Excerpt from the Indian Advocate, Volume XII No. 5, page 154
The question often arises about the number of Freedmen who actually lived in Indian Territory. An article from a 1900 article from The Indian Advocate, contained data estimated from the Federal Census of that year.
There numbers were quite interesting.
Cherokee Freedmen: 4000
Choctaw Freedmen: 4150
Chickasaw Freedmen 4500
Creek Freedmen 5000
Total 17650 (Note that no figures for Seminole Freedmen were reported.)
The fact is that there were more than 17,000 I.T. Freedmen who were either survivors or children of survivors of slavery in Indian Territory, and much rich history is still to be told. The stories of these thousands of families will hopefully reflect another aspect of the African Diaspora and hopefully more researchers will become interested in these remarkable people who forged their lives on the western frontier once freed from bondage.
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