Indian Territory Freedmen History Month-The Trillion Dollar Question?

$20 Million in 1907 Equals 1,043,790,291,753.06 in 2021

Chickasaw Freedman Card #61 Rear

Chickasaw Freedman Card #61 Front

The Joe and Dillard Perry petition to transfer from the Freedmen roll to the Chickasaw by Blood Roll became the “test case” for admitting all people who possessed Chickasaw or Choctaw blood to be enrolled as “citizens by blood” despite whether they had an ancestor (female) who was held in bondage.

The Joe and Dillard Perry case is pivotal because it established that a person who was a lineal descendant of a Chickasaw or Choctaw “Indian” was entitled to enroll on the citizen by blood roll and receive three-hundred and twenty acres of land.

After many years of litigation the Department of the Interior in November of 1906 ruled the Perry’s were entitled to be transferred from the freedmen roll to the roll of Chickasaw citizens by blood roll.

The success of the Perry case should have been the precedent for similar cases that were denied by the Dawes Commission and the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations. These cases became known as Equity Case 7071; Bettie Ligon vs Chickasaw & Choctaw Nations and the United States Department of the Interior.

To understand the importance of the Perry case and the effects it could have on Indian Territory as it became the new state of Oklahoma you have to understand the political and economic impact it would have on the new state of Oklahoma.

“This ends one of the hardest legal battles ever waged in the Interior Department regarding the Choctaw-Chickasaw citizenship and the effects of the present decision will be far reaching, as thereby all persons now on the roll as Choctaw or Chickasaw freedmen who can prove their descent from a Choctaw or Chickasaw Indian will be entitled to have their enrollment as freedmen cancelled and be enrolled upon the rolls of citizens by blood and instead of receiving only an allotment appraised at $130.16 they will be entitled to an allotment of the appraised value of $141.28, besides a full share of all tribal money.” 

If only justice was that simple and Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations as well as the Department of the Interior applied the law equitably. Such was not the case and in only a few months later it would be necessary for more “half-breed Indians” to file suit to protect their rights as citizens of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nation.

The lawsuit file on April 13, 1907 initially involved approximately one thousand –five hundred individuals seeking a transfer from the Choctaw and Chickasaw freedmen roll to the by blood roll of the tribe of their respective birth.

It was calculated that these men, women and children who were the children or descendants of Choctaw and Chickasaw men would stand to gain the equivalent of ten thousand ($10,000) each; in a land allotment of three hundred and twenty acres as opposed to the forty acres they would receive as “freedmen.”

The argument used by the tribes, the Dawes Commission and the Department of the Interior was based on the antebellum “custom” of children of slave women follow the status of their mother in regards to their “race.”

However, the mandate for the Dawes Commission and the Department of the Interior was to enroll and allot 320 acres of land to all who “possessed” Indian blood!

Seems to me, a debt is long overdue and payable? Whether a person was born out of wedlock or not does not affect their genealogy.

The number of individuals involved in this lawsuit now known as Equity Case 7071 increased from 1,500 to two thousand. The amount of that suit adjusted for inflation based on the figure $20,000,000 compound at just a simple 10% per annum would equal $1,043,790,291,753.06  in 2021. 

I suspect the number will continue to increase each year until the debt is paid?

Cover Page Original Brief Equity Case 7071