[Federal Register Volume 76, Number 81 (Wednesday, April 27, 2011)]
[Notices]
[Pages 23621-23623]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2011-10117]


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DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

Bureau of Indian Affairs


Final Determination Against Federal Acknowledgment of the Choctaw 
Nation of Florida

AGENCY: Bureau of Indian Affairs, Interior.

ACTION: Notice of Final Determination.

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SUMMARY: Notice is hereby given that the Department of the Interior 
(Department) declines to acknowledge that the group known as the 
``Choctaw Nation of Florida'' (CNF, formerly known as the Hunter 
Tsalagi-Choctaw Tribe), Petitioner 288, c/o Mr. Alfonso James, 
Jr., Post Office Box 6322, Marianna, Florida 32447, is an American 
Indian group that exists as an Indian tribe under Department 
procedures. This notice is based on a determination that the petitioner 
does not meet one of the seven mandatory criteria set forth in 25 CFR 
83.7, specifically criterion 83.7(e), descent from a historical Indian 
tribe, and therefore, the Department may not acknowledge the petitioner 
under 25 CFR part 83. Based on the limited nature and extent of comment 
and consistent with previous practices, the Department did not produce 
a detailed report or other summary under the criteria pertaining to 
this FD. This notice is the Final Determination (FD).

DATES: This determination is final and will become effective 90 days 
from

[[Page 23622]]

publication of this notice in the Federal Register on July 26, 2011, 
according to section 83.10(l)(4), unless a request for reconsideration 
is filed with the Interior Board of Indian Appeals according to section 
83.11.

ADDRESSES: Requests for a copy of the Federal Register notice should be 
addressed to the Office of the Assistant Secretary--Indian Affairs, 
Attention: Office of Federal Acknowledgment, 1951 Constitution Avenue, 
NW., MS: 34B-SIB, Washington, DC 20240. The Federal Register notice is 
also available through http://www.bia.gov/WhoWeAre/AS-IA/OFA/RecentCases/index.htm.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: R. Lee Fleming, Director, Office of 
Federal Acknowledgment, (202) 513-7650.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: On July 2, 2010, the Department issued a 
proposed finding (PF) that the CNF petitioner was not an American 
Indian group that exists as an Indian tribe under Department procedures 
because the petitioner did not meet one of the seven mandatory criteria 
for Federal acknowledgment as an Indian tribe, criterion 83.7(e). This 
criterion requires that the petitioner's membership consist of 
individuals who descend from a historical Indian tribe or from 
historical Indian tribes that combined and functioned as a single 
autonomous political entity. The review of the evidence for the 
proposed finding clearly established that the petitioner did not meet 
criterion 83.7(e) and the Department issued a proposed finding denying 
acknowledgment under that one criterion (83.10(e)(1)). The Department 
published a notice of the PF in the Federal Register on July 12, 2010 
(75 FR 39703). Publishing notice of the PF initiated a 180-day comment 
period during which time the petitioner and interested and informed 
parties could submit arguments and evidence to support or rebut the PF. 
In response to the PF, the petitioner or third parties must provide 
evidence for the FD that the petitioner meets the criterion in question 
under the standard set forth at 25 CFR 83.6(d). This initial comment 
period ended on January 10, 2011.
    By letter dated January 3, 2011, the petitioner's attorney 
submitted on the petitioner's behalf copies of 44 documents consisting 
of 74 pages described as ``additional information'' for the Department 
``to consider in making its final decision.'' The Department received 
these comments on January 6, 2011, before the close of the comment 
period on January 10, 2011. The petitioning group did not provide any 
narrative or thorough explanation regarding the relevance of these 
documents to criterion 83.7(e). The petitioner did not submit any 
changes to its most current membership list of 77 individuals. The 
Department analyzed the submitted documents as the group's comments on 
the PF. The Department did not receive comments from any party other 
than the petitioner. After the close of the applicable comment periods, 
the Department received an additional comment from the petitioner's 
attorney. In accord with the regulations, the Department did not 
consider this unsolicited comment in the preparation of the FD 
(83.10(l)(1)).
    The petitioner claims to be a group of Choctaw Indians that 
migrated from North Carolina to Georgia and then Florida following the 
Choctaw Indian removal of the 1830s. None of the evidence in the record 
for the PF demonstrated the validity of this claim. None of the 
evidence in the record for the PF demonstrated the petitioner's members 
or claimed ancestors descended from a Choctaw Indian tribe or any other 
Indian tribe. The petitioner did not submit any materials in its 
submission for the FD that established, by the standard set forth at 
83.6(d), descent from a historical Indian tribe as required by 
criterion 83.7(e).
    Of the 44 documents the petitioner submitted for the FD, 37 were 
previously submitted and analyzed for the PF. Only seven of the 
documents were new submissions, and six of them did not provide 
evidence for documenting descent from a historical tribe as required by 
criterion 83.7(e). Of these six documents, the first described statutes 
of 1852, 1898, and 1902; the second was a one-sentence description of 
``Fort Chippola''; the third briefly described the courthouse history 
of Walton County, Florida; the fourth described the Choctawhatchee 
River; the fifth was a two-page list of Choctaw villages transcribed 
for the Internet from the Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico 
(1907); and the sixth described United States Code, Title 18, Section 
1164, ``Destroying boundary and warning signs.'' None of these 
documents provides descent evidence linking members of the petitioner 
to a historical Indian tribe.
    Only one document received from the petitioner in the comment 
period had any bearing on criterion 83.7(e): A Dawes Commission Roll 
index entry for a Lucy Pope. The Department finds this evidence 
insufficient to document the required descent for the petitioner under 
criterion 83.7(e) for the following reasons.
    For the PF, the Department determined that most of the current 
group's members descend from a Burton Hunter (b.ca. 1836-1842) and his 
wife Lucy (b.ca. 1844-1850) whose maiden name was not documented. The 
petitioner claimed Lucy's last name was ``Pope'' and submitted for the 
PF two Federal census entries in an attempt to support its theory: An 
1860 Federal census entry for an ``L. Pope'' of South Carolina and an 
1870 Federal census entry for a ``Lucy Pope'' of Florida. Evaluation 
presented in the PF demonstrates that the census entries pertained to 
two women, neither of whom could have been the wife of Burton Hunter. 
Further, the PF found no evidence in the record that Burton Hunter's 
wife Lucy was a Pope or that either he or Lucy descended from a 
historical Choctaw Indian tribe or any other Indian tribe.
    For the FD, the petitioner submitted a two-page index from an 
Internet Web site that listed a Lucy Pope among some Choctaw Indians 
whose names appeared on the 1898-1914 Dawes Commission Roll. The 
petitioner placed an asterisk next to the entry for Lucy Pope, Roll No. 
8626. The Department believes the petitioner is using this annotation 
to advance a claim that the Dawes Commission, a Federal organization 
that Congress authorized in 1893, had enrolled one of its claimed 
ancestors as a member of the Choctaw Nation in Indian Territory (now 
Oklahoma).
    The Department examined the evidence behind the Dawes Commission 
Roll index reference and found that the enrolled Choctaw Lucy Pope is 
different from Burton Hunter's documented wife Lucy and different from 
both of the Pope women the petitioner claimed as Burton Hunter's wife. 
As explained in the PF, Burton Hunter's wife Lucy was born around 1842 
in Florida and died in 1907 in Florida. The ``L. Pope'' the petitioner 
claimed as Burton Hunter's wife, citing the 1860 Federal census of 
South Carolina, was born between 1831 and 1833 in South Carolina, and 
the other ``Lucy Pope'' claimed as Burton Hunter's wife, citing the 
1870 Federal census of Florida, was born about 1832 in Florida. In 
contrast, the Dawes Commission enrollment record for a Lucy Pope, Roll 
No. 8626 on Census Card 2933, submitted by the petitioner for 
the FD, shows that this Lucy Pope was born around 1878, her maiden name 
was Sam, and she was married to a Pope. She appeared on the 1910 
Federal Census as living with her family in Pittsburg County, Oklahoma. 
Therefore, this Lucy (Sam) Pope (b. 1878-d.aft. 1910) is not the same 
person as any of the three women analyzed in the PF as the wife of 
Burton Hunter: L. Pope (b. 1831-1833 SC), Lucy Pope (b. 1832 FL) or 
Lucy [--?--] Hunter (b. 1842

