A history of the state of Oklahoma, Volume I, Part 25

Author: Hill, L. B. (Luther B.)
Publication date: 1908
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pubishing Company
Number of Pages: 645

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still another consideration even more impor- tant, yet not generally apprehended. It is that an Indian tribe is a singularly homo- genous body (socially), and, if not dis- turbed by the intrusion of alien and dis- cordant elements, is susceptible of being governed and controlled with the greatest ease and effect."

After stating that the 92, Indian reserva- tions then existing in the United States, either by treaty or executive order, were widely scattered and not located for the per- manent interests of either the Indian or the government, too many in number and oc-

""North American Review," April, 1873.

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cupying too much territory in aggregate, he continues: "What is worse, some of them unnecessarily obstruct the natural ac- cess of population to portions of territory not reserved, while others, by their neigh- borhood, render large tracts of otherwise available land undesirable for white occu- pation. Indeed, it may be said that the present arrangement of reservations would constitute an almost intolerable affliction, were it to be maintained without change. Nor are the interests of the Indians any better served by the existing order. Many tribes, even were they disposed to agricul- ture, would not find suitable land within the limits assigned them. Others are in a position to be incessantly disturbed and harassed by the whites. Others still, while they stand across the path of settlement, are themselves, by ill-considered treaty provi- sions, cut off from access to hunting grounds, to fishing privileges, or to moun- tains abounding in natural roots and ber- ries, which would be of the greatest value to them."

Such being the situation of the reserva- tions then existing, General Walker felt that the next five or ten years must witness a general recasting of the scheme of Indian reservations, "the principal object of which should be, while preserving distinct the boundaries of every tribe, so to locate them that the territory assigned to the Indians west of the Mississippi shall constitute one or two grand reservations, with, perhaps, here and there a channel cut through, so to speak, by a railroad, so that the ind:is- tries of the surrounding communities may not be unduly impeded."

General Walker recommended® a policy of conserving the Indian reservations, of maintaining their racial integrity and pro-

moting their welfare as an individual people requiring the supervision of the superior race that crowded about them. It is of in- terest to note the opposite policy which he inferred might be followed by an unwise government. This retrograde policy would be, he said, the hastening of "the time when all these tribes shall be resolved into the body of our citizenship, without seclusion and without restraint, letting such as will, go to the dogs, letting such as can, find a place for themselves in the social and in- dustrial order, the responsibility of the gov- ernment of our people for the choice of either or the fate of either being boldly de- nied ; suffering, meanwhile, without precau- tion and without fear, such debasement in blood and manners to be wrought upon the general population of the country as shall be incident to the absorption of the race, relying upon the inherent vigor of our stock to assimilate much and rid itself of more, until, in the course of a few human generations, the native Indians, as a pure race or a distinct people, shall have disap- peared from the continent."

"If, for the want of a definite and posi- tive policy of instruction and restraint, they [the Indians] are left to scatter under the pressure of hunger, the intrusion of squat- ters and prospectors, or the seductions of the settlements, there is little doubt that the number of Indians of full blood will rap- idly diminish, and the race, as a pure race, soon become extinct. But nothing could be more disastrous than this method of rid- ding the country of an undesirable element. . . . But if, on the other hand, the policy

of seclusion shall be definitely established by law and rigidly maintained, the Indians will meet their fate, whatever it may be, substantially as a whole and as a pure race. White men will still be found, so low in nat- ural instincts, or so alienated by misfor-

'"' The Indian Question" (1874).

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tunes and wrongs, as to be willing to aban- don civilization. Half-breeds, bear- ing the names of French, English and American employees of fur and trading companies, or of refugees from criminal justice 'in the settlements,' are to be found in almost every tribe and band, however dis- tant. The white men, who, under the reservation system, are likely to become affiliated with Indian tribes as 'squaw men,' are, however, probably fewer than the In- dian women who will be enticed away from their tribes to become the cooks and concu- bines of ranchmen. One is surprised even now, while traveling in the territories, to note the number of cabins around which, in no small families, half-breed children are playing."

