Creek Freedmen

Creek Freedmen is a term for Creeks of African descent who were enslaved by Indigenous Muscogee people before 1866. It also refers to the descendants of the original Creek Freedmen. The enslaved were emancipated under the Muscogee Nation's 1866 treaty with the United States following the American Civil War, during which the tribe's government had allied with the Confederate States of America. 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 under the Treaty of 1866.

Many of the African Americans had removed with the Creek from the American Southeast in the 1830s, and lived and worked the land since. At the time of the war and since, many Creek Freedmen were of partial Creek descent by blood. Registration of tribal members under the Dawes Commission often failed to record such ancestry. In 1979, the Creek Nation changed its membership rules, requiring all members to prove descent to persons listed as "Indian by Blood" on the Dawes Rolls. In July 2025, the Muscogee Nation Supreme Court struck "by blood" requirements from the nation's constitution and ordered the Muscogee Nation Citizenship Board to begin enrolling Muscogee Freedmen.