[2] To allot the communal lands, citizens of the Five Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole) were to be enumerated and registered by the US government.
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.
[2][4] The Dawes Commission went to the individual tribes to obtain the membership lists, but it took a series of attempts to gain anything approaching an accurate count.
[5][6] Additionally, non-Native census takers introduced the idea of Blood Quantum, a concept previously foreign to the tribal communities.
It also uncovered a great mass of nauseous evidence, and rejected a large number of claims upon the ground they had been advanced through perjury and forgery.
[4][8] Refusing to be enumerated, and even fleeing, would mean warrants being issued for the person's arrest; they could then be treated brutally and imprisoned in the process of being enrolled by force.
[12][2] Gregory Smithers, associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University stated, "These were opportunistic white men who wanted access to land or food rations.
"[12] For the small minority that managed this, this fraudulent enrollment may have earned white people potential benefits for themselves and their descendants, but also could have subjected them to further removal, relocation or incarceration.