Creek Freedmen

Creek Freedmen is a term for emancipated African Americans who were slaves of Muscogee Creek tribal members before 1866. They were emancipated under the tribe's 1866 treaty with the United States following the American Civil War, during which the Creek Nation had allied with the Confederacy. Freedmen who wished to stay in the Creek Nation in Indian Territory, with whom they often had blood relatives, were to be granted full citizenship in the Creek Nation. Many of the African Americans had removed with the Creek from the American Southeast in the 1830s, and lived and worked the land since then in Indian Territory.

The term also includes their modern descendants in the United States. At the time of the war and since, many Creek Freedmen were of partial Creek descent by blood. Registration of tribal members under the Dawes Commission often failed to record such ancestry. In 2001, the Creek Nation changed its membership rules, requiring all members to prove descent to persons listed as "Indian by Blood" on the Dawes Rolls. The Creek Freedmen have sued against this decision.

Most of the Freedmen were former slaves of tribal members who had lived in both upper and lower Creek territories in the Southeast. In some villages, Creek citizens married enslaved men or women, and had mixed-race children with them. Interracial marriages were common during this time, and many Creek Freedmen were partly of Creek Indian ancestry.

Because the Muscogee (Creek) Nation mostly allied with the Confederacy, after the Union victory in the Civil War, the United States in 1866 required a new treaty with the Creek Nation and others of the Five Civilized Tribes, who also had allied with the Confederacy.

The treaty required the tribes to emancipate their slaves and to offer them citizenship in the Creek and other nations, eligible for voting rights and shares of annuities and land settlements. The treaty called for the setting aside of the western half of the territory (thereafter called Unassigned Lands) for the United States to use for the settlement of freedmen and other American Indian tribes from the Great Plains. The Creek were forced to cede 3,250,560 acres (13,154.5 km²), for which the United States agreed to pay the sum of thirty (30) cents per acre, amounting to $975,165 USD. The 1866 U.S. treaty article 4 said the US would conduct a census of the Creek tribe, to include the Freedmen.

...
Wikipedia