Blacks were a significant minority of the Cherokee Nation throughout the nineteenth century, first as slaves and later as freedmen. An 1830s census shows that the Cherokee Nation at that time consisted of: 13,536 Indians; 147 intermarried white males; 73 intermarried white females; and 1,277 slaves. In 1860 there were approximately 23,000 Cherokees and 2,500 blacks in the Cherokee Territory. And according to the United States Census of 1890 the total population of the Cherokee Nation was 56,309, including 5,127 persons of Negro descent.