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249 6' Appendix: Note on Sources Writing this story was like piecing together a quilt. Connecting the smallest scraps of information into larger pieces, I watched each chapter take shape through many steps of gathering and combining evidence. No one source or set of records tells the story of allotment. That includes the volumes compiled by the Dawes Commission. Likewise, evaluating sources of evidence against one another enables verification of information. I include this brief description of my methodology and key primary sources in order to help those readers who want to do their own research into the allotment era. Whether you are a descendant of allottees, a student of the past, or both, I encourage you to work in these records. There are so many more stories of allotment that should be told. I began my research in the applications for enrollment compiled by the Dawes Commission. These are called enrollment packets and contain evidence proving rightful inclusion on the Dawes roll. I was most interested in the transcripts of interviews with Cherokees, which provide an enormous amount of demographic and personal information. Not all of this material ended up on the Dawes cards that made up the final roll. I spent my first days researching this book reading through these records, noting information about dozens of individuals. Overwhelmed by the level of detail, I soon created charts for each extended family. Over the decade that I worked on this project, I designed my own system of shorthand to keep track of the names used to refer to individual Cherokees; places of residence and with whom they were shared; age; blood quantum or ancestry; experiences of migration, traveling, or relocation; educational attainment; political orientation and experiences; names of nearest neighbors; proximity to kin and indicators of the type and quality of these relationships; marital, sexual, and reproductive experiences; parenting; sickness and mortality; work and productive labor (both for subsistence and for cash); experiences of the environment, including resources used for food, such as game and wild plants; and land leases and sales. Having developed a means to bring order to each individual reference to the lives of the Cherokees in this study, I continued researching sources that enabled me to understand how these families evolved over time. I used the Cherokee censuses for 1880, 1883, 1890, and 1893. I also searched in the U.S. census from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Cherokees who did not remove immediately to Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears often appear in the U.S. census in Georgia and 250 appendix North Carolina. The United States first took a census in Indian Territory in 1890, but it was lost to fire, and only the cumulative report survived. The U.S. census for 1900 exists but does not include all Cherokee families in Indian Territory. About half of the families I researched were counted. By 1910, census takers included most Cherokee families in this study, but many Cherokees refused to share anything beyond the most basic information. Congress ordered the destruction of the corresponding 1900 and 1910 farm schedules, a tragic loss of information. Most Cherokees in this study appear in the 1920 census and those taken thereafter. I then compared demographic information obtained from the Dawes roll and censuses to that found on the Eastern Cherokee applications, which resulted in the Guion Miller roll. The U.S. government created this list to determine which survivors of the Trail of Tears and their descendants were eligible to receive compensation according to a May 1906 ruling of the U.S. Court of Claims. The list was completed in 1909. Because claimants had to document their ancestry back to the 1830s, it contains signi ficantly more genealogical information than the Dawes roll or any Cherokee or U.S. census. It is particularly useful when used in conjunction with the Henderson roll, which was compiled before removal in 1835. Several sources enabled me to learn more about the homesteads and economies of these families. To begin, allotment jackets—files containing applications and maps— often list improvements, including houses and other farm structures, fields, and orchards. Unfortunately, clerks did not always identify the location of these improvements on the accompanying maps, nor do the pre-allotment surveys or plat maps created by the USGS give a detailed or accurate depiction of land use and development prior to allotment. As a result, I made the maps that I wished the Dawes Commission had by...

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