KEY WORDS: Census coverage, American Indians, ethnographic, Creek Indians, Oklahoma
Rural roads rutted by sheet floods, booby-trapped fields, and foot paths to homesteads were among the physical obstacles to finding houses and people in this rural Oklahoma area. Creek Indian people were missed at a higher rate than their neighbors who identified as Black or White in this rural community where Creek Indians are concentrated on allotment lands. The high net undercount was due to omission of whole households and similar to the 12 per cent net undercount estimated by the 1990 PES for the 10 largest Indian Reservations. Moore contrasts the community's recognition of individuals as Creek Indians with census reports that identified them as another "race" -- white or black. Such misidentification further diluted the count of people categorized as American Indian among those who were enumerated. The Alternative Enumeration was a collaborative effort by University of Oklahoma staff and lifelong residents of the community who are bi-lingual speakers of Muskoke, the American Indian language spoken by the Creek Indians.
Citation: Moore 1992 Ethnographic Evaluation of the 1990 Decennial Census Report #10. Final Report for Joint Statistical Agreement 89-30 with the University of Oklahoma. PREM # 144.
