 | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 845 [1] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
  | |
| Languages | |
| English, Mvskoke | |
| Religion | |
| Protestantism, traditional tribal religion | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Other Muskogean peoples, including Alabama, Coushatta, Miccosukee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee Creek, and Seminole |
Thlopthlocco Tribal Town is both a federally recognized Native American tribe and a traditional township of Muscogee Creek Indians, based in Oklahoma. The tribe's native language is Mvskoke, also called Creek.
An item in the Tulsa World explained: "The sound of the "thl" is usually spelled with an "r" in the Muscogee language and is pronounced in English by placing the tongue halfway between the "th" position and the "l" position." [2]
Thlopthlocco Tribal Town is now headquartered in Okemah and Clearview, Oklahoma. Tribal enrollment is 845, with 728 members living within the state of Oklahoma, and is based on lineal descent. Ryan Morrow is the elected Mekko, or Town King. [1] He succeeded Vernon Yarholar. [3]
The tribal jurisdictional area of Thlopthlocco is within Creek, Hughes, Mayes, McIntosh, Muskogee, Okfuskee, Okmulgee, Rogers, Seminole, Tulsa, and Wagoner Counties. [1] The tribe maintains a close relationship with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and falls under the jurisdiction of their tribal courts.
Thlopthlocco operates its own tribal housing program, smoke shop, and the Golden Pony Casino, located in Okemah. The tribe's economic impact for 2011 was $12,500,000. [1]
In August 2012, the National Indian Gaming Commission notified the Thlopthlocco Tribal Town that it was in violation of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act for allowing two Atlanta, Georgia companies to operate the Golden Pony Casino for several years without a contract. The companies named were Titan Network LLC and Mercury Gaming Group LLC. The violations occurred from September 2005 through December 2010. [4]
The Muscogee Creek confederacy was composed of autonomous tribal towns, governed by their own elected leadership. The Creek originated in the Southeastern United States, in what is now Alabama and Georgia. They were collectively removed from the southeast to Indian Territory under the United States' Indian Removal Policy of the 1830s. [5]
Before 1832, the Thlopthlocco Tribal Town split from a larger town. It was removed to Indian Territory in 1835. [5] The members of the town settled in an area south of Okemah, Oklahoma, in what would become Okfuskee County, on lands that were originally occupied by the Osage and Quapaw. Those tribes ceded their lands to the US by 1825. [6]
During the American Civil War, Thlopthlocco Tribal Town was briefly the headquarters of Confederate Col. Douglas H. Cooper. Greenleaf Town, located five miles northwest of Thlopthlocco, was the headquarters of Opothleyahola , a Muscogee leader who worked to resolve conflicts between the Creek factions during the war. He and 5000 others moved north to Kansas to avoid the Civil War. After the war, the Muscogee Creek collectively signed the 1866 Treaty with the United States and freed their slaves. The treaty also called for the Creek Freedmen to have membership in the Muscogee Nation. The freedmen settled new townships in Okfuskee County, including Boley, Bookertee, Clearview, Chilesville, and Rusk. [6]
Thlopthlocco Tribal Town retained its tribal identity despite allotments of land to individual households under the Dawes Commission of 1896. From 1898-1906, members among the Five Civilized Tribes were registered on what have come to be known as the Dawes Rolls. After making allotments to households registered with the tribes, the US government declared other formerly tribal land as surplus and sold it to European-American settlers after 1906. This further broke up tribal communal territory.
The Thlopthlocco Tribal members organized as a distinct tribe under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act of 1936, which followed the national Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. [5] The original headquarters for the tribe was the Thlopthlocco Methodist Episcopal Church, located between Wetumka and Okemah.
The Muscogee, also known as the Muskogee, Muscogee Creek, Creek, Mvskokvlke, or the Muscogee Creek Confederacy in the Muscogee language, are a group of related indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands. Their original homelands are in what now comprises southern Tennessee, all of Alabama, western Georgia and part of northern Florida.
The Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally describe an evolving land area set aside by the United States Government for the relocation of Native Americans who held aboriginal title to their land as a sovereign independent state. In general, the tribes ceded land they occupied in exchange for land grants in 1803. The concept of an Indian Territory was an outcome of the US federal government's 18th- and 19th-century policy of Indian removal. After the American Civil War (1861–1865), the policy of the US government was one of assimilation.
Okfuskee County is a county located in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2010 census, its population was 12,191. Its county seat is Okemah. The county is named for a former Muscogee town in present Cleburne County, Alabama, that in turn was named for the Okfuskee, a Muscogee tribe.
Okemah is the largest city in and the county seat of Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, United States. It is the birthplace of folk music legend Woody Guthrie. Thlopthlocco Tribal Town, a federally recognized Muscogee Indian tribe, is headquartered in Okemah. The population was 3,223 at the 2010 census, a 6.1 percent increase from 3,038 in 2000. In that census, about 26.6 percent of the residents identified themselves as Native American.
The Dawes Rolls were created by the United States Dawes Commission. The Commission was authorized by United States Congress in 1893 to execute the General Allotment Act of 1887.
The American Dawes Commission, named for its first chairman Henry L. Dawes, was authorized under a rider to an Indian Office appropriation bill, March 3, 1893. Its purpose was to convince the Five Civilized Tribes to agree to cede tribal title of Indian lands, and adopt the policy of dividing tribal lands into individual allotments that was enacted for other tribes as the Dawes Act of 1887. In November 1893, President Grover Cleveland appointed Dawes as chairman, and Meridith H. Kidd and Archibald S. McKennon as members.
The Yuchi people, spelled Euchee and Uchee, are people of a Native American tribe who historically lived in the eastern Tennessee River valley in Tennessee in the 16th century. The Yuchi built monumental earthworks. In the late 17th century, they moved south to Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Some also migrated to the panhandle of Florida. After suffering many fatalities from epidemic disease and warfare in the 18th century, several surviving Yuchi were removed to Indian Territory in the 1830s, together with their allies the Muscogee Creek.
The Curtis Act of 1898 was an amendment to the United States Dawes Act; it resulted in the break-up of tribal governments and communal lands in Indian Territory of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indian Territory: the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee (Creek), Cherokee, and Seminole. These tribes had been previously exempt from the 1887 General Allotment Act because of the terms of their treaties. In total, the tribes immediately lost control of about 90 million acres of their communal lands; they lost more in subsequent years.
Samuel Houston Mayes of Scots/English-Cherokee descent, was elected as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory, serving from 1895 to 1899. His maternal grandfather belonged to the Deer clan, and his father was allied with members of the Cherokee Treaty Party in the 1830s, such as the Adair men, Elias Boudinot, and Major Ridge. In the late nineteenth century, his older brother Joel B. Mayes was elected to two terms as Chief of the Cherokee.
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation is a federally-recognized Native American tribe based in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The nation descends from the historic Creek Confederacy, a large group of indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands. Official languages include Muscogee, Yuchi, Natchez, Alabama, and Koasati, with Muscogee retaining the largest number of speakers. They commonly refer to themselves as Este Mvskokvlke. Historically, they were often referred to by European Americans as one of the Five Civilized Tribes of the American Southeast.
Creek National Capitol, also known as Creek Council House, is a building in downtown Okmulgee, Oklahoma, in the United States. It was capitol of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation from 1878 until 1907, when Oklahoma became a state. In 1919 the U.S. Department of the Interior sold the building to the city of Okmulgee. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961. In November 2010 the city sold the building back to the tribe for $3.2 million. The building currently houses the Creek Council House Museum, with artifacts and exhibits about the history of the Muscogee tribe and the arts and crafts of other Native American tribes.
The Kialegee Tribal Town is a federally recognized Native American tribe in Oklahoma, as well as a traditional township within the former Muscogee Creek Confederacy in the American Southeast. Tribal members pride themselves on retaining their traditions and many still speak their traditional Muscogee language. The name "Kialegee" comes from the Muscogee word, eka-lache, meaning "head left."
