Dawes Rolls and enrollment records

Why the rolls were made

The Dawes Act of 1887 divided many reservations into individual allotments, but it excluded the five nations of Indian Territory, which the government then called the Five Civilized Tribes. In 1893 Congress created a commission to negotiate with them. Its chairman was Henry L. Dawes, the former Massachusetts senator who wrote the 1887 law, so it became known as the Dawes Commission.

In 1896 Congress allowed the commission to take applications to add names to existing tribal rolls, and it received more than 7,500. Those 1896 applications were later declared void. The Curtis Act of June 28, 1898, let the commission enroll and allot without tribal consent and provided for ending the tribal governments, and by 1902 each nation had ratified an agreement that set the terms. Applications were accepted from 1898 to 1907, with a small number added as late as 1914. Approved members received an allotment of land, and the commission required them to live in Indian Territory.

Roll, card, packet, and jacket

The final roll is the short version. It gives a roll number, name, age, sex, blood degree, and the census card number, arranged by tribe and then by enrollment category. The card number is the key that leads to everything else.

The census card, also called an enrollment card, was made for each family group. It lists each person's roll number, tribe and category, name, relationship to the head of the family, age, sex, blood degree, and parents' names, with notes about births, deaths, marriages, earlier tribal rolls, and cross references to related cards. The Oklahoma Historical Society notes that the age shown is generally the person's age around 1902.

The enrollment application, also called a jacket or testimonial packet, holds what the family submitted and what the commission heard: transcripts of testimony, letters, and sometimes affidavits from relatives or neighbors, with details of births, deaths, marriages, and divorces. Packets run from one page to more than a hundred.

Approved members also have a land allotment jacket, filed by enrollment number. It gives the legal description of the land by range, township, and section, describes improvements, and may hold plat maps and notices of contested selections. The commission's allotment maps show the parcels township by township.

Categories, abbreviations, and card types

Each roll is divided by category, and the abbreviations appear everywhere. BB means citizen by blood, IW intermarried white, IM citizen by marriage, A adopted, and F Freedmen. NB marks newborns and M minors, children born after enrollment began in 1898 but before March 1907, who were listed on separate cards. D means doubtful and R rejected, and Freedmen have their own denied and rejected categories.

Approved applicants are on straight cards with no extra marking. Doubtful applicants were put on D cards and later moved either to an approved card or to an R card. Some cards are stamped Cancelled, Denied, Dismissed, Refused, or Rejected, and a person moved from one card to another may appear on a card stamped Transferred or Duplicate. Mississippi Choctaw who were found eligible were listed as identified, and they were ultimately required to move to Indian Territory to be enrolled.

Freedmen on the rolls

Freedmen were people who had been enslaved by members of the five nations, and their descendants. They were enrolled on separate Freedmen rolls and were entitled to allotments like other approved citizens. Freedmen cards include fields for slave of, father's owner, and mother's owner, which can point to the family that held an ancestor before emancipation and so to earlier records.

The Oklahoma Historical Society cautions that although Freedmen and Native Americans did intermarry, the commission typically enrolled people of mixed heritage as Freedmen and recorded no blood relation to the tribe. A Freedmen card is therefore a record of how the commission classified a person, and family testimony in the application packet may tell a fuller story.

If your ancestor is not on the roll

Start with the 1900 census. The Oklahoma Historical Society says that if an ancestor did not live in Indian Territory, it is extremely unlikely they will be on the rolls. If they did live there, they may be among the doubtful or rejected applicants, who are left out of most indexes. They may also have belonged to another nation, chosen not to enroll, or been unable to.

Rejected applicants can still have a census card and an application, even though they have no allotment jacket. Look also at the 1896 applications, which survive and are noted on later cards as 1896 Case with a number, and at earlier tribal rolls. Choctaw and Chickasaw cases reviewed by the Choctaw-Chickasaw Citizenship Court between 1902 and 1904 are marked CCCC on the card. For Eastern Band Cherokee families, the Guion Miller Roll is a separate record, and for other tribes the Indian Census Rolls are a better starting point.