Dawes Rolls: Final Rolls
Step 4: Look up the Person in the Final Rolls online
Both the Index to the Final Rolls and the Final Rolls are available through the National Archives Catalog, so you will be searching there.
- Go to the Final Rolls of the Five Civilized Tribes, 1899–1914 page in the National Archives Catalog.
- Select the "Search within this Series" link to bring up the list of rolls.
- Select the rolls for the respective tribe you are looking for: Cherokee Rolls, Choctaw and Chickasaw Rolls, or Creek and Seminole Rolls.
- Scroll through the rolls to find the person you are looking for. The person will be listed in numerical order by the Roll Number you obtained from the Index.
(Note: This may require patience and some trial and error to find!)
Getting back to the previous example where we were looking for Napoleon Ainsworth of the Choctaws, we will browse through the images to find the Choctaw tribe, and then click through those images until we find number 8938 listed on image 54 (page 6).
Click on the image for page 54. This is what you will see at the top:
Napoleon is listed as number 8938, just as expected from the index, along with his age, sex, blood degree, and census card number.
- Write down everything that is listed on the line of the person you are looking for. You will especially want to write down the Census Card No. so you can continue research with records held at the National Archives at Kansas City. You will find the Census Card number in the sixth column, after the person's age, sex, and blood degree.
In this case, we write down Census Card No. 3055 for Napoleon Ainsworth.
Next Step:
- Now that you have obtained the Census Card number from the Final Rolls, and have already checked to see if the Enrollment or Census card has been described in the National Archives Catalog (in Step 2), you can proceed to Step 5: What You Can Do Next.
