USA > Oklahoma > A standard history of Oklahoma; an authentic narrative of its development from the date of the first European exploration down to the present time, including accounts of the Indian tribes, both civilized and wild, of the cattle range, of the land openings and the achievements of the most recent period, Vol. I > Part 23
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Civil war because of the scarcity of funds.18 Like the national seminaries, the Advocate exerted a profound influence upon the Cherokees as a people.
At least two efforts were made to establish a newspaper in the Choctaw Nation during this period, as the following news items bear witness:
CHATAH HOLISSO
We have received the first number of the "Choctaw Telegraph," printed in Doaksville, Choctaw Nation, edited by Daniel Folsom, a native, and published by D. G. Ball. It is neatly printed on a super-royal sheet and is well edited. We extend to them the right hand of fellowship. May it prosper .- Fort Smith Herald, Novem- ber 8, 1848.
NEW PAPER
The first number of the Choctaw Intelligencer came to hand this week, printed in English and Choctaw, Doaksville, Choctaw Nation, D. D. Alsobrook, publisher, J. P. Kingsbury and J. E. Dwight, editors. It is neatly printed and bids fair to excel its predecessor, the Choctaw Telegraph. Price $2 in advance .- Fort Smith Herald, June 15, 1850.
18 The publication of the Advocate was not resumed until in 1870. The columns of the Cherokee Advocate, during this first period of its existence, would have compared very favorably with the best weekly papers of the time in the states east of the Missis- sippi. Executive proclamations, official notices, legislative council proceedings and enactments and news of the Cherokee Nation and neighboring Indian tribes were printed in both English and Chero- kec. In addition, there were timely editorials upon pertinent themes, a goodly selection from the news of the day (both domestic and for- eign), with some space devoted to agriculture, industrial develop- ment, and education, and a miscellaneous assortment of short stories, poems and other literary products of the time.
CHAPTER XXVIII POLITICAL AFFAIRS
THE TEXAS CESSION
By the terms of the compromise under which the State of Mis- souri had been admitted into the Union, there were to be no new slave states west of Missouri and north of the southern boundary of that state. When Texas was annexed to the United States, in 1845, her dominions west of the 100 Meridian extended north to the Arkansas River and therefore included parts of the present states of Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado. In compliance with the provision of the Missouri Compromise which forbade the admission of states with slave territory north of the southern boundary of Missouri (Latitude 36° 30', north), the State of Texas relinquished its claim to the ownership of all lands north of that line, Novem- ber 25, 1850. The region thus ceded by the State of Texas thus became a part of the public domain of the United States.1
NO-MANS-LAND
The establishment of the territory of New Mexico (September 9, 1850), with the one hundred and third meridian as its boundary, and of the territory of Kansas (May 30, 1854), with the thirty- seventh parallel as its southern boundary, together with the north- ern boundary of Texas as established by the cession of 1850, and the western limit of the Cherokee Outlet (i. e., the one hundredth meridian) left a tract of land, thirty-four miles wide and 166 miles long, unassigned to any state or territory. Eventually it became known as No-Mans-Land and as such it remained until it was opened to settlement in 1889 and, in 1890, was included in the bounds of the Territory of Oklahoma by the terms of the Organic Act. Prior
1 Oddly enough, in 1857 the Supreme Court of the United States rendered a decision declaring that the Missouri Compromise Act was unconstitutional.
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to 1821 it was claimed as a part of the dominions of the Kingdom of Spain. Then, until 1836, it was included in the domain of the Republic of Mexico. From 1836 to 1845 it belonged to the Republic of Texas. Brought into the Union as a part of a state, it was later excluded and long remained as the only tract of unorganized public domain in the country. It is now included in the three Oklahoma counties of Beaver, Texas and Cimarron.
THE INDIAN TERRITORY REDUCED IN SIZE
By the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act (May 30, 1854) the Indian Territory was reduced in size by taking from it all the vast region extending from the thirty-seventh parallel of north latitude to the Niobrara River. The Indian Territory, proper, was thus reduced to the area which it included up to the time of the passage of the Organic Act under which the Territory of Oklahoma was formed in 1890.2
Although Kansas and Nebraska were thus cut off from the Indian Territory, together, they still contained the reservations of about twenty tribes of Indians, most of whom had been removed from states east of the Mississippi River. In addition to these, in the central and western portions of the two new territories, there were a number of tribes of the untamed Indians of the plains, whose people still roamed unhindered in the wilderness and who had as yet no reservations assigned to them. Eventually, most of these tribes were removed to the Indian Territory, though not until after the close of the Civil war.
TRIBAL CHANGES
In theory, at least, the Cherokee people were united under a republican form of government, though the internal dissensions seriously interfered with the perfect working of the political
2 The boundary line between the Indian Territory and Kansas Territory (which extended westward to the Continental Divide) was surveyed during the summer of 1857, by a party under the com- mand of Lieut .- Col. Joseph E. Johnston, of the Second United States Dragoons. Colonel Johnston subsequently became one of the most distinguished generals in the Confederate Army.
The western boundary of Oklahoma, from the Red River north as far as the Canadian, was surveyed under the direction of Daniel C. Major, of the U. S. Astronomical Observatory, in the summer of 1859.
