Equity
Case 7071 is uniquely American because it involves the issue of what constitutes
racial identity along with genealogical descent.
It was an unfortunate but real choice the Native American tribes known as the Five Civilized Tribes chose to adopt the institution of chattel slavery. This institution brought many of the leading families a measure of wealth and prestige that allowed them to maintain a lifestyle that would have been envied throughout the nation.
Their children attended some of the finest schools in the nation that proved to pass their legacy of riches down through several generations and to this day they honor the leading men of that time without acknowledging how they obtain wealth and prestige.
In contrast, the freedmen and those who had Chickasaw and Choctaw ancestry that were classified as freedmen had to endure the hostilities of living in their homeland because of their skin and because of their enslavement. Despite the Choctaw's adopting their former slaves, their status in the tribe was marked by constant struggles to be treated as equals in an unequal environment.
The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished the institution of slavery and was clearly used in the language of the Treaty of 1866. However, the vestiges of slavery continued when the Dawes Commission deliberately used the customs of defining a persons race by the race of the mother thereby ignoring basic biology that a person is the sum of both parents.
This is the underlying issue with Equity Case 7071, the tribes and the Dawes Commission knew full and well many individuals attempted to exert their rights to citizenship during the allotment period, but they effectively ignored the evidence and testimony that would have at least 1600 to 2000 individuals to the citizenship rolls who were Chahta lusa (Black Choctaw) and Chiksa lusa (Black Chickasaw.)
 | Daily Ardmoreite December 30, 1908 p.04 |