Chapter 3 | Section 2
Southeastern Native Nations
While explorers were busy documenting their positive and negative views of Oklahoma, they could not have known that what they said and wrote would have dire consequences for scores of Indigenous people living nowhere near the so-called Great American Desert. This was especially true for those living in the Southeast. The southeastern Native nations or Five Tribes are the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, and Cherokee peoples. Well before they first had contact with Europeans, the tribes that were forced to abandon their ancestral homelands in the Southeast had thriving communities with sophisticated structures of government, commerce, and society. Many members of these tribes incorporated aspects of European culture following the American Revolution in the late eighteenth century. They hoped their adaptations would help protect them from further loss of land and attacks on their culture and way of life. Members of the southeastern tribes married non-Native people, and these unions, especially between white men and Indigenous women, led to close familial bonds and cultural exchanges. However, adopting the cultural and economic practices of white Americans was not enough to protect these Native nations from ongoing dispossession. The US government, in other words, took ownership or possession of land that belonged to the tribes.
For close to two hundred years, the Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole nations were known as the Five “Civilized” Tribes. The term “civilized” came into use because in the minds of many white observers, the governments, economic structures (including the ownership of slaves), and cultures of the Five Tribes seemed to closely resemble those of European settlers. The Five Tribes largely, though to varying degrees, tried to accommodate white settlement and growth in the Southeast by adopting aspects of non-Indigenous culture and entering into treaties on a government-to-government basis. That said, they often blended their own cultures and beliefs with those of white men and women rather than replacing them. And some rejected these efforts altogether. Traditionalists within each of these Native nations remained dedicated to preserving their own traditional beliefs, practices, and ways of knowing.
Members of the Five Tribes held varied beliefs and practices but also had much in common. They were (and remain so today) matrilineal tribes, which means that clan identity, community affiliation, and tribal membership passed from mothers to their children. It also meant that the oldest woman in a family had control over the home and that when men and women married, they became part of the woman’s family of origin. Another common practice was that the father and brothers of women played a significant role in making decisions about a woman’s children, including advising on marriage and other important matters. This was very different from most European traditions where a woman’s identity (political, legal, familial, and so forth) was determined mainly by the identity of her husband.
Another difference between the southeastern tribes and Europeans had to do with religion. The religious systems of the tribes were—and are to this day as well—rooted in their creation stories as well as a belief in animism (the idea that all things have a spiritual essence). Southeastern tribes also shared a belief in three worlds: the upper, middle, and lower. The upper world was occupied by a divine force or forces, which could include a single creator or multiple spirits or gods. For Cherokees, the upper world was occupied by numerous male and female gods who looked out for the welfare of the people and provided them with gifts to improve their way of living. Muscogees on the other hand believed in a single divine creator but also, like the Cherokees, honored the spiritual connection between all living things. The lower world (also called the underworld) was inhabited by ancestors as well as monsters. This lower world could be chaotic, but it was not all good or bad. The middle world, or this world, was where people were living in the present. It was the world occupied by Indigenous people as well as those they encountered. While belief systems were not uniform among the southeastern tribes, there were more similarities than differences.
As their contact with Europeans increased, members of each of these Native nations found ways to connect their traditional beliefs to Christianity and to monotheism, or the belief in a single god. Some southeastern Indigenous people actually converted to Christianity, but they found ways to blend both sets of beliefs. Ceremonial, Christian, and blended traditions continue among tribal communities today.
Southeastern tribes also had complex political systems consisting of numerous chiefdoms (smaller groups) linked to the larger political organization. The groups were led by chiefs and subchiefs, and they had tribal councils (governing bodies or legislatures). An exception was the Muscogee Nation, which instead of chiefdoms had smaller towns that were linked to a larger town, or mother town. Each of these towns had its own chief and held its own town meetings. There were also larger meetings or councils that took place among chiefs in the mother town. Most disputes between tribes or even between chiefdoms were less about conquest or permanent gain than they were a last resort to settle a disagreement. Many tribal members preferred to use stickball or other games as a more peaceful way to settle disputes.
Over time, some tribal members, including many leaders, made the conscious decision to adopt more European or American ways of living. They did this for several reasons. Some liked the new ways and wanted to include them. Some believed that if they were more like white Americans, they would be protected from having their land taken from them. Some believed that having a written language and learning to read and write English was an important means for them to understand and negotiate with American leaders. The best example of this is the creation of the Cherokee syllabary by Cherokee linguist Sequoyah.
Sequoyah, by Charles Banks Wilson. The Cherokee syllabary is a writing system that Sequoyah developed and the Cherokee Tribal Council adopted in 1821. With the adoption of the syllabary as a uniform writing system, literacy spread quickly among Cherokee people.
Courtesy of the Capitol Art Collection, Oklahoma Arts Council.
The Cherokee syllabary is not an alphabet but a system of 85 characters that represent the sounds used to speak Cherokee. Original copies of the syllabary written by Sequoyah in the 1820s can be viewed at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa.
From James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokees (Washington, DC: Bureau of American Ethnology, 1900), 113.
Some members of the Five Tribes made economic gain a new priority. For example, the Five Tribes developed plantation-style farming and used enslaved labor. The rise of cotton, a labor-intensive crop known, increased the demand for enslaved labor. It also allowed some members of the Five Tribes to become very wealthy. Historians have had many debates about whether members of the Five Tribes and southern whites treated enslaved people in similar or different ways. No doubt individual enslavers (both Indigenous and white) treated enslaved people in varying ways. What is clear is that this form of enslavement, which treated human beings as property, was raced-based and inherited from one generation to the next, and there was little opportunity for enslaved people to escape their situation. The unfree status of enslaved people, which lasted for centuries in the United States before it was outlawed, continues to complicate discussions about race and racism today. And the formerly unfree status of Black people enslaved by the Five Tribes continues to complicate questions about tribal membership, politics, and identity.
The Cherokee Phoenix, published as a bilingual newspaper in Cherokee and English, was the first newspaper to be published by Native Americans. For its Cherokee text, it used the syllabary created by Sequoyah. The first issue was produced in New Echota, Georgia, in 1828.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
The Five Tribes had complex political and economic structures and thriving societies in the southeastern United States, and this continued into the early 1800s. The Cherokee Nation, for example, adopted a constitution in 1827 that was based on the US Constitution. By the early 1820s, however, states like Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi began pushing hard for the federal government to move Native nations to parts of the new Louisiana Purchase territory. The states wanted to open up more land for white southerners. They made multiple efforts to convince tribes to relocate, and those efforts were met with mixed results. Some Indigenous leaders believed that if they did not agree to move, they would be forced to do so under worse terms than they were being offered. Others were committed to staying in the Southeast. They either thought negotiation was still possible or that they could simply reject efforts to force them to leave their land. The debate over relocation led to bitter divisions and mistrust both within Native nations and between Native nations and the US government. Some individuals belonging to the Five Tribes left well ahead of forced removal. The Muscogee, Cherokee, and Chickasaw Nations all had members already living in Indian Territory by the 1820s. Eventually all the Five Tribes (with the exception of some bands who broke away to avoid going) were relocated to present-day Oklahoma. The process of removal varied among tribes, but it was a deeply painful experience for most individuals who experienced it.