USA > Louisiana > The province and the states, a history of the province of Louisiana under France and Spain, and of the territories and states of the United States formed therefrom, Vol. III > Part 48
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Oklahoma was provided for on the passage of either bill, but there was a division of sentiment in the territory as to the best policy, statchood alone, or statchood with Indian territory. The advocates of single statehood pointed to the geographical location of the two territories, the junction of which would make a regular
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parallelogram ( with the exception of the Public Land strip), bounded on the north by the state of Kansas, on the east by the state of Arkansas and a part of Missouri, on the west by the state of Texas, and on the south by the state of Texas, or rather by the Red river. It was claimed that the union of the two terri- teries as one state would give the proposed state clear, well- defined, homogeneous boundaries, and would avoid the broken and ragged boundaries that exist between the two territories. Single statehood partisans maintained that the union was ideal for the further reason that the Indian territory was rich in coal, minerals, building stone, and timber, of which there was a dearth in Oklahoma. A single statehood convention was held in Okla- homa City, on January 6 and 7, 1903, at which there were present 900 delegates from the Indian territory and 700 from Oklahoma. This convention endorsed the Nelson bill and voted an expression of confidence in the purity of the motives of Senator Beveridge and associates. John F. Palmer, of Pawhuska, an Osage Indian, was made temporary chairman, and "Senator" Gid Morgan, a Cherokee Indian, of Tahlequah, I. T., was made permanent chair- man. Henry Johnson, a Chickasaw Indian, was made temporary secretary, and Joseph Dunn, of Alva, Okla. T., was made perma- nent secretary. This convention was the seventh of its kind for the purpose of furthering statehood for Oklahoma and the Indian territory.
On the other hand there is a strong sentiment against a union of the two territories as a single state at this time, it being claimed that it is the better policy to make a state of Oklahoma territory at once, with a provision in the enabling act for attaching the Indian territory thereto at a later date, when the allotment of the lands to the Indians has been completed and these allotted lands become liable to taxation. The opponents to single statehood also point to the fact that no lands have been set aside in the Indian territory for school purposes, while Oklahoma derives a large revenne for schools and colleges from this source. Many promi- nent men in the affairs of the territory have placed themselves on record as opposed to single statehood, and several prominent news- papers have taken the same position.
In the fight on the floor of the United States senate both Sen- ator Quay and Senator Nelson claimed a majority of the senators at their backs, but both sides resorted to a great deal of filibuster- ing, and a decisive vote on the question was delayed from day to dav. Although both champions of the two bills were members of
OKLAHOM.I, MISCELLANEOUS EVENTS, STATISTICS. 485
the dominant political party, political motives lay beneath the delay in bringing the matter to an issue one way or the other, and it is stated that grave national questions were involved in the great fight that took place in the senate. The result was a deadlock, which lasted till the end of the session and compels a renewal of the ardnons controversy again in future, as Oklahoma territory will be found knocking at the doors of every congress until she has been admitted as a peer among other states of the Union.
Indian Territory
Ex-Governor Cassius McDonald Barnes Associate Editor
Archer B. Hulbert Author
Indian Territory
CHAPTER I
The Indian Tribes
A NY RECORD of the development of the Indian territory, from carly times to the present, must follow closely the varying fortunes of five civilized tribes of Indians, viz., Cherokees, Crecks, Choctaws, Chickasaws and Seminoles, who have been domiciled within its borders. The territory is not an organized territory and is the only one of its kind in the United States, the Indians being allowed to govern themselves under the supervision of congress.
For years the red men hunted or tilled the soil in their Indian Eden without interference from the white men, who cast longing eyes at the land, but were held in check by treaty rights granted the Indians. The intercourse law forbade traffic by whites with with the Indians except through licensed traders. The white men were not allowed to own land in the territory and for a long time the government agents, a few traders and missionaries, and the soldiers stationed on the reservations were the only citizens of the United States within the territory.
