Documents from the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes (authorized under a rider to an Indian Office appropriation bill, March 3, 1893) contain a great deal of family history information. A member of the Joseph Vick Family of America provided many copies of documents from The National Archives to JVFOA about her family’s claims of Choctaw Indian ancestry and their entitlement to land under the 1830 treaty know as the treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek.
Among other documents in the Commission’s file are summaries of the sworn testimony of family members. The following were some of the questions asked:
What is your name?
How old are you?
How much Choctaw blood do you claim?
What is your post office address?
How long have you lived there
Is your father living?
What was his name?
Is your mother living?
What was her name?
Through which one of your parents do you claim your Choctaw blood?
Then the questions drilled down through each generation until arriving at the ancestor believed to have been a Choctaw. The person testifying was asked where the ancestor was born and when, and if the ancestor was living in 1830. There were further questions about whether the person filing the claim was married (and if so how many times), to whom, and how many children they had from each marriage. Additional questions dealt with whether a spouse had any Choctaw blood.
In an upcoming issue of the Vick Family Newsletter we are going to cover these claims, the lineage of the William6 (Stephen5, Jacob4, Isaac3, William2, Joseph1), and what we learned from testing descendants of Jacob4 at 23andMe about the probability of Jacob4 (or his wife) having Choctaw Indian ancestry as claimed in the testimony.
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