When a NC census says alongside the census info that "Indians were not taxed" does this then mean that if an individual was Indian then that that individual as an Indian, also weren't counted on the census as having lived in a household in 1800 ? Tina Rogers Beller

-- Tina Rogers Beller (jkpb3@bellsouth.net), July 23, 2002

Answers

Tina, The category on the 1800 census is "number of all other free persons, except Indians not taxed". "A Note about American Indians Census enumerators did not count Indians not taxed, that is, Indians who lived on reservations or who roamed as nomads over unsettled tracts of land. Whether or not they were of mixed blood, Indians who lived among the white population or on the outskirts of towns were counted as part of the ordinary population." Source: National Archives Trust Fund Board, Guide to Genealogical Research in the National Archives, pg. 20 and 22.

Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples by Jack D. Forbes has a discussion of this topic on pp. 199-200. However, some of his examples use circular reasoning, such as if a group is Indian today, then the ancestors of that group were Indians. One of his examples is the Lumbee tribe. The Lumbees are considered Indians today, but were not considered Indian in the pre-Civil War period.

Leah lcsims@eskimo.com

-- Leah Sims (lcsims@eskimo.com), July 29, 2002.