v. Cherokee Nation and The United States (1912) (30 Ct. Clms. 138(1895)). The Cherokee Nation appealed it to the US Supreme Court. It related to treaty obligations of the Cherokee Nation to the United States. The Claims Court ruled that payments of annuities and other benefits could not be restricted to "particular class of Cherokee citizens, such as those by blood." This ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court, thus affirming the rights of Freedmen and their descendants to share in tribal assets. 1894-1896 Kern-Clifton Roll As the Cherokee Nation had already distributed the funds they had received for sale of the Cherokee Outlet, the U.S. government as co-defendant was obligated to pay the award to the Cherokee Freedmen. It commissioned the Kern-Clifton roll, completed in 1896, as a record of the 5,600 Freedmen who were to receive a portion of the land sale funds as settlement. The payment process took a decade. 1898-1907 Dawes Rolls Prior to the distribution of proceeds, Congress had passed the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887. It was a measure to promote assimilation of Native Americans in the Indian Territory by requiring the extinguishing of tribal government and land claims; communal lands were to be allotted to individual households of citizens registered as tribal members, in order to encourage subsistence farming according to the European-American model. The U.S. government would declare any remaining lands to be "surplus" to communal Indian needs and allowed it to be bought and developed by non-Native Americans. This resulted in massive losses of land for the tribes. As a part of the act and subsequent bills, the Dawes Commission was formed in 1893 and took a census of the citizens in Indian Territory from 1898 to 1906. The Dawes Rolls, officially known as The Final Rolls of the Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory, listed individuals under the categories of Indians by blood, intermarried Whites, and Freedmen. The rolls were completed in March 1907 and additional citizens were enrolled under an Act of Congress on August 1, 1914. Although Freedmen frequently had Cherokee ancestry and sometimes living Cherokee parents, the Dawes commissioners generally listed all Freedmen or people of visible African features exclusively on the Freedmen Roll, rather than recording an individual's percentage of Cherokee ancestry. It was not an orderly process. The Dawes Rolls of 1902 listed 41,798 citizens of the Cherokee Nation, and