citizenship to Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen by adoption in 1885 after considerable tribal debate. The Cherokee Nation Constitution was amended in a special convention on November 26, 1866. The constitutional amendments removed all language excluding people of African descent and reiterated the treaty's language concerning the Freedmen. The constitution also reiterated the treaty's six-month deadline for Freedmen to return to the Cherokee Nation in order to be counted as citizens. Essentially, Cherokee and other tribal freedmen were allowed the choice to reside as citizens with the tribes, or to have United States citizenship in United States territory outside the tribal nations. All native born Cherokees, all Indians, and whites legally members of the Nation by adoption, and all freedmen who have been liberated by voluntary act of their former owners or by law, as well as free colored persons who were in the country at the commencement of the rebellion, and are now residents therein, or who may return within six months from the 19th day of July, 1866, and their descendants, who reside within the limits of the Cherokee Nation, shall be taken and deemed to be, citizens of the Cherokee Nation. – 1866 Amendments to Article 3, Section 5 of the 1836 Cherokee Nation Constitution Assimilation and resistance Following the recognition of the 1866 treaty, efforts were made by the Cherokee Nation and other nations to incorporate the Freedmen. As citizens of the Cherokee Nation, Freedmen were allowed to vote in local and national elections. By 1875, the inclusion of Freedmen in political office was established with the first Cherokee Freedman elected to the Cherokee National Council. During the 1870s, several segregated Freedmen schools were established, with seven primary schools in operation by 1872. It was not until 1890 that a high school, Cherokee Colored High School, was established near Tahlequah. The Cherokee Nation typically did not fund these schools at a level comparable to those for Cherokee children. Like the resistance of whites to acceptance of freedmen as citizens in the South, many Cherokee resisted inclusion of the Freedmen as citizens. This issue became part of the continuing divisions and internal factionalism within the tribe that persisted after the war. In addition, there were tribal members who resented sharing already scarce resources with their former slaves. There were also economic issues, related to the forced granting of some lands to Freedmen, and later allotment of lands and