Creek Freedmen

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Creek Freedmen is a term for emancipated Creeks of African descent who were slaves of Muscogee Creek tribal members before 1866. They were emancipated under the tribe's 1866 treaty with the United States following the American Civil War, during which the Creek Nation had allied with the Confederate States of America. Freedmen who wished to stay in the Creek Nation in Indian Territory, with whom they often had blood relatives, were to be granted full citizenship in the Creek Nation. Many of the African Americans had removed with the Creek from the American Southeast in the 1830s, and lived and worked the land since then in Indian Territory.

The term also includes their modern descendants in the United States. At the time of the war and since, many Creek Freedmen were of partial Creek descent by blood.^[1] Registration of tribal members under the Dawes Commission often failed to record such ancestry. In 1979, the Creek Nation changed its membership rules, requiring all members to prove descent to persons listed as "Indian by Blood" on the Dawes Rolls. The Creek Freedmen have sued against this decision.