But the barriers were finally broken down, Oklahoma was organized as a territory and thrown open to settlement, and the "land of running waters and of flowers," where the Indians pur- sted the elk and buffalo, kindled their camp fires and met in con- cil, is teeming with evidences of western progress and civilization. Cities have sprung up, factories been built, and the iron steeds have long since taken the place of the fleetest Indian ponies.
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Oklahoma and Indian territories are at this time knocking at the door of congress demanding statchood. When this request is granted, and the Indian lands, so long held in common, are par- titioned in severalty, the prestige of the Indian as a race will be gone, and the "Indian Question" which has agitated the country since the two races came in contact will be a matter of history.
This transition, which is now taking place, from the position of conditional independence to full citizenship, has been made possible through education and intermarriage with the whites. The change, however, has been a gradual one, the metamorphosis taking a century in its accomplishment.
The history of the five civilized tribes reads like a romance. Driven from their early homes in the east, forced to reside in the western wilderness, and subjected to the avariciousness of dishonest agents, they have overcome all obstacles ; seminaries have been established, hospitals and orphan asylums built, local gov- ernment has been perfected, banks have been opened, and in many and devious ways have they kept pace with their white brothers. Today these Indians are living examples to prove the fallacy of the worn out assertion that the only good Indian is a dead Indian.
At the time of the acquisition by the United States of the coun- try west of the Mississippi river from France, the "Indian Coun- try," as it was called, embraced a large indefinite tract. Early maps of this period show the location of the different tribes, and to the west a large section of undiscovered territory was noted as "Indian Hunting Grounds." Later the bounds of the country set aside for the Indians by the government as a permanent abid- ing place, became more definitely fixed, and the "Indian country" became known as the "Indian territory." This designation of the Indian lands has been given for convenience only, as no form of territorial government has ever been established within the present bounds of the "Indian territory," although large sections have been chopped off the original allotment of territory to the Indians, and states and territories formed thereof.
Josiah Gregg's map of 1844 gives the bounds of this territory as the Platte river on the north, the Red river on the south, the wild tribes of prairie Indians on the west and the states of Arkan- sas and Missouri on the cast. The contraction of the territory to its present limits has been accomplished partly by persistent encroachments by the white settlers and partly by treaties made with the Indians, by which they ceded to the government large tracts of their original grants.
The new territory had hardly been acquired from France before congress was petitioned to remove all the Indians from the cast
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INDIAN TERRITORY, THE TRIBES.
to the west side of the Mississippi river, and the fifteenth section of the act of March 26, 1804, provided for their removal and for the laying off of the prospective Indian lands. No sketch of Indian territory would be complete without referring to the efforts on the part of the government to remove the five civilized tribes from their old homes to the Western lands and the hopeless struggle on their part against the inevitable.
On January 27, 1825, President Monroe, in a message to con- gress, urged the removal of the Indians, particularly those tribes in the Southern states and in Ohio and Indiana, to the country west of the Mississippi river. This recommendation of the presi- dent was the result of the persistent demands of the state of Georgia that the United States fulfill an agreement made with hier in 1802. By this compact (the only one of the kind ever entered into between the United States and a separate state) the United States government agreed to extinguish all Indian titles to lands in the state of Georgia as soon as it could be done peaceably and on reasonable terms. The Cherokee Indians, whose lands extended into that state, had organized an independent govern- ment, and Georgia protested against this disregard of her rights of sovereignty. President Monroe said in his message: * Experience has clearly demonstrated that, in their present state, it is impossible to incorporate them (the Indians) in such masses, in any form whatever, into our system. It has been demonstrated with equal certainty, that, without a timely anticipation of, and provision against, the dangers to which they are exposed, under canses which it will be difficult, if not impos- sible, to control, their degradation and extermination will be inevitable. The great object to be accomplished is, the removal of those tribes to the territory designated, on conditions which shall be satisfactory to themselves and honorable to the United States. This can be done only by conveying to each tribe a good title to an adequate portion of land to which it may consent to remove, and providing for it there a system of internal govern- ment, which shall protect their property from invasion, and, by regular progress of improvement and civilization, prevent that degeneracy which has generally marked the transition from one state to another."
