Native American Records
Index to Dawes Commission Records and Guion Miller Rolls

The Dawes Commission was created in 1893 to negotiate agreements to exchange tribal lands for individual allotments. The Curtis Act of 1898 provided for the preparation of tribal rolls and the assignment of land to qualified persons. The commission produced "Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes." For the Cherokee, the categories are: Cherokee by Blood, Cherokee by Intermarriage, Cherokee Freedmen, and Minor Cherokee Freedmen. There is some variance in the categories for Choctaws, Creeks, Seminoles, and Chickasaws, but basically they are the same. After the index is searched, the roll cards can be ordered. These roll cards give the enroller's name, parents' names, and their enrollment numbers, as well as the numbers of other relatives listed on his card.

After the U.S. Court of Claims found in favor of the Cherokee Indians in their suit against the U.S. for treaty violations, the Department of the Interior assigned special agent Guion Miller the task of compiling rolls of claimants eligible to receive compensation. The court specified that payment was to be made to Western Cherokees who were alive on May 28, 1906 and who could prove they were members or descendants of the Eastern Cherokee Tribe at the time the violated treaties were made in 1835, 1836, and 1845. Claims were to be filed with Guion Miller on or before August 31, 1907. By the deadline 46,000 applications were on file, representing 90,000 individual claimants. Roughly one-third of these were entitled to a share, which indicates that two-thirds of the applicants' were members of the white populations. The Guion Miller Rolls consist of the applications offering the name, residence, age, birthplace, spouse, tribe and children of the applicant. Similar information was given about parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts, and uncles.

These records are searched in two steps. The first search provides a list of everyone of the same surname listed in the Dawes Commission Records Index and Guion Miller Rolls Index. The roll cards or applications can then be ordered for the individuals of primary interest.

If your ancestor is found in the index, Lineages' staff can send a copy of the original record for an additional $10.00 fee.

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