[[Page 23623]]

FL) (documented wife of Burton Hunter).
    In the PF, the Department discussed in detail Lucy [--?--] Hunter 
as well as the L. Pope and Lucy Pope the petitioner claimed as the wife 
of Burton Hunter. None of the evidence for the PF demonstrated any 
descent from a historical Choctaw Indian tribe or other historical 
Indian tribe for Lucy Hunter or the other Pope women the petitioner 
claimed. The evidence behind the Dawes Commission Roll index reference 
pertains to a Lucy Pope who is not the petitioner's claimed ancestor 
although her married name is the same as that of two individuals 
previously analyzed in the PF. Therefore, the Dawes Commission Roll 
evidence does not demonstrate Indian ancestry for Burton Hunter's 
documented wife Lucy or either of the Pope women whom the petitioner 
claimed as the wife of its ancestor Burton Hunter.
    None of the material submitted for the FD changes the conclusions 
of the PF that the petitioner does not meet the requirements of 
criterion 83.7(e), which requires that the petitioner's membership 
consist of individuals who descend from a historical Indian tribe or 
from historical Indian tribes that combined and functioned as a single 
autonomous political entity.
    To summarize, the petitioner claims to have descended as a group 
from a historical tribe of Choctaw Indians. There is no primary or 
reliable secondary evidence submitted by the petitioner or located by 
the Department showing that any of the named ancestors or members of 
the group descended from a historical Choctaw Indian tribe or any other 
Indian tribe. None of the documentation on the petitioner's members and 
their claimed individual ancestors, submitted by the petitioner or 
found by the Department's researchers, supports the petitioner's claim 
of descent from a historical Choctaw Indian tribe or any other Indian 
tribe. No document in the record identified the petitioner's members 
and claimed ancestors as part of the historical Choctaw or other Indian 
tribe. In fact, the evidence shows the petitioner's members and claimed 
ancestors were consistently identified as non-Indians living in non-
Indian communities. The extensive evidence in the record does not 
demonstrate descent from any historical Indian tribe.
    The Department declines to acknowledge the CNF petitioner as an 
Indian tribe because the evidence in the record does not demonstrate, 
by the standard set forth at 25 CFR 83.6(d), that the membership 
descends from a historical Indian tribe as required by mandatory 
criterion 83.7(e).
    After the publication of notice of the FD, the petitioner or any 
interested party may file a request for reconsideration with the 
Interior Board of Indian Appeals (IBIA) under the procedures set forth 
in section 83.11 of the regulations. The IBIA must receive this request 
no later than 90 days after the publication of the FD in the Federal 
Register. The FD will become final and effective as provided in the 
regulations 90 days from the Federal Register publication, unless a 
request for reconsideration is received within that time.

    Dated: April 21, 2011.
Larry Echo Hawk,
Assistant Secretary--Indian Affairs.
[FR Doc. 2011-10117 Filed 4-26-11; 8:45 am]
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