In 1826, the secretary of war, Hon. James Barbour, drafted a bill for the consideration of congress, relating to the removal of the Indians. In connection with this bill he reported as follows :
"The condition of the aborigines of this country and their future destiny, have long engaged the attention of the philosopher and statesman, inspiring an interest correspondent to the import-
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ance of the subject. The history of the past presents but little on which recollection lingers with satisfaction. The future is not more cheering unless resort be speedily had to other counsels than those by which we have heretofore been governed. From the first discovery of America to the present time one master passion, common to all Americans, that of acquiring land, has driven, in ceaseless succession, the white man on the Indian. The latter, reluctantly yieldling to a force he could not resist, has retired from the ocean to the mountains, and from the mountains to more hospitable recesses, wasting away by suffering and wars, foreign and intestine, till a wretched fragment only survives of the numerous hordes once inhabiting this country, whose portion is to brood in grief over their past misfortunes, or to look with despair on the approaching catastrophe of their impending doom. ** Can it be a matter of surprise that they hear with unmixed indignation of what seems to them our ruthless purpose of expelling them from their country? They see that our pro- fessions are insincere-that our promises have been broken, that the happiness of the Indian is a cheap sacrifice to the acquisition of more lands; and when tempted to be soothed by assurances that the country to which we propose to send them is desirable, they ask us, what new pledges can you give us that we shall not again be exiled when it is your wish to possess these lands. It is easier to state than to answer this question. Either let him retain and enjoy his home, or, if he is to be driven from it, abstain from cherishing illusions that mean to disappoint, and thereby make him to feel more sensibly the extent of his loss."
The bill of the secretary of war provided for the removal of the Indians by individuals and not by tribes, that a territorial govern- ment be maintained by the United States over the country to which the Indians should be removed, that all tribal relations should cease and the members be amalgamated in one mass, and that all property should be held by individuals and not in com- mon. The policy outlined in this bill was not, however, in accord- ance with the views of congress at that time, and the bill was not favorably acted upon. Instead, congress advocated that most solemn guarantees should be given to the Indians of perpetual and undisturbed possession of the lands to be selected and that they should be forever exempt from the jurisdiction of state or territorial government. It was claimed that the welfare of the Indians depended on their being separated from the whites and living under their own laws, and for that reason it was desired to give them, in exchange for lands within states then rapidly becoming populous, . territory that could be protected from
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encroachment. The latter policy of paternal protection has been followed by the government in its dealings with the Indians up to recent times, when now the recommendations of secretary of war in 1826 are being practically put into execution.
Georgia took the question of the failure of the United States to fulfill its agreement to the supreme court, and President Jack- son in his first annual message, December 8, 1829, dealt with the Indian problem. Finally in February, 1830, both the senate and house committees on Indian affairs made reports in favor of removal and before the close of the session a law was passed entitled : "An Act to provide for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing within any of the states or territories, and for their removal west of the river Mississippi."
This act was approved by the president May 28, 1830. Prior to this date the United States acquired by treaty with the Kan- sas and Great and Little Osage Indians the territory west of the Mississippi and Arkansas, south of the Great Nemaha and north of the Red river, bounded on the west by a line drawn from the head source of the Nemaha to the source of the Kansas river, thence southwardly through Rock Saline to the Red river.
Capt. Z. M. Pike, the explorer, in his narrative relating his travels, writes enthusiastically of the lands bordering on the Arkansas river, which he termed a terrestrial paradise for the wandering savages. In his opinion there were buffalo, elk and deer in sufficient mimbers on the banks of the Arkansas alone, if used without waste, to feed all the savages of the United States a full century.
