<p class="ql-align-justify"><strong>This series transcribes the&nbsp;</strong><em>Applications for Enrollment of Creek Newborn</em><strong>, National Archive film&nbsp;M-1301 (Act of 1905), as described in the National Archives publication&nbsp;</strong><em>American Indians</em><strong>. &nbsp;These applications represent one component of the&nbsp;larger body of applications for Enrollment of the Commission to the Five&nbsp;Civilized Tribes, 1898-1914 (Dawes Commission). Under the terms of the Dawes&nbsp;Allotment Act of February 8, 1887, which established the Commission and had the&nbsp;effect of breaking up the Five Civilized Tribes as social units, parcels of&nbsp;land&nbsp;within the Indian Territory were to be awarded to Native Americans&nbsp;according to&nbsp;their degree of Indian blood, age, and family status. The term&nbsp;"newborn"&nbsp;referred to each Creek individual living within a qualified Creek (or&nbsp;other&nbsp;tribal) household who was four years of age or less and not an orphan--up&nbsp;to the&nbsp;time that the President awarded the land allotments. Under this&nbsp;definition each&nbsp;Creek newborn was to receive forty acres of Indian Territory.&nbsp;The importance of&nbsp;the original Creek applications found in M-1301 and&nbsp;transcribed in this series&nbsp;is that they contain more information and establish&nbsp;family relationships not&nbsp;found on the census cards in National Archive film&nbsp;M-1186, the basis for the&nbsp;seminal title&nbsp;</strong><em>Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedmen&nbsp;of the Five Civilized&nbsp;Tribes in Indian Territory [and] Index to the Final&nbsp;Rolls</em><strong>.</strong></p><p class="ql-align-justify"><br></p><p class="ql-align-justify"> <strong>As Mr. Bowen explains in his Introduction, on July 25,&nbsp;1898,&nbsp;the Interior Department established an Indian Territory Division to&nbsp;administer&nbsp;the Curtis Act of 1898, named for the Native American Senator&nbsp;Charles Curtis of&nbsp;Kansas. The Curtis Act mandated that new tribal population&nbsp;rolls be compiled for&nbsp;inhabitants of the Indian Territory. The leaders of the&nbsp;Creek Nation in&nbsp;Muskogee, who had hoped to retain their tribal organization,&nbsp;resisted this&nbsp;census requirement until 1904-05, when the Dawes Commission&nbsp;announced that its&nbsp;representatives would appear in seven towns of the Creek Nation and accept&nbsp;notarized official applications for its newborn. Once the&nbsp;deadline for these&nbsp;applications had passed, the rolls establishing Creek&nbsp;citizenship would be&nbsp;closed. The Commission accepted applications for 2,410&nbsp;children by the deadline&nbsp;of midnight, May 2, 1905; however, only 1,171 of those&nbsp;claimants were ultimately&nbsp;approved.&nbsp;</strong></p><p class="ql-align-justify"><br></p><p class="ql-align-justify"> <strong>Mr. Bowen's transcriptions include all correspondence&nbsp;associated with the 1,171 successful Creek claimants. Besides the names of all&nbsp;parents and "newborns," the applications include the names of doctors, lawyers,&nbsp;midwives, and other Creek relatives whose identities were divulged as part of&nbsp;the application process, and who attended to the Creek Nation before and during this time in history.</strong></p><p class="ql-align-center"><br></p><p><br></p>