Five Civilized Tribes definition of Five Civilized Tribes in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Five Civilized Tribes, inclusive term used since mid-19th cent. for the Cherokee Cherokee (chĕr`əkē), largest Native American group in the United States.
..... Click the link for more information. , Chickasaw Chickasaw (chĭk`əsô)
..... Click the link for more information. , Choctaw Choctaw (chŏk`tô), Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Muskogean branch of the Hokan-Siouan linguistic stock (see
..... Click the link for more information. , Creek Creek, Native North American confederacy. The peoples forming it were mostly of the Muskogean branch of the Hokan-Siouan linguistic stock (see Native American languages ).
..... Click the link for more information. , and Seminole Seminole, Native North Americans whose language belongs to the Muskogean branch of the Hokan-Siouan linguistic stock (see Native American languages ). They separated (their name means "separatist") from the Creek in the early 18th cent.
..... Click the link for more information. tribes of E Oklahoma. By 1850 some 60,000 members of these tribes were settled in the Indian Territory Indian Territory, in U.S. history, name applied to the country set aside for Native Americans by the Indian Intercourse Act (1834). In the 1820s, the federal government began moving the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw) of the
..... Click the link for more information. under the Removal Act of 1830, which provided that this territory was to be held communally on the condition that the tribes surrendered certain land rights E of the Mississippi River. These tribes never lived on a reservation and were officially recognized as domestic dependent nations. Before crossing the Mississippi River, the Cherokee and the Creek had evolved a highly developed agricultural culture in the SE United States. Each tribe had a written constitution, a judiciary system, a bicameral legislature, an executive branch, and a public school system.

After the American Civil War, the majority of tribes having aided the Confederacy, all treaties were put aside, their lands were restricted to E Oklahoma, and their black slaves, who had numbered several thousand, were freed. Later a federal policy of detribalization resulted in loss of the governmental functions of the Five Tribes and the division of all land into individual holdings. Although the tribal governments have continued to function, they have little authority and serve mainly in an advisory capacity.

Bibliography

See G. Foreman, The Five Civilized Tribes (1934, repr. 1966) and Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes (new ed. 1953, repr. 1966); A. Debo, And Still the Waters Run (1940, repr. 1966); R. S. Cotterill, Southern Indians (1954, repr. 1963); M. T. Bailey, Reconstruction in Indian Territory (1972); T. Perdue, Nations Remembered (1980).