The Great and Little Osages, or Wa-saw-see, as they called their tribe, appear to have been the only Indians indigenous to the country now known as Indian territory. They were great wanderers, their villages being found at one time along the head- waters of the White river and even along the Missouri and Mis- sissippi, from which points the carliest settlers drove them south and west. The Kans, or Kaws or Konza's were an offshoot of the Osages. The traditional enemies of the Osages were the Pawnees and Comanches on the west, against whom they often went on the war path, although numerically inferior. Other neighboring tribes on the north were the Pottawatomies, Omahas, Otoes and Quapaws. On the west were the wild tribes such as the Comanches and Arapahoes, and on the southwest, along the Brozos and Red rivers, were the hunting grounds of the Wacoes, Wichitas, Towackanoes, Keechies and Inyes.
George Catlin, the celebrated traveler, whose gallery of Indian portraits is now in the National Museum at Washington, spent
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several months among the Osages in 1834, at Fort Gibson, which was the extreme southwestern post on the frontier, and at that time occupied by the Seventh regiment of United States infantry under General Leavenworth. This fort was established by Brevet Brig .- Gen. M. Arbuckle ( then colonel) in 1824, and was located on the Grand or Neosho river near its confluence with the Arkan- sas. Article 9 of the treaty made with the Cherokees in 1828 pro- vides for a military reservation at Fort Gibson two miles wide and six miles long, and also a military road between Fort Gibson and Fort Smith, across the line in Arkansas. Josiah Gregg's map of 1844 shows two roads in the Indian territory, the road provided for in the above treaty, and another running from Fort Smith in a southwesterly direction to Fort Towson on the Red river, the latter post being established in 1833. Fort Gibson was aban- coned as a military reservation in 1857, re-established in 1863, and finally abandoned in 1800. The first traders and sutlers located at this point in 1854 and became the pioneers of what today is a flourishing town, named after the old fort.
At the time of Catlin's visit to Fort Gibson the Osage Indians. numbered 5,200, their number having been greatly reduced by repeated ravages of the small-pox. According to this intrepid explorer and artist, the Osages were the tallest men on the con- tinent, many of them being over seven feet in height and most of them six feet or over. Their chief at that time, Black Dog, was blind in one eye, weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds and measured six feet six inches in height.
Like a number of other tribes the Osages shaved their heads with the exception of the "scalp-lock" on the top. Their children were bound to boards slung on their mothers' backs, and the head of each child was bound so tight as to force in the occipital bone and create an unnatural deficiency on the back part of the head and an unnatural elevation on top. This was supposed to give them a bold and manly appearance. They also cut and slit their ears to which were suspended great quantities of wampum and tinsel ornaments.
J. M. Stanley visited the Osages in 1843. He describes them as living in three villages, their wigwams being built of bark and flags, or reeds. Their villages were located on the headwaters of the Arkansas, Neosho and Grand rivers, and were forty, sixty and eighty miles distant, respectively, from Fort Gibson. This tribe studiously rejected everything pertaining to civilized customs, with the exception of the arniy blanket which they were persuaded to exchange for their buffalo robe.
The emigration of the five civilized tribes from their old homes
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in the Southern states east of the Mississippi to the Western wil- derness took many years in its accomplishment. The Chickasaws inhabited the upper part of Mississippi and the Choctaws the lower part of the same state. These two tribes spoke practically the same language and eventually united as one nation. They commenced moving west in 1801 and by 1830 had exchanged all their lands for grants in the Indian territory. During all their - relations with the French, Spanish, English and Americans, they were never at war with either. In early times they were nick- named "Farmer" Indians on account of their diligence in tilling the soil.
Apushamataha was a famous Choctaw chief, who was born about 1764. He was presented with a complete military suit by General Jackson, with whom he allied himself against the Creeks in 1812. He died at Washington December 24, 1824, when there as a member of a delegation from his nation. His dying request was that the "big guns on the hill" be fired in his honor after his death, and it is stated that this was done.
