Constitution of the Muscogee

Citizenship Board Website!
&
Tribal Housing Authority.

Add FREE Weather to your website - Click Here!

Court Records
In Indian Territory

• 1889 — a federal court was established at Muskogee. Marriage records of many white settlers will be found in its records from 1890 to 1907 (statehood).

   

• 1890 — a federal court was established at Ardmore

  These were later divided into four districts with 26 substations. They are:
  

  • Northern District, established in 1895, covered the area of the Cherokee and the Quapaw Agency, with Vinita as the court seat.
    
  • Central District, established in 1895, covered the area with Muskogee as the court seat.
    
  • Southern District, established in 1895, covered the area of the Choctaw and Chickasaw , with South McAlester (now called McAlester) as the court seat.
    
  • Western District, established in 1897, covered the area of the Chickasaw, with Ardmore as the court seat.
    

• Family Tree Place

• 
  
  

• 1832 Census Images

• 1857 Old Settlers Roll

• 1863 Refugee & Euchee Census

• 1882 Census

• Creek Indians
  
  
• Message Board
  
  
• Muskogee Public Library
  
  
• Comanche Lodge
  
  
• Kiowa Comanche Apache Reservation
  
  
• Indian Sign Language
  
  
• Surnames Search

Try Our World Famous Armadillo Search! The fastest search engine this side of the Red River (Rio Rojo)

• From about 1890 until Oklahoma statehood in November of 1907, marriages of white and black citizens in the area were recorded in the various recording districts of the U.S. federal court. Most of these records have been transcribed and are on file at the Oklahoma Historical Society and the Family History Library. Muscogee County has marriage records from July 1890.
  
  
• Marriage records (if either the bride or bridegroom was a citizen)  prior to 1890 will be found in the tribe's records.  They are scattered and no known index exists to them. They can be found in the respective tribal records at the Oklahoma Historical Society.
  
  
• A white man who married a Native woman became an adopted member of the tribe and was listed as an intermarried citizen. The number of intermarried citizens increased so rapidly that strict laws were enacted regarding these marriages. The cost of a license was expensive — at one time it amounted to $100 in the Choctaw Tribe. Among the Cherokees, a man had to get 10 citizens to vouch for his good character. A white man coming into the area to work was required to take out a license or permit, and its cost varied according to the business. Ordinary laborers paid only a small fee, while peddlers, mechanics and professional men had to pay much more. All the tribes passed laws forbidding the leasing of land to white men, but in all of them the laws were broken. A tribal citizen could employ a white man as a laborer to work on a farm and could make a contract that the white man would have a share of the crops instead of a wage in money.

• The people of Muskhogean linguistic stock, had adopted fragment groups into the tribe since early times. The tribe in Oklahoma contained people from the Koasati, Hitchiti, Natchez, Apalachicola, Alabama, Tuskegee and Yuchi (Euchee) tribes. All of these, with the exception of the Yuchis, belonged to the Muskhogean language group.
  
  
• The people had begun arriving in the region since the early 1830's, mostly from Alabama.
  
  
• The 1867 constitution divided the tribe into six districts — Okmulgee, Coweta, Muskogee, Deep Fork, Eufaula and Wewoka. Its Council elected a judge for each district, the principal chief appointed six district attorneys with the approval of the council, and the voters of each district elected a captain and four privates to serve as a light-horse police force. Trial by jury was provided for civil and criminal cases. All suits at law in which the amount in dispute was more than $100 were tried by the Supreme Court, composed of five justices named by the Council for terms of four years.

• The earliest settlements in what is now Oklahoma had been determined by the Texas Road and fertile land that attracted wild game and farmers to the Three Forks area (near what is now Muskogee) and the forks of the Canadian River (near what is now Eufaula). At the forks of the Canadian River, Asbury Mission had been established in 1847 and several towns grew up and flourished in that vicinity. North Fork Town grew and was important until the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad was built through the area in 1871. After a station was built at Eufaula, the older towns moved to the railroad. The towns of North Fork Town and Micco Post Office vanished, while Eufaula grew. The St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad (a successor of the Atlantic and Pacific) extended its line to Tulsa in 1882 and to Sapulpa in 1886. The Arkansas Valley Railroad crossed the Missouri, Kansas and Texas at Wagoner.
  
  
• Creek Census 1860 Free inhabitants west of the State of Arkansas.
  
  
• From the close of the Civil War in 1865 to the admission of Oklahoma to the Union as a state in 1907, the history of the eastern half of the present-state of Oklahoma is quite different from that of the western half. When the people of the Five Civilized Tribes ceded their western lands as a home for friendly allies of the Plains, they really divided Oklahoma into two nearly equal parts.
  
  
• After 1890, the western portion became known as Oklahoma Territory and the eastern part was called Indian Territory. These Twin Territories, as they came to be known, were nearly the same size, but were quite unlike geographically and politically. The citizens of the Five Civilized Tribes did not pay taxes in the ordinary sense of the word. Money to support the government and tribal schools came from annuities, from the license fees, coal royalties from the Outlet lands in the case of the Cherokees, and from some other sources.
  
  
• The number of whites in this area steadily increased. In 1880 it was estimated that there were 6,000 whites in the area of the Five Civilized Tribes, not including railway workers and certain other laborers, whom the tribal officers had allowed to remain. The U.S. government tried to remove those who had no permits, but they usually came back again. By 1884, the number of whites in this area was estimated at 25,000. In 1890, between 120,000 and 140,000. As new railroads were built into the region more whites arrived. By 1895, the whites were estimated at 300,000 and by the census of 1900 there was a population of whites of nearly 400,000 and only 70,000 Natives.

Oklahoma became a state 16 November 1907

© 2008 All Rights Reserved.