The Earth is Our Mother (Five Civilized Tribes)

Description: In The Earth Is Our Mother, Jimmie Carole Fife has depicted leaders of five dominant south-eastern Indian tribes discussing their destiny. The figures, from left to right, represent the Choctaw, who were primarily located in southern Mississippi, the Creek, a confederation of tribes that lived in the Alabama-Georgia region; the Seminole, located in Florida; the Chickasaw, from northern Mississippi and Alabama, west of the Creek confederacy; and the Cherokee, located in Tennessee. These were the first tribes moved to Oklahoma by the U.S. government in the latter part of the nineteenth century. At the time, that area was officially referred to as Indian Territory. The white man “benevolently” named these five groups the Five Civilized Tribes because they codified their laws and formed governments modeled after those of the United States and European nations.