Five Civilized Tribes

The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by the United States government in the early federal period of the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminoles. White Americans classified them as "civilized" because they had adopted attributes of the Anglo-American culture.
Examples of such colonial attributes adopted by these five tribes included Christianity, centralized governments, literacy, market participation, written constitutions, intermarriage with White Americans, and chattel slavery practices, including purchase of enslaved Black Americans. For a period, the Five Civilized Tribes tended to maintain stable political relations with the White population. However, White encroachment continued and eventually led to the removal of these tribes from the Southeast, most prominently along the Trail of Tears.
In the 21st century, this term has been criticized by some scholars for its ethnocentric assumptions by Anglo-Americans of what they considered civilized, but representatives of these tribes continue to meet regularly on a quarterly basis in their Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes.
The descendants of these tribes, who primarily live in what is now Oklahoma, are sometimes referred to as the Five Tribes of Oklahoma, although several other federally recognized tribes are also located in that state.

Terminology

The term "civilized tribes" was adopted to distinguish the Five Tribes from other Native American tribes that were described as "wild" or "savage". Texts written by non-indigenous scholars and writers have used words like "savage" and "wild" to identify Indian groups that retained their traditional cultural practices after European contact. As a consequence of evolving attitudes toward ethnocentric word usage and more rigorous ethnographical standards, the term "Five Civilized Tribes" is rarely used in contemporary academic publications.
George Washington believed that the only way Indians could survive in proximity to White settlers was for them to become civilized. The United States accordingly adopted a policy of civilizing Indians while Washington was president. The policy assumed that civilized Indians would require less land, and would need money, so that they would be willing to sell the excess land to White settlers. In White American terms, Indians became civilized by the men giving up hunting and becoming farmers, displacing the women who traditionally had been the primary farmers. They were expected to use draft animals and to give up maize as a main crop and instead raise wheat and cotton. The women were to become housekeepers, caring for children and weaving cotton for clothing. The Indians were also expected to acquire slaves and use them like their White plantation neighbors did.
The word "civilized" was used by White settlers to refer to the Five Tribes, who, during the 18th and early 19th centuries, actively integrated Anglo-American customs into their own cultures. Sociologists, anthropologists, and interdisciplinary scholars alike are interested in how and why these native peoples assimilated certain features of the alien culture of the White settlers who were encroaching on their lands. Historian Steve Brandon asserts that this "adaptation and incorporation of aspects of white culture" was a tactic employed by the Five Nations peoples to resist removal from their lands.
While the term "Five Civilized Tribes" has been institutionalized in federal government policy to the point that the US Congress passed laws using the name, the Five Nations themselves have been less accepting of it in formal matters, and some members have declared that grouping the different peoples under this label is effectively another form of colonization and control by White society. Other modern scholars have suggested that the very concept of "civilization" was internalized by individuals who belonged to the Five Nations, but because much of Native North American history has been communicated by oral tradition, little scholarly research has been done to substantiate this.
In present-day commentary on Native American cultures, the term "civilized" is contentious and not commonly used in academic literature. Some commentators, including the Indian activist Vine Deloria Jr., have declared that it is demeaning and implies that the indigenous peoples of the North American continent were "uncivilized" before their contact with the habits, customs, and beliefs of Anglo-American settlers. The term is based on the assumption that different peoples possess objective "degrees" of civilization that may be assessed and raises the question of just what qualities define "civilization". Consequently, it is considered a judgmental term whose meaning is dependent on the user's perspective, and thus best avoided.

History

The Five Civilized Tribes is a term used for five major indigenous tribes who lived in the Southeastern United States. They lived in an area that had been influenced by the Mississippian culture. Prior to the arrival of white settlers, these tribes generally had matrilineal kinship systems, with property and hereditary positions passed through the mother's family.

First to 18th centuries

Based on the development of surplus foods from cultivation, Mississippian towns had more dense populations, and they developed artisan classes, and hereditary religious and political elites. The Mississippian culture flourished in what is now the Midwestern, Eastern, and Southeastern United States from 800 to 1500 CE. Agriculture was the primary economic pursuit. The bulk of the tribes lived in towns, some covering hundreds of acres and populated with thousands of people. They were known for building large, complex earthwork mounds. These communities regulated their space with planned streets, subdivided into residential and public areas. Their system of government was hereditary. Chiefdoms were of varying size and complexity, with high levels of military organization.

18th century

President George Washington and Henry Knox, the first Secretary of War, implemented a policy of cultural transformation in relation to Native Americans. The Cherokee and Choctaw tended, in turn, to adopt and appropriate certain cultural aspects of the federation of colonies.
In 1776, assembled in Philadelphia, the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopted the Declaration of Independence, which was largely written by Thomas Jefferson. American independence was subsequently achieved by the victory of the Continental Army, led by George Washington, in the American Revolutionary War and codified in the Treaty of Paris in 1784.
The Five Tribes generally adopted cultural practices from Americans that they found useful. Tribal groups who had towns or villages closer to European-descendant Americans, or interacted more with them through trading or intermarriage, took up more of such new practices. Those towns that were more isolated tended to maintain their traditional cultures.
George Washington promulgated a doctrine that held that Indian Americans were biologically equals, but that their societies were inferior. He formulated and implemented a policy to encourage civilizing them, which Thomas Jefferson continued and expanded. Historian Robert Remini wrote that the American leaders "presumed that once the Indians adopted the practice of private property, built homes, farmed, educated their children, and embraced Christianity, these Native Americans would win acceptance from Americans of European descent.
George Washington's six-point plan included: regulating the buying of Indian lands, promoting commerce with the tribes, promoting experiments to civilize or improve Indian society, authorizing presidential authority to bestow presents on the tribes, and punish those who violated Indian rights.
The US government appointed Indian agents, such as Benjamin Hawkins in the Southeast, to live among Indians and to encourage them, through example and instruction, to assimilate and adopt the lifestyle of White settlers. The tribes of the Southeast adopted Washington's policy as they established schools, took up yeoman farming practices, converted to Christianity, and built homes similar to those of their colonial neighbors. These five tribes also adopted the practice of chattel slavery: holding enslaved African Americans as forced workers.
Following the establishment of independence following the American Revolutionary War, Americans pushed into the interior and into the Deep South, areas that were still largely dominated by Native Americans. The invention of the cotton gin made cultivation of short-staple cotton profitable in the interior, and settlers encroached on Native American lands in the Upper South, including western Georgia, and the future states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. They demanded the chance to cultivate these lands for agriculture. Armed conflicts occurred between some of the tribes and the settlers, who kept pushing west and acquired additional territories through negotiated treaties with European colonial powers and sometimes by force.

19th century

In the early 19th century, under such leaders as Andrew Jackson, elected president in 1828, and others, the US government formally initiated Indian removal, forcing those tribes still living east of the Mississippi River, including the Five Tribes, to lands west of the river. Congress passed authorizing legislation in 1830, to fund such moves and arrange for new lands in what became known as Indian Territory to the west.
Most members of the Five Tribes were forced to Indian Territory before 1840, many to what later became the states of Kansas and Oklahoma. The Cherokee Nation resisted removal until 1838 and lost thousands of members in removal, along what they called the Cherokee Trail of Tears. President Martin Van Buren had enforced the Treaty of New Echota, although the Senate had not ratified it, and a majority of the tribe said they had not agreed to its cessions of communal land.
Once the tribes had been relocated to Indian Territory, the US government promised that their lands would be free of American settlers. But settlers soon began to violate that, and enforcement was difficult in the western frontier.