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The Treaty of 1866 and the Long Fight for Black Belonging in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations

Title: The Treaty of 1866 and the Long Fight for Black Belonging in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations
Description: This module reframes histories of the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction by analyzing how enslaved and freed Black people in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations struggled to actualize their freedoms amid contested tribal and federal jurisdictions. Ultimately, the module elucidates how Black enslaved and Freedpeople in the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations developed unique methods of resistance and visions of freedom shaped by the legal paradigms forged in the Treaty of 1866.
Contributor: Keziah Anderson, 2025 Mellon Graduate Fellow in U.S. Law and Race
Documents: Letter from Thirteen Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen Pleading for Federal Assistance in Emancipating their Kin (1865); An Act Temporarily Providing for Such Persons as Have Been to the Present Time Considered as Slaves (1865); Letter from Nelson Harris to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1867); Treaty with the Choctaw and Chickasaw (1866); Statement of the Chickasaw Freedmen, Setting Forth Their Wrongs, Grievances, Claims and Needs (1894); Sworn Statement of W. L. Cochran as to the Enslavement of Margaret Clark in 1866 in Support of Her Application for Enrollment as a Choctaw (1896); Sworn Affidavit of Alexander Harlin Regarding His Continued Enslavement Until the 1866 Treaty as Part of His Application for Enrollment as a Choctaw (1896); Sworn Affidavit of Jeff Franklin Regarding His Enslavement and Emancipation in the Chickasaw Nation as Part of His Application for Enrollment as a Chickasaw (1896); Indian Citizenship Act (1924); An Act to Adopt the Negroes of the Chickasaw Nation (1873); Memorial of the Freedmen of the Chickasaw Nation (1882)
Legal Concept: Emancipation; Federal Indian Policy; Citizenship; Civil Rights; Race; Slavery; Tribal Sovereignty
Subject: African Americans; Native Americans; Freedpeople
Temporal Coverage: Allotment and Assimilation Era; Civil War and Reconstruction; Exclusion Era; Gilded Age; Jim Crow Era; Long Civil Rights Movement; Progressive Era; Territorial Expansion
Spatial Coverage: Oklahoma; South; Borderlands

Item sets: The Treaty of 1866 and the Long Fight for Black Belonging in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations

Title: The Treaty of 1866 and the Long Fight for Black Belonging in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations
Description: This module reframes histories of the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction by analyzing how enslaved and freed Black people in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations struggled to actualize their freedoms amid contested tribal and federal jurisdictions. Ultimately, the module elucidates how Black enslaved and Freedpeople in the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations developed unique methods of resistance and visions of freedom shaped by the legal paradigms forged in the Treaty of 1866.
Contributor: Keziah Anderson, 2025 Mellon Graduate Fellow in U.S. Law and Race
Documents: Letter from Thirteen Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen Pleading for Federal Assistance in Emancipating their Kin (1865); An Act Temporarily Providing for Such Persons as Have Been to the Present Time Considered as Slaves (1865); Letter from Nelson Harris to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1867); Treaty with the Choctaw and Chickasaw (1866); Statement of the Chickasaw Freedmen, Setting Forth Their Wrongs, Grievances, Claims and Needs (1894); Sworn Statement of W. L. Cochran as to the Enslavement of Margaret Clark in 1866 in Support of Her Application for Enrollment as a Choctaw (1896); Sworn Affidavit of Alexander Harlin Regarding His Continued Enslavement Until the 1866 Treaty as Part of His Application for Enrollment as a Choctaw (1896); Sworn Affidavit of Jeff Franklin Regarding His Enslavement and Emancipation in the Chickasaw Nation as Part of His Application for Enrollment as a Chickasaw (1896); Indian Citizenship Act (1924); An Act to Adopt the Negroes of the Chickasaw Nation (1873); Memorial of the Freedmen of the Chickasaw Nation (1882)
Legal Concept: Emancipation; Federal Indian Policy; Citizenship; Civil Rights; Race; Slavery; Tribal Sovereignty
Subject: African Americans; Native Americans; Freedpeople
Temporal Coverage: Allotment and Assimilation Era; Civil War and Reconstruction; Exclusion Era; Gilded Age; Jim Crow Era; Long Civil Rights Movement; Progressive Era; Territorial Expansion
Spatial Coverage: Oklahoma; South; Borderlands

Item sets: The Treaty of 1866 and the Long Fight for Black Belonging in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations

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A project of the U.S. Law and Race Initiative and the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and created with funding from the Mellon Foundation.

Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International except where otherwise noted.

We acknowledge the University of Nebraska is a land-grant institution with campuses and programs on the past, present, and future homelands of the Pawnee, Ponca, Oto-Missouria, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Kaw Peoples, as well as the relocated Ho-Chunk, Iowa, and Sac and Fox Peoples.

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