The Creeks were found in Alabama and Georgia. The first treaty was consummated with them August 7, 1790, after the Revolutionary war, during which they had fought on the side of Great Britain. Between that date and February 12, 1825, seven additional treaties were made with them, by the terms of which all of their lands were ceded to the United States. In one of these early treaties it was stipulated that the dividing line between their lands and those of their white neighbors was to be a line of felled trees, twenty feet wide. The treaty made by them . with General Jackson on August 9, 1814, was one of capitulation after a disastrous war.
On April 4, 1832, this tribe ceded to the government all their remaining lands east of the Mississippi and accepted in exchange therefor a tract of land in Indian territory immediately north of the lands allotted to the Choctaws, the latter occupying the south- castern part of the territory.
According to the terms of this treaty each emigrating warrior was given a rifle, monlds, wiper and ammunition and each family presented with a blanket. In addition the government pledged itself to pay the tribe an annuity of three thousand dollars for the education of their children, and to furnish one blacksmith when one-third of the tribe had emigrated and another blacksmith when two-thirds had crossed the Mississippi, together with one ton of iron and two hundred weight of steel annually.
The Cherokees made their camp fires in the mountains of Ten- nessee, the Carolinas and Georgia, and were known as the "Moun-
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taineer Indians." James Oglethorpe when he landed at Charles- ton, S. C., in 1733 made friends with a branch of this tribe and gave the Indians presents on behalf of his Majesty, King George Il. In return the Indians sold the white men corn from their well-stocked cribs, and as a token of respect the Cherokee chiefs sent their "Great White Father" across the seas a letter in black and red hieroglyphics on dressed buffalo skin. There was then no question of land titles to be settled between the two races ; primeval forests, apparently unlimited in extent, stretched north, south and west.
In November, 1785, at Hopewell, the United States entered into a treaty with the British allies, the Cherokees, guaranteeing them protection and proclaiming the bounds to their hunting grounds.
The treaty of Holston river was next negotiated in February, 1792, between United States commissioners and Cherokee chiefs, by which certain lands were ceded to the government in return for an annuity of one thousand five hundred dollars. Again on May 17, 1804, another treaty was made ceding more land and further annuities and payments made therefor. In all sixteen treaties were made with these Indians before they were finally removed to the Indian territory.
The Cherokee nation was probably further advanced in civili- zation than any other tribe of Indians, due in a large measure to their cordial relations with the missionaries. In 1800 they began the manufacture of cotton cloth and by 1820 a spinning wheel was found in nearly every family. Before their final exodus to the West they boasted a printing press and a newspaper .. They were greatly attached to their homes and their hunting grounds and vigorously protested whenever they were asked to cede more land. But their position as an independent nation within the limits of several sovereign states could not continue long without friction and in spite of their protests they were compelled to cede strip after strip.
A part of this nation voluntarily emigrated to Arkansas. about 1810, and on May 28, 1828, a treaty with these "Old Settler Cherokees" was negotiated at Washington, the preamble to which reads as follows :
"WHEREAS, It being the anxious desire of the Government of the United States to secure to the Cherokee Nation of Indians, as well as those now living within the limits of the territory of Arkansas, as those of their friends and brothers who reside in states cast of the Mississippi, and who may wish to join their brothers of the West, a permanent home, and which shall, under
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the most solemn guaranty of the United States be and remain theirs forever-a home that shall never in all future time be embarrassed by having extended around it the lines, or placed over it the jurisdiction of a territory or state ; * the par- ties hereto do hereby conclude the articles, etc."
Among the cash payments made to the Indians on account of this treaty may be mentioned fifty thousand dollars cash, annuity of two thousand dollars for three years, eight thousand seven hundred and sixty dollars for spoliations committed, one thousand dollars for the use of Thomas Graves, a Cherokee chief, for losses sustained in his property and for personal suffering endured by him when confined a prisoner on a criminal but false accusation ; five hundred dollars for the use of George Guess, another Chero- kee, for great benefits conferred upon the Cherokee people, the use of the alphabet discovered by him; two thousand dollars annuity for ten years for the education of the children, and one thousand dollars for the purchase of printing press and types.
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