Good Morning...Beginning of the end of tribal control of Indian Territory

[Okla-homey]

April 28, 1897 Chickasaw and Choctaw abandon communal lands

111 years ago today, the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations, two of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes in the Indian Territory, become the first to agree to abolish tribal government and communal ownership of land. The other three tribes soon followed, finally throwing open all of Indian Territory to white settlement.

Representatives of the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes had been negotiating their future with the Dawes Commission since 1893. President Grover Clevelandappointed the commission members.

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/3382/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz32.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Here's how it was supposed to work. Backers of the Dawes Severalty Act believed Indians would be better able to integrate and assimilate into mainstream "white" society if they abandoned tribal governments and ownership of land.

http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/6161/366pxhenrylaurensdawes1ln9.jpg
Sen. Henry Dawes. He believed the only way to save the Indian was to make him act white. Allotment of land to individual Indians was the key

Instead, every Indian head of household would be allotted a quarter section (160 acres) of land to own privately. The theory was the Indian would become a yeoman farmer and/or rancher just like most everyone else in the West.

This was not a total act of federal largesse. Any formerly tribal land that remained-which in most cases was a substantial amount-would be open to settlement by whites. Thus, if the I.T. tribes signed up, land not given to individual indians was in "play" and therefore available to white homeseekers in the territory.

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/8055/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz27.th.jpg
Former exclusive Chickasaw land assigns

In order to understand why convincing I.T. tribes to agree to the terms of the Dawes Act was so critical here, you need to understand this important fact: Most US Indian tribes were forced to abide by the Dawes Severalty Act regardless of their wishes. However, a treaty from 1830 promised the Five Civilized Tribes living in Oklahoma Indian Territory their land for "as long as the grass grows and water runs," and the Dawes Act did not apply to them.

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/8107/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz28.th.jpg (http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz28.jpg)
Former exclusively Choctaw lands

Instead, the Dawes Commission was formed to convince them to adopt its principles voluntarily. Today is the 111th aniversary of the day the first two tribes in Indian Territory became convinced and signed up to the act's provisions.

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/922/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz33.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
The result of tribes' agreeing to the terms of the Dawes Severalty Act.

Don't misunderstand, although they were'nt required to sign, the Chickasaws and Choctaws were pressured to sign. What follows is a little more on that.

At the same time, Congress also threatened to make it harder for the Five Civilized Tribes to maintain their traditional ways of life. The Curtis Act, for example, invalidated the authority of all tribal courts and tribal legislatures. Recognizing that they had little hope of maintaining their old ways, in 1897, the Choctaws and Chickasaws became the first to agree to abandon tribal government and land ownership. By 1902, the other three tribes-the Cherokee, Seminole, and Muscogee (Creek) -had followed suit.

http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/9323/charlescurtisgl9.jpg
Charles Curtis (January 25, 1860 – February 8, 1936) was a Representative and a Senator from Kansas as well as the thirty-first Vice President of the United States. Nearly half of Curtis' background was made up of American Indian stock. His mother, Ellen Pappan Curtis, was one-fourth Kaw, one-fourth Osage, and one-fourth Pottawatomie (as well as one-fourth French). Curtis spent part of his early life on a Kaw reservation, and is the first and only person with acknowledged non-European ancestry to reach either of the two highest offices in the United States government's executive branch. Curtis was the last U.S. Vice President or President to wear a beard or mustache—in his case, a mustache—while in office.

Despite the sincere humanitarian goals of some on the Dawes Commission, the ultimate effect was to deprive Indians of most of their landholdings. Fraud was rampant, and some Indians either did not know they needed to apply for their private acreage or refused to do so in protest.

In fact, in a recent scholarly and extremely well documented account written by a Kent Carter, a curator and researcher assigned to the Fort Worth National Archives repository where most of the Dawes papers are stored, Carter asserts fully up to 70% of Indians in what is now modern Oklahoma refused to step forward and sign the Dawes Rolls which were the basis for the allotments. These people either never got the word, or, simply didn't trust the government.

http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/5659/dawescommission572vg6.jpg
Kent Carter's book. If this period and the Dawes Roll doings in Oklahoma are of interest to you, you really need to get this book.