As to citizenship for the 55,000 civilized Indians of Indian Territory in 1874, Gen- eral Walker declared that if they ever re- linquished the autonomy guaranteed them by solemn treaties, it would be caused by their desire for the privileges of American citizenship. "These are not beggarly and vagabond Indians, to whom the offer of subsistence would be sufficient to obtain the relinquishment of their franchises, or the cession of their lands. They are self-sup- porting, independent, and even wealthy. Their cereal crops exceed those of all the territories of the United States combined. In the number and value of horses and cat- tle, they are surpassed by the people of but one territory; in expenditures for educa- tion, by the people of no territory. . They have already advanced so far in civ- ilization as to secure their own future, as against anything but squatter and railroad rapacity ; and their fate does not properly form a part of the Indian problem of the present day."

But excepting this body of Indians, the other less advanced tribes were, as Walker

believed, so situated that the government might deal with them as wisdom dic- tated, regardless of treaty promises. "Few of these tribes," he says, "but are obliged, even now, to seek from the United States more aid than they are entitled to by treaty ; while it is certain that in the near future most, if not all, will be thrown in compara- tive helplessness upon our bounty. The United States being the sole party to which they can cede their lands (8 Wheaton, 543), and the sale of the great body of these lands being their only resource, the govern- ment will have the opportuinty, not only without fraud or wrong to this people, but for their highest good, and indeed for their salvation from the doom otherwise await- ing them, to cancel the whole of these ill- considered treaties, leaving the natives where they ought to be-subject to direct control by Congress. . Under this relation of the parties in interest, and with the pressure of actual want, due to the in- ability of the natives properly to cultivate what they possess, the United States may at an early date, with good faith and judi- cious management, easily secure the relin- quishment of every franchise that stands in the way of a satisfactory adjustment of the difficulty."

Referring to the Indian tribes outside of the Five Civilized Tribes, Walker asserts : "Unless the system of reservations shall soon be recast, and the laws of non-inter- course thoroughly enforced, the next fifteen or twenty years will see the great majority of the Indians on the plains mixed up with white settlements, wandering in small camps from place to place, shifting sores upon the public body, the men resorting for a living to basket making, beggary and hog-stealing, the women to fortune-telling, beggary and harlotry. . . . Today [1874] there is no portion of our territory where citizens of

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the United States are not preparing to make their homes. To cut off a reservation suffi- cient for the wants of this unfortunate peo- ple in their rude ways of life; to hedge it in with strict laws of non-intercourse; turn- ing aside, for the purpose, railway and high- way alike; and upon the soil thus secluded, to work patiently out the problem of In- dian civilization-is not to be deemed a light sacrifice to national honor and duty.

"The claim of the Indian upon us is of no common character. The advance of railways and settlements is fast pushing him from his home, and, in the steady extinc- tion of game, is cutting him off from the only means of subsistence of which he knows how to avail himself. He will soon be left homeless and helpless in the midst of civilization, upon the soil that once was his alone. The freedom of territorial and industrial expansion, which is bringing im- perial greatness to the nation, to the Indian brings wretchedness, destitution, beggary. .. . Surely there is obligation found, in such considerations as these, to make good in some way to him the loss by which we so largely gain. . The cornerstone of our Indian policy should be the recogni- tion by government and by the people, that we owe the Indian, not endowments and lands only, but also forbearance, patience, care and instruction. . . We may as well remember that posterity will grow much more sentimental over the fate of the Indian than any Quaker or philanthropist of today. The United States will be judged at the bar of history according to what they shall have done in two respects-by their disposition of negro slavery, and by their treatment of the Indians."

