https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/history/people/paying-play-indian-dawes-rolls-legacy-5-indians/
It may be fashionable to play Indian now, but it was also trendy 125 years ago when people paid $5 apiece for falsified documents declaring them Native on the Dawes Rolls.
These so-called five-dollar Indians paid government agents under the table in order to reap the benefits that came with having Indian blood. Mainly white men with an appetite for land, five-dollar Indians paid to register on the Dawes Rolls, earning fraudulent enrollment in tribes along with benefits inherited by generations to come.
“These were opportunistic white men who wanted access to land or food rations,” said Gregory Smithers, associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University. “These were people who were more than happy to exploit the Dawes Commission—and government agents, for $5, were willing to turn a blind eye to the graft and corruption.”
About U.S., Native American Applications for Enrollment in Five Civilized Tribes (overturned), 1896
In 1896 a Congressional law was passed that gave the Dawes Commission authority to oversee applications for tribal citizenship into the Five Civilized Tribes – Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. This database contains the applications for enrollment into these tribes from the Muskogee, Oklahoma area office. There are no records from the Seminole tribe because they made a separate arrangement with the Dawes Commission and bypassed the application process.
Individuals applying for tribal citizenship included:
- Indians by blood
- Spouses of Indians
- Freedmen who were former members of the Five Civilized Tribes
Application files can include documents such as affidavits, depositions, letters, memorials, objections, lists of evidence, receipts for service of papers, notices of appeal, and references to case numbers. Some files contain further documents and background information that may provide more detail on the applicant’s life.
Each application received an application number. The applications are organized numerically. Applications from Chickasaw and Choctaw freedmen were filed separately from the applications for the rest of these two tribes.
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