African-Native American Heritage Month Molsie Butler

 African-Native American Heritage Month

Molsie BUTLER

Choctaw Freedwoman Card #1083

 It has been demonstrated by a preponderance of information and evidence that the Chickasaw Nation, the Choctaw Nation and the Dawes Commission as well as the Department of the Interior processed the claims of people with African-Native American ancestry in a racially biased way. As a result of their decisions thousands of descendants of this particular class of “freedmen” were denied recognition as citizens and more importantly the generational wealth of receiving three hundred and twenty acres of land that was given to people who arguably had less Chickasaw and Choctaw blood but were deemed acceptable because they didn’t’ have an ancestor of African descent.

South McAlester Capital March 24, 1904, p3c5

You have seen one case after the other presented during “Native American Heritage Month” attesting to this practice which left the descendants of these people ignored and ostracized from the community of their ancestors birth and not one of the citizens in those two nations has had the courage to come forward and say; this is wrong, we must correct this.

 If there was any doubt that this was the practice of the Dawes Commission or that the commissioners were confined to this practice my colleague Angela Walton-Raji and I have gone to great lengths to shine a light on this subject that “equal justice under law” for the descendants of the people who comprise what is known as Equity Case 7071; Bettie Ligon vs the Choctaw Nation, the Chickasaw Nation and the Department of the Interior which was filed on April 13, 1907 remains as one of the “most important lawsuits” in Indian Territory to this day!

M-1186 Choctaw by Blood Denied#D-638

When the Dawes Commission used every trick in the book; from claiming they didn’t declare their desire to be placed on the blood rolls, to there was no evidence the ancestor or parent that was the basis for their claim to be placed on the “citizen by blood” roll, in some cases the response of the commission was “even it was their parent as claimed they could not locate the individual on any earlier roll” we see a pattern of deceit or as one attorney put it, “an abuse of intelligence” to think these petitioners did not have a rightful claim to be recognized as a citizen of the Choctaw or Chickasaw Nation. 

The case of Molsie Butler is one of those foundational cases demonstrating how African-Native Americans were rejected as “citizens by blood” by the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations with the full co-operation of the Dawes Commission. Remarkably at one point the evidence of Molsie Butler’s lineal ancestry was convincing enough for the United States Court for the Central District of the Indian Territory in 1897 “reversed the decision of the Commission and admitted to Choctaw citizenship Molsie Butler, Roger and Bessie Butler.” However, the court “reformed” the judgment and struck the names of Roger and Bessie from citizenship because they were not on the original 1896 application for citizenship. Molsie had two other children born since that filing and the three were enlisted as “citizens in the Choctaw Nation.” 

What is so remarkable about this particular case is there was an affidavit entered on the record that the mother and father of Molsie Butler nee Foster were “duly and lawfully married” and astonishingly they were married in January of 1866, several months before the signing of the Fort Smith Treaty of 1866.

M-1301 Choctaw by Blood Denied #D-638

Aleck Foster the “recognized” Choctaw citizen died in 1870 which highlights another pattern and practice of the Dawes Commission. If the father of “African-Choctaw” or African-Chickasaw” children was deceased at the time of the Dawes Land Allotment application, his children were not admitted as citizens. 

It was only in cases like the children of Jesse and Dora McGee in the Chickasaw Nation or Morris and Lucy Impson in the Choctaw Nation that the father was alive and fought to have his children enrolled on the blood rolls. 

The idea that children were admitted recognized and received three-hundred and twenty acres of land based on the “clan” of the mother was pure fiction. The evidence is overwhelming that the children of “white” women and a “recognized” male were admitted based on their father. 

The Dawes Commissioners would probably site the fact that a couple were “married according to Chickasaw or Choctaw law” was also fiction because as we see in the case of Joe N. Love, his parents were not married. His mother was a white woman and though the father Robert Howard Love, accepted Joe as his son, it did not remove the taint of “illegitimate” from Joe and it didn’t prevent Joe N. Love from being placed on the Chickasaw by Blood Roll, unlike what happened to Molsie Butler.

M-1186 Chickasaw by Blood #1717

As Native American Heritage month comes to a close, the history and detrimental actions of the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations has to be fully told and include the chapter where they shamefully removed thousands of people from their community based on the so called “race” (African descent) of their mother. The citizens of these two nations can remedy that error and bring their people home!