From 1887 to 1934, Indian landholdings declined from 138 million to 47 million acres. Since the Dawes Act was rescinded in 1934, however, tribal ownership and government have again become legal -- which, BTW made it possible to open casinos someday :D .

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/2756/zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz9news3si.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

http://img242.echo.cx/img242/936/naland5hm.jpg
Indian lands in 1880 and 1990 graphically displaying the effect of the Dawes Severalty Act.

http://img214.echo.cx/img214/5669/insane2ee.jpg

[olevetonahill]

Great Jorb as Usual Homey
But just a Honest question ?
In essence We , (settlers ) Invaded , We whipedass , we won .
Has any other Country Invaded and Taken over a Foe and then Let em Have their Own Country In the country ?
I aint defendin , Im askin . Cause I sure as hell didnt like the Idea Of trading em Blankets with the Plaque to kill em off .

[12]

Curtis was the last U.S. Vice President or President to wear a beard or mustache—in his case, a mustache—while in office.

I guess that little run will be over if HRC is elected.

[TUSooner]

That's good stuff, 'specially about the last mustache. :)

[Okla-homey]

Great Jorb as Usual Homey
But just a Honest question ?
In essence We , (settlers ) Invaded , We whipedass , we won .
Has any other Country Invaded and Taken over a Foe and then Let em Have their Own Country In the country ?
I aint defendin , Im askin . Cause I sure as hell didnt like the Idea Of trading em Blankets with the Plaque to kill em off .

Generally, when a territory is conquered in a just war, the rights of individual real property owners are respected by the conquering power. Thus, after we acquired much of the Souithwest US in the wake of our Mex War victory, the land owned by the Mexican folks thereon remained their property. It became US territory, but the Mexican landowners kept their ranchos. Not so with Indian folks.

See, the wheels fell off the accepted practice because individual Indians didn't own any land. There was generally no concept of individual land ownership in indigenous culture in North America.

Thus, anyone who had a hankering for Indian land had to buy it from the tribe, not individual owners. In contrast, Indian land conquered in war, became the property of the US gubmint. Now, they usually inked a treaty in which the vanquished tribe relinquished title to their territory, in exchange for rights "reserved" on a given parcel where they were forced to reside. Hence, the origin of the term "reservation" because it connotes the Indians conveyed title to their land, excepting the portion "reserved" for their use.

In the case of just about every tribe in Oklahoma but the Osage who were always here, it was shadier. Those tribes were forced to convey title to their lands elsewhere to the gubmint within a treaty, and in exchange, they received title to substitute land over which they held reserved rights out here in the Territory. Then, they were forced at the point of a bayonet to stagger to their new "reservation."

On this day in 1897, they were denied even that. And to think, we have an expression we call "indian giver" that is used as a perjorative to describe a person who "gives, then takes back." I submit to you it is descriptive of what the gubmint did to the tribes removed here. First the gubmint "gave," to the Indians, then it took back.

It's a sad chapter in American history my friend. At any rate, I fervently believe whatever is good for Oklahoma tribes is good for Oklahoma generally. That's why I support and would defend their right to conduct gaming. In a real sense, tribal gaming has become the "new buffalo" because it is the source of the Indians ability to support themselves. And that, my friend, has been a long time coming.

Particularly since they were too often hooked out of their minerals in Oklahoma back in the Teens and Twenties when all this oil was making speculators fabulously rich who managed to defraud Indians of their holdings.

Think about it, in 1917, a land man waltzes up to an Indian couple who got their 160 acres under the Dawes Act. He offers to pay them 50 or 100 bucks for a lease and the right to drill. They take it because that's more money than they've ever seen in one place in their pitiful lives. The oil company makes brazilians.