The Alabama–Quassarte Tribal Town is both a federally recognized Native American tribe and a traditional township of Muskogean-speaking Alabama and Coushatta peoples. Their traditional languages include Alabama, Koasati, and Mvskoke. As of 2014, the tribe includes 369 enrolled members, who live within the state of Oklahoma as well as Texas, Louisiana, & Arizona.
The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is a federally recognized Native American tribe based in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. It is the largest of the three federally recognized Seminole governments, which include the Seminole Tribe of Florida and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. Its members are descendants of the 3,000 Seminoles who were forcibly removed from Florida to Indian Territory, along with 800 Black Seminoles, after the Second Seminole War. The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma is headquartered in Wewoka within Seminole County, Oklahoma. Of 18,800 enrolled tribal members, 13,533 live within the state of Oklahoma. The tribe began to revive its government in 1936 under the Indian Reorganization Act. While its reservation was originally larger, today the tribal jurisdictional area covers Seminole County, Oklahoma, within which it has a variety of properties.
Creek Freedmen is a term for emancipated Creeks with African Descent who were slaves of Muscogee Creek tribal members before 1866. They were emancipated under the tribe's 1866 treaty with the United States following the American Civil War, during which the Creek Nation had allied with the Confederacy. Freedmen who wished to stay in the Creek Nation in Indian Territory, with whom they often had blood relatives, were to be granted full citizenship in the Creek Nation. Many of the African Americans had removed with the Creek from the American Southeast in the 1830s, and lived and worked the land since then in Indian Territory.
Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Area is a statistical entity identified and delineated by federally recognized American Indian tribes in Oklahoma as part of the U.S. Census Bureau's 2010 Census and ongoing American Community Survey. Many of these areas are also designated Tribal Jurisdictional Areas, areas within which tribes will provide government services and assert other forms of government authority. They differ from standard reservations, such as the Osage Nation of Oklahoma, in that allotment was broken up and as a consequence their residents are a mix of native and non-native people, with only tribal members subject to the tribal government. At least five of these areas, those of the so-called five civilized tribes of Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole, which cover 43% of the area of the state, are formally recognized as reservations by federal treaty, and thus not subject to state law or jurisdiction for tribal members.
An Organic Act is a generic name for a statute used by the United States Congress to describe a territory, in anticipation of being admitted to the Union as a state. Because of Oklahoma's unique history an explanation of the Oklahoma Organic Act needs a historic perspective. In general, the Oklahoma Organic Act may be viewed as one of a series of legislative acts, from the time of Reconstruction, enacted by Congress in preparation for the creation of a unified State of Oklahoma. The Organic Act created Oklahoma Territory, and Indian Territory that were Organized incorporated territories of the United States out of the old "unorganized" Indian Territory. The Oklahoma Organic Act was one of several acts whose intent was the assimilation of the tribes in Oklahoma and Indian Territories through the elimination of tribes' communal ownership of property.
On the eve of the American Civil War in 1861, a significant number of Indigenous peoples of the Americas had been relocated from the Southeastern United States to Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi. The inhabitants of the eastern part of the Indian Territory, the Five Civilized Tribes, were suzerain nations with established tribal governments, well established cultures, and legal systems that allowed for slavery. Before European Contact these tribes were generally matriarchial societies, with agriculture being the primary economic pursuit. The bulk of the tribes lived in towns with planned streets, residential and public areas. The people were ruled by complex hereditary chiefdoms of varying size and complexity with high levels of military organization.
Hickory Ground, also known as Otciapofa is an historic Upper Muscogee Creek tribal town and an archaeological site in Elmore County, Alabama near Wetumpka. It is known as Oce Vpofa in the Muscogee language; the name derives from oche-ub,"hickory" and po-fau, "among". It is best known for serving as the last capital of the National Council of the Creek Nation, prior to the tribe being moved to the Indian Territory in the 1830s. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 10, 1980.
Sharp v. Murphy, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a Supreme Court of the United States case of whether Congress disestablished the Muscogee (Creek) Nation reservation. After holding the case from the 2018 term, the case was decided on July 9, 2020, in a per curiam decision following McGirt v. Oklahoma that, for the purposes of the Major Crimes Act, the reservations were never disestablished and remain Native American country.