That the Cherokees were entitled to be

ranked among civilized communities, and that their condition was far better than that of the agricultural classes of England, was a claim advanced by General Walker in 1872. "The Cherokees," he says," "number about fifteen thousand, and are increasing. They have their own written language, their national constitution and laws, their churches, schools, and academies, their judges and courts. Their dwellings consist of 500 frame and 3,500 log houses. During the year 1872 they raised three million bushels of corn, besides large quantities of wheat, oats and potatoes, their aggregate crops being greater than those of New Mex- ico and Utah combined. Their stock con- sists of 16,000 horses, 75,000 neat cattle, 160,000 hogs, and 9,000 sheep. It is need- less to say that they not only support them- selves, but sell largely to neighboring com- munities less disposed to agriculture. [The completion of the M., K. & T. Railroad through eastern Indian Territory in 1872 afforded them an outlet for these products.] The Cherokees have sixty schools in opera- tion, with an aggregate attendance of 2,133 scholars. Three of these schools are main- tained for the instruction of their former negro slaves. All orphans of the tribe are supported at the public expense. The Chero- kees are the creditors of the United States in the sum of $1,716,000, on account of lands and claims ceded and relinquished by them. The interest on this sum is annually paid by the treasurer of the United States to 'the treasurer of the Cherokee nation,' to be used under the direction of the national council for objects prescribed by law and treaty."

""The Indian Question" (1874).

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PART IV THE OKLAHOMA COUNTRY

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CHAPTER XVII

ORGANIZED INVASION

On previous pages have been reviewed the forces that were working with the inevitability of destiny for the disintegration of the Indian country. The ground had been prepared, and now the time came for its cultivation and reaping the harvest. And men were not wanting to give personal effectiveness to the general tendencies that have already been noted.

It has been observed that a considerable per cent of the inhabitants of Indian Ter- ritory, from the time of the establishment of the five tribes there, was of white and mixed blood. But in all the efforts, before the Civil war, for the organization of a territorial government, there was not, so far as known, any definite scheme for the ultimate attainment of anything more than an Indian commonwealth, where the abo- riginal tribes would continue to be pre- ponderant, both in population and in owner- ship of property and civic control. Soon after the war, however, another spirit is manifested in the movements for the organ- ization of this country. At once it becomes

' In 1859 the superintendent of the southern Indian superintendency said: "Conveyed by pat- ent to the Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles, it [the Indian Territory] is said to belong to them in fee simple. But this is & misuse of the term; since they have no power of disposition or alienation, a power inseparable from a fee simple. They have a right of perpetual oc- eupancy and use, and no more; but that right is exclusive of the whole of this vast territory, of much enormous capacity for production. These Indians actually occupy and use not a five-thou- sandth part, and could sell enough to make them- solves and their children rich, and still have ample

apparent that the promoters of such legis- lation were actuated by the desire not only to give Indian Territory a civil government · similar to those in other territories, but also to open this country to a less restricted intercourse with the rest of the Union- in short to allow the resources of this coun- tary to be developed under the same condi- tions that held elsewhere, only permitting the Indian inhabitants the privileges that priority of occupation guaranteed to them. The logic at the basis of these movements was most reasonable: The Indians have possessed this fertile country for years; their possession has not resulted in com- plete utilization and development, and thou- sands of acres lie idle which a proper enter- prise would make productive of all the fruits of labor and civilization ; therefore, why not bestow this natural paradise upon men cap- able of profiting by its opportunities?1

These views may have been entertained among individuals for a long time, but an enterprise so vast in scope as the opening of a country larger than the average Amer-

estates in land left for each, with princely en- dowments for schools and colleges. I have al- ready spoken in a previous report, of the certainty that this fine country must ultimately, and at no distant day, be formed into states. Not only the remorseless flow of our population, but stern po- litical necessities make this decree as fixed as fate." (Sen. Doc. 1st Sess., 36th Cong., vol. I, p. 531.) Elsewhere the superintendent makes his southern sympathies apparent, and probably the "political necessities" which he emphasizes refer to the opening of the Indian country to slave- holding immigration and the addition of another southern state to the Union.

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ican state for settlement required, besides men of broad sagacity and great influence, the power of determined organization and persistent effort working in the medium of the federal government. For this reason, it is natural that the first comprehensive plan for the organization of Indian Ter- ritory originated in Congress, and a quar- ter of a century before it was finally accom- plished.

