Five Civilized Tribes

The term "Five Civilized Tribes" derives from the colonial and early federal period. It refers to five Native American nations--the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole. These are the first five tribes that Anglo-European settlers generally considered to be "civilized" according to their own world view, because these five tribes adopted attributes of the colonists' culture, for example, Christianity, centralized governments, literacy, market participation, written constitutions, intermarriage with white Americans, and plantation slavery practices.