Democracy and the American Civil War: Race and African Americans in the Nineteenth Century by Kevin Adams & Leonne M. Hudson

Author:Kevin Adams & Leonne M. Hudson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Kent State University Press

The three groups included for enumeration in the census were whites, colored persons, and Indians. In the case of whites and colored persons, the Council specified that census takers count both those individuals entitled to Cherokee citizenship and those residing in the nation illegally. The provisions regarding the third category for enumeration, Indians, exemplify the change in Cherokee racial self-perception. The early portion of the instructions, specifying the counting of heads of household and the classification of the population by age and gender, did not explicitly mention Cherokees or Indians but most likely referred to Cherokees or Cherokees by birth. If the three stated available racial categories were black, white, and Indian, the term Indian used later in the instructions must have included the Cherokees. By requiring a separate enumeration from blacks and whites, Cherokees obliquely affirmed their separateness from both groups and their “Indian-ness.”

Although the act did not state this explicitly, the separate enumeration of those individuals who would have accessed Cherokee citizenship by adoption or under the treaty of 1866 implies that lawmakers recognized at least two categories of legal citizenship: Cherokee citizens by birth and Cherokee citizens by law. The final segment dealing with counting the human population ordered census officials to name all Indians not entitled to Cherokee citizenship. Where is the directive to count the Indians who were entitled to Cherokee citizenship? After all, as early as 1843, an agreement between the Cherokee, Creek, and Osage Nations permitted the citizens of any of the party nations to become citizens of other party nations.34 Thus, it is probable that some Creeks or Osages lived in the Cherokee Nation as Cherokee citizens. The language of the act implies that the categories of people entitled to citizenship mentioned earlier included all Indians, so that “Indian” encompassed Cherokees as well as Indians originally from other tribes.

Despite the provisions of the act authorizing the 1880 census, the Cherokee Nation’s actual report summarizing the census results includes the language of “blood” and “nativity.” Included in the demographic data about the gender and age of Cherokee citizens was an accounting of the number of “Native” and “Adopted” citizens in the nation by district.35 Cherokees were distinguishing more frequently between Cherokee citizens by birth and by law, a distinction that would not have been made before the nineteenth century. Census takers also collected data on the “Races” of the citizen population. The racial categories named were “Cherokees by blood,” “Whites,” “Colored,” “Delawares,” “Shawnees,” “Creeks,” and “Miscellaneous.”36 The census takers were instructed to note racial categorization but were not asked to divide the Cherokee citizenry by “blood” or “nativity”; nevertheless, the census takers chose to collect and report data in precisely this manner. “Blood” and “nativity” were increasingly important parts of Cherokee identity.

As the Cherokee Nation developed a hierarchy of legal citizenship, those Cherokees who were citizens by birth reaped real economic benefits. Cherokees by birth had civil and political rights, were eligible for all offices in the national government, and received remuneration from annuity funds paid by the federal government for Cherokee land.

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