For the history of these movements it is fortunate that the narrative of the principal actor in the long struggle for the opening of Oklahoma can be published here. This narrative, as dictated by Mr. Sidney Clarke for this publication, forms the most inter- esting of the "original documents" in the bibliography of Oklahoma history, since it is the detailed personal experience of the man who consistently for a period of forty years advocated and worked with all the adroit persistency of his nature for the opening of the Oklahoma country and its development into statehood. The story as told by Mr. Clarke reviews many of the events discussed on previous pages, and also carried the history of Oklahoma for- ward to accomplished statehood. Though it thus anticipates many of the succeeding chapters, his narrative possesses a conti- nuity of interest that forbids its insertion in chronological order. Mr. Clarke's review of the movements which brought about the establishment of Oklahoma, first as a place of white men's colonization, and later as a state, follows :

"My interest in the opening of Oklahoma to settlement and civilization commenced soon after my location in Kansas in the spring of 1859. I was attracted there, like thousands of others, because of the great controversy that was then going on between freedom and slavery. The whole country was profoundly excited as to whether Kan-

sas was to become a free or a slave state, and all over New England and the north- ern states the trend of emigration was to that territory. I was the editor of a paper in my native town in Massachusetts, and ardently supported Fremont and Dayton in the presidential election of 1856. On my arrival in Kansas I immediately became identified with the Free State party. Con- stitutional conventions had been held at Topeka, LeCompton and Leavenworth, but all the constitutions formed were rejected by Congress. It seemed settled, however, that Kansas was to be admitted as a free state at the time the Wyandotte constitu- tional convention assembled, July 5, 1859. That convention was composed almost en- tirely of free-state men. They formed what is now, with the exceptions of a few amend- ments, the constitution of Kansas, and in the ensuing fall the first free-state gov- ernment was elected, though the territory was not admitted to statehood until January 29, 1861.

"The slavery question settled, public at- tention was attracted to questions relating to the material development of the state. At that time the Missouri Pacific Railroad had only reached Jefferson City on the east, and it was not until some time later that the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad reached the Missouri at St. Joseph. The proposi- tion of an outlet to the Gulf was regarded as of supreme importance by those of us who believed in the future possibilities of Kansas, Nebraska, and the Indian Terri- tory on the south. The result of the agi- tation was that, when the usual land grants made to new states by Congress were made to Kansas in 1863, one of the lines of rail- road provided for was from Leavenworth on the Missouri River by the way of Law- rence to the south line of the state in the direction of Galveston, Texas.

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"This road was a favorite project of Gen. James H. Lane, the most conspicuous of the free-state leaders, and who after- ward became one of the first United States senators from Kansas. I read law in the office of General Lane at Lawrence, became his private secretary, went with him to Washington, and remained in that position during the first year of the Civil war. I was thoroughly imbued with the idea that an outlet to the Gulf was the natural course of transportation for the products of Kan- sas and the surrounding states and terri- tories, and that the time must soon come when the treaties that closed the door to the entry of white settlement in the Indian Territory would be modified, and that in the progress of future emigration they must give way to the necessities of the situation. I realized then, with others, that the battle to break down the treaty system and sup- plant it with a more liberal policy would be hard and long, but I was confident of the outcome, and thought that I saw clearly that the great southwest was to be formed into a galaxy of states instead of being forever dedicated to Indian possession. I was thoroughly possessed of the idea ex- pressed by William H. Seward in one of his speeches on the Kansas controversy, in which he said: 'When the emigrant from the old world shall find his way to the new, and steps his foot on the west bank of the Missouri, he will there enter upon a broad land of impartial freedom.'

"As time went on my interest increased in the question of opening the Indian Ter- ritory to settlement. I realized that the treaties which provided that the country of the five civilized tribes should never be included in the limits of any territory or state were a serious barrier to the railroad outlet to the Gulf, but I was in no way discouraged. As a member of the state

legislature in 1862 I continued to urge the importance of the project. In the fall of 1864 I was elected to Congress, which gave me a wider field for agitation and placed in my hands more effective weapons for efficient work. I introduced and Congress passed several bills providing for lines of road terminating on the south line of the state. My bill granting lands to the state to aid the Kansas, Neosho Valley Railroad Co. to construct a line of road from the eastern terminus of the Union Pacific Rail- road, Eastern Division, which became a law on July 25, 1866, provided for a line through the eastern tier of counties to the south line of the state with a provision for its extension so as to effect a junction at Red River with the road then being con- structed from Galveston to Red River at, or near, Preston in Texas. This bill was intended to carry out the purpose of the land grant act of 1863, which contemplated the line through the Indian Territory with Preston as the terminal point.

