Although many Indian tribes did not consider strict 'blood' descent the only way to determine if a person was a member of a tribe, the Dawes Commission did. Many Freedmen (slaves of Indians who were freed after the Civil War), were kept off the rolls as members of tribes, although they were emancipated after the war and, according to peace treaties with the United States, to be given full membership in the appropriate tribes in which they were held. Even if freedmen were of mixed-race ancestry, as many were, the Dawes Commission enrolled them in separate Freedmen Rolls, rather than letting them self-identify as to membership. The same was true for members of the historical African descendant communities which developed alongside different Indian settlements in Florida (a Spanish colony for most of the colonial period until 1821 and a popular destination for both escaped slaves and indigenous Southeastern Woodlands refugees) prior to deportation, such as the Black Seminoles, who then accompanied them to Indian Territory.