Five Civilized Tribes is a name for the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole people. White settlers gave the Indigenous (native) American tribes this name in the 1800’s, after the tribes had adopted a number of European customs. Many settlers considered European ways more civilized than Native American ones.
The tribes once farmed and hunted in what is now the Southeastern United States. Most of these groups lived in towns. Europeans, who began to explore the area in the 1500’s, brought diseases that killed thousands of Indigenous people. By the early 1700’s, the Indigenous American population had dropped by about 75 percent.
Meanwhile, the five tribes and three European powers—Britain, France, and Spain—fought for the land, sometimes forming alliances with one another. Britain won the struggle, but the United States took over after the American Revolution (1775-1783).
The five tribes began to realize that they could not defeat the white settlers or continue living in traditional ways. Many started to attend churches and send their children to schools run by missionaries. Some Indigenous people acquired cotton plantations, worked by enslaved Black people.
However, white settlers wanted the tribes’ land. Between 1830 and 1842, the U.S. government forced most Indigenous people to move to the Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma. Thousands died on the journey. The Cherokee called their own trip the Trail of Tears, and this term is sometimes used to refer to the removal of the other tribes as well. A small number of Indigenous Americans stayed in the Southeast.
The United States pledged to uphold forever the land rights of people in the Indian Territory. However, Congress took away the western part of their land after the American Civil War (1861-1865), partly to punish the tribes for helping the South fight the North. Congress began to dissolve the tribal governments gradually in 1898 and, in 1901, granted citizenship to all Native Americans in the territory. Today, most members of the tribes live much as other Oklahomans do. Many prefer to be known as members of the Five Nations.