"Section 8 of the bill went still further and provided that with the consent of the Indians by treaty, endorsed by the presi- dent, any railroad company under any law of the United States, or the state of Kan- sas, might unite with the Neosho Valley Railroad Co. in the valley of the Neosho river ; and further provided that should the Leavenworth, Lawrence & Ft. Gibson Rail- road Co. or Union Pacific Co., southern branch, construct and complete its road to that point on the southern boundary of Kansas where the line of the Kansas & Neosho Valley Railroad Co. crossed the same before the Kansas & Neosho Valley Railroad Co. had completed its road to said point, then in that event the company first reaching the state line was authorized, upon obtaining the written approval of the presi- dent of the United States, to construct and

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open a line of road through the Indian Ter- ritory to a point near Preston in the state of Texas.

"I have referred to these laws in detail because they constituted the first practical movement to penetrate the Indian Terri- tory with a railroad and broke the first link that bound that territory as with chains to the policy of exclusion of white settlement.

"The first step having been taken look- ing to the final opening of the Indian Ter- ritory, other efforts followed in more rapid succession. On entering Congress I became a member of the committee on Indian af- fairs, and also a member of the committee on the Pacific Railroad, then in course of construction. The question of providing a territorial government for the Indian Territory seemed to me to be the second logical step looking to its final opening. I had no desire, nor had the committee of which I was a member, to violate any of the treaties which protected the five tribes in the possession of their lands, or to im- pair, in any way, the practical fee simple title by which these lands were held. But,

"The reporting of a bill creating a territory of Oklahoma, from the house committee on terri- tories, February 2, 1873, brought out a strong protest from the Creek and Cherokee delegations. D. N. McIntosh and Pleasant Porter represented the Creeks, while the Cherokee delegates were W. P. Ross, William P. Adair and C. N. Vann. Their memorial (in house Mis. Doc. No. 110, 42d Cong., 3d Sess.), after asserting the inviolable right of the Indians to their lands, and protest- ing against the alleged misstatements of the com- mittee's report, proceeds in the following vigorous and emphatic language:

"Above all do we protest against a measure to throw our country open to those who covet our lands, to break down our governments, so as to leave us at the mercy of our enemies, and to destroy our organization as a people, so that our property and our land might be left without legal owners, to the end that railroad corporations might seize them, while they endeavor to cover up this cruel wrong by the pretext that it is a 'contest between savageism and civilization.'

at the same time, the lands lying west of the five tribes, subsequently organized into the territory of Oklahoma, were held by different tenures and were controlled by various treaty stipulations, and were occu- pied by a very few Indians. These anom- alous conditions were subjects of protracted discussions in the committee. Col. Robert T. Van Horn, representing the Kansas City district in Missouri, was a member of the committee and took a deep interest in the project to establish civil government in the Indian· Territory, and to open the way for railroad transportation to the Gulf. Col. Van Horn, who is still living, was an ex- ceedingly able member of Congress,.a bril- liant editor, a comprehensive statesman, and in all respects one of the best men I ever knew in public or private life. He intro- duced in the thirty-ninth Congress [1866] a bill to establish a territorial government covering the whole of the Indian Territory, but the Indians, supported by treaty stipu- lations, denied the right of Congress to establish such a government and nothing was accomplished in that direction.2 The

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A history of the state of Oklahoma, Volume I, Part 25

Author: Hill, L. B. (Luther B.) Publication date: 1908 Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pubishing Company Number of Pages: 645

Author: Hill, L. B. (Luther B.)
Publication date: 1908
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pubishing Company
Number of Pages: 645