The Dawes Rolls (or Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes, or Dawes Commission of Final Rolls) were created by the United States Dawes Commission. The commission was authorized by United States Congress in 1893 to execute the General Allotment Act of 1887. Traditionally, the land in these tribal communities had been held communally. With the establishment of the Dawes Commission, the ruling was made by the colonial agents to divide up the land into parcels and institute a system of individual ownership in accordance with US laws, overriding the treaty and tribal laws of the region. In order to allot the communal lands, citizens of the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole) were to be enumerated and registered by the US government. These counts also included the freedmen – formerly-enslaved African-Americans who had been emancipated after the American Civil War, and their descendants. The rolls were used to assign allotments to heads of household and to provide an equitable division of all monies obtained from sales of surplus lands. These rolls became known as the Dawes Rolls. When word got out that people could get land, many non-Natives appeared at the offices and falsely claimed to be Native. Most of these false claimants claimed to be Cherokee. Family myths still persist of "hiding in the hills", or of being "rejected from the rolls", or "refusing to enroll" when the reason for having not been enrolled is that the applicants were simply not Native American. Enumeration and enrollment The Dawes Commission went to the individual tribes to obtain the membership lists, but it took a series of attempts to gain anything near to an accurate count. In 1898, Congress passed the Curtis Act, which provided that a new roll would be taken and supersede all previous rolls. Difficulties in enumerating the population included the forced migrations of the period as well as the American Civil War. Additionally, non-Native census takers introduced the idea of Blood Quantum, a concept previously foreign to the tribal communities. Those recording this percentage of ancestry wrote down an estimation, based on physical appearance and personal opinion if the individual was present. Tribal citizens were listed under several categories: Citizen by Blood New Born Citizen by Blood Minor Citizens by Blood Citizen by Marriage Freedmen (persons formerly enslaved by Native Americans and/or adopted by the Cherokee tribe) New Born