Bettie's List: Choctaw & Chickasaw Descendants-Black History Day 9, Full Bloods, Half Bloods & Mixed Bloods

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Choctaw & Chickasaw Descendants-Black History Day 9, Full Bloods, Half Bloods & Mixed Bloods

Choctaw & Chickasaw Descendants Black History Day 9, #BlackHistory365

HEARINGS before the Committee on Indian Affairs House of Representatives (61-2)

H.R. 192789, H.R. 19552 & H.R. 22830 pp 53

Full Bloods, Half Bloods & Mixed Bloods

Argument by Harry J. Cantwell, esq.

#BlackHistory365

On the approved rolls of full-blood Choctaws appear 16,227 names Only 6,498 of these names are full bloods. The remainder are of all degrees of Indian blood, from one-half to one two-hundred and twenty-fourths. Not one out of twenty of the mixed bloods classified as full bloods has as much as one-half Indian blood.
There are more with one-sixteenth, one thirty-second, and one sixty-fourth than there are with one-quarter blood.
In the new-born Choctaw full-bloods roll, out of a total of 1,583, only 345 are really full bloods.
There are also on the roll of Choctaws by marriage, who have each and all been given full rights and who have already received 320 acres each, 1,672 persons.
Out of a total of 19,482 persons given already 320 acres of land as Choctaw citizens of full blood and by marriage, 6,843 only are really full-blood Indians.
That is about one in three.

On the Chickasaw rolls the same general ration appears. Now, this distribution has been made upon what theory? Upon what legal theory and what was the consideration and motive moving Congress to distribute this property to these people?

There can only be three.

One was to distribute it in accordance with the provisions of former treaties, although Congress was not bound to regard former treaties, to the “Indian and his descendants.”

Another was to distribute it upon the theory that every human being born to the environment of the tribe, and all those adopted into the tribe by marriage, by formal act or custom, when the tribal relation was broken up, and the collective right of the tribe to occupancy of the land was gone, were entitled, morally, to equal distribution of that which the tribe had theretofore collectively claimed or enjoyed.

And the third motive or consideration was that those who, by reason of the Indian life and environment, had been deprived of the capacity which other citizens of this Republic possess to earn a livelihood, should be given a start and the means toward self-maintenance and existence as individuals.