Five Civilized Tribes

The term Five Civilized Tribes was applied by European Americans in the colonial and early federal period in the history of the United States to the five major Native American nations in the Southeast—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (formerly called "Creek"), and Seminoles. Americans of European descent 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 African Americans. For a period, the Five Civilized Tribes tended to maintain stable political relations with the European Americans, before the United States promoted Indian removal of these tribes from the Southeast. 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. Numerous other federally recognized tribes are also located in Oklahoma. The Five Civilized Tribes is a term used by European Americans for five major indigenous tribes who lived in the Southeastern United States. They coalesced historically in an area that had been strongly influenced by the Mississippian culture. Before European contact, these tribes generally had matrilineal kinship systems, with property and hereditary positions passed through the mother's family. But they were much more egalitarian and decentralized than the Mississippian culture peoples at their height. 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.

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