In 1894, the Dawes Commission was established to register Choctaw and other families of the Indian Territory so that each tribe's communal lands could be allotted among its heads of households. The final list included 18,981 citizens of the Choctaw Nation, 1,639 Mississippi Choctaw, and 5,994 former slaves (and descendants of former slaves), most of them associated with Choctaw in the Indian/Oklahoma Territory. Following completion of the land allotments, the US proposed to end the tribal governments of the Five Civilized Tribes and to admit the two territories jointly as a state.
