Guion Miller Rolls: 27 August. 1906 to 18 May 1909
The Guion Miller Rolls, also known as the Eastern Cherokee Emigrant Payroll, is a list of Cherokees who applied for compensation arising from the judgment of the United States Court of Claims on May 28, 1906 for the Eastern Cherokee Tribe. Approximately 46,000 people applied for compensation but not all were admitted. Basically this was a payment roll ($133.33 per person) to be paid the Eastern Cherokee and their descendants which were removed from the Southeast. It was not a citizenship roll as the Dawes Roll was. The Guion Miller Roll lists Cherokees in two broad categories: Cherokees residing East of the Mississippi and Cherokees residing West of the Mississippi. This compensation did not apply to those Cherokees that had left the East prior to 1835 and were covered by the Treaty of 1828 what we today call the Old Settlers. The Old Settlers received compensation in 1896 for loss of lands and other goods promised them by treaties of 1828 and 1832. The key to collecting funds or compensations from the U S. Government was for an ancestor's named to have appeared on an earlier roll. So often, these applications contained no proofs of lineage and were vague representations of memories.
