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lineal descendants

The Mount Tabor Indian Community is made up of the lineal descendants of the seven remaining extended families of Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Muscogee-Creek Indians, who have continued to reside in rural Rusk, Smith (and after 1873 Gregg) counties of east Texas from historical times to present day.

The historical community was formed in stages, beginning with the Treaty of Birds Fort on September 29, 1843, then the purchase of 10,000 acres of land in Rusk County by Benjamin Franklin Thompson in the spring of 1844. This was due to an Executive Order of United States President James K. Polk, allowing members of the Old Settler and Ridge Party Cherokees to leave Indian Territory for Texas to seek lands on which to settle and re-establish a government there in order to protect their lives and that of their families from a near civil war state that existed in the Cherokee Nation following the forced removal of 1838-39.

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History

• Mount Tabor Indian Community
  By Patrick Pynes, Ph.D, Northern Arizona University
• There are two American Indian tribes located in Texas today that are recognized by the state government, but not by the federal government. One of these is the Mount Tabor Indian Community.
• Although generally thought of as a Cherokee community only, the Mount Tabor Indian Community also has important Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek (Muscogee) roots. What all four of these indigenous peoples have in common are deep roots in the U.S. Southeast and a shared experience of colonization and removal from their original homelands.
• Beginning with the community’s establishment during the 1840s, the Mount Tabor Indian Community has been located in the Rusk County area of east Texas. The community was founded in Rusk County in 1845, some six miles south of Kilgore. As of 2016, the community counted slightly more than 500 enrolled members. About 300 of these members are living in Rusk, Smith, and Gregg Counties, mainly within about twenty miles of Kilgore. Many of the community’s members live near the town of Troup in extreme southeast Smith County, near the Rusk County line.
• The Mount Tabor Indian Community’s deepest indigenous roots reach back into Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina, and to the federal government’s policies of Assimilation and Removal as a means of solving the “Indian problem.” These federal “foreign” policies originated in the early nineteenth century, especially during the Washington and Jefferson administrations. They culminated in 1830 with the passage by the U.S. Congress of President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act, despite the “no” votes of people like Congressman David Crockett of Tennessee.

Constitution

Preamble

“We, the citizens of the Texas Cherokees and Associate Bands of the Mount Tabor Indian Community an indigenous community and political organization, having a desire to firmly establish this organization in order to preserve and enrich our culture, protect and develop our natural and human resources; provide for the stabilization and economic prosperity of our families and our posterity. Do, hereby adopt and proclaim this constitution as the governing document of the Texas Cherokees and Associate Bands of the Mount Tabor Indian Community.”