I think that Aleisha was sharing some data from records that are stored as part of the Arkansas Census. She was not suggesting that Cow Tom was living in Arkansas. On the top of the very census pages that she cited, it clearly states that the territory was the Creek Nation.

As pointed out on the OkGen website: A census enumerator from AR came into Indian Territory and listed some (not all) of the non-Indians who were living here at that time, the original can be found at the end of the 1860 Yell County AR census microfilm]

To find the census that she was citing, one has to look under the Arkansas records for 1860.

This particular record is useful, because it does reflect the names of many people who lived in Indian Territory as free people, who were not enslaved. Black and whites are listed on this particular census, although it was not a enumeration of Indians in the same communities.