1
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system which had been devised for this purpose. In the other tribes from the South, however, there was even less of unity in their respective tribal political organizations. Thus, in the Creek Nation, though the people aeted together in matters that affected the interests of the whole tribe, such as in making treaties and dis- tributing annuity funds, they generally kept the sub-tribal lines intact and, in their internal affairs, were praetieally distinct tribes -the Upper and Lower Creeks-just as they were before their migration to the West.
When the Choctaw people first eame to the West, they promptly re-established the form of tribal government which they had main- tained in their old home land east of the Mississippi, in which there were three distinet chiefs who collectively aeted as the executive head of the tribal government. When the Chiekasaw people came west, they joined their kinsmen, the Choctaws, by purchasing an in- terest in the Choctaw reservation and merging themselves into its body politic with the proviso that there should be a Chiekasaw distriet, thus making four distriets in the Choetaw-Chickasaw Nation.3
When the Seminole people were transported to the West, it was the intention of the Government authorities to not only settle them among their kinsmen, the Creeks (for the Seminoles were an off- shoot of the Creek or Muskogee Nation), but also to have them assume citizenship in the Creek Nation. Whether the divisions among the Creek Nation, proper, had anything to do with a eon- trary determination on the part of the Seminoles is not known. Be that as it may, however, the Seminoles held themselves aloof from participation in the politieal affairs of the Creek Nation, and, eventually, asked to be set off by themselves.
While the Chiekasaws were personally friendly to the Choetaws and held a common and undivided interest in the reservation which had originally been granted to the latter, they became politieally dissatisfied. To be sure, they had the same rights and privileges that the Choctaws did, but the arrangement became somewhat irksome to the Chiekasaws because, the tribal lines being always drawn politically, they were always out-numbered and out-voted. The Choetaws were therefore always in full control of the tribal . government and only Choctaws were elected to fill national posi- tions. The Chickasaws finally insisted upon a politieal separation
3 Treaty of Doaksville, January 17, 1837, Senate Document No. 542, Fifty-seventh Congress, 1st Session, pp. 361-2.
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from the Choctaws. Accordingly, on June 22, 1855, at Washing- ton, D. C., commissioners representing respectively the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes and the Federal Government, signed a treaty by the terms of which the political jurisdiction of the Chickasaw District passed under the control of the Chickasaw Nation in con- sideration of the payment of $150,000 from the trust fund of the Chickasaw Nation to the Choctaws. Both tribes agreed to relin- quish all claims to the country west of the ninety-eighth meridian and to accept in compensation therefor such an amount as might be determined by the United States Senate.4
Like the Chickasaws, the Seminoles desired to be set apart and to be allowed to manage their own tribal affairs. They were clothed with the full rights of Creek citizenship, but they were not satisfied, for they wanted to govern themselves rather than be governed by the stronger tribe with whom they lived. At Washington, D. C., August 7, 1856, commissioners representing respectively the Fed- eral Government and the Creek and Seminole tribes of Indians, concluded a treaty by the terms of which a part of the reservation assigned to the Creek Nation was ceded to the Seminoles, who were to be granted a separate agency and to be permitted to establish an independent tribal government.5
The Choctaws and Chickasaws having separated as the result of the agreement entered into by the treaty of 1855, both nations adopted new constitutions in 1857. The constitutions of both nations, like that of the Cherokees, were republican in form, having many features in common but differing somewhat in detail. Thus, the chief executive of the Choctaw Nation was styled the "Principal chief," while that of the Chickasaw Nation was designated as "governor." Both nations had a "senate" and a "house of repre- sentatives," and, in the Chickasaw Nation, the two were called the "legislature," while in the Choctaw Nation the entire legislative branch of the tribal government was styled the "general council."
The Choctaw constitution, commonly called "the Skullaville constitution," was not regarded with favor by a large faction of
4 Senate Document No. 452, Fifty-seventh Congress, 1st Session, pp. 531-6.
5 Ibid., pp. 569-76. The reservation set aside for the Seminolc Nation was bounded on the east by a line which would divide the present Pottawattomie County into two very nearly equal parts; thence it extended in a northwesterly direction to the Texas Pan- handle line, bounded on the south by the Canadian River and on the north by the North Canadian and the Cherokee Outlet.
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the people of that tribe and was the occasion of intense political excitement which for a time threatened to lead to violence. Those who opposed the new order of things under the Skullaville consti- tution were mostly of the conservative and non-progressive class. They held a convention in Blue County, at which sundry objec- tions to the constitution were enumerated. The tribal officers, who had been elected in accordance with the provisions of the constitu- tion (and who had been recognized as the lawful authorities of the Choetaw Nation by the Federal Government), promptly submitted amendments to the constitution to remedy all of the alleged defects. Still discontented, the opposition held a convention at Doaksville framed another constitution and proceeded to hold an election for a legislature and new chiefs. Although the condition was described as having nearly reached "the brink of anarchy," the conciliatory attitude of the de facto tribal government ultimately led to a subsidence of the agitation and quiet was restored though not until the whole constitution had been resubmitted to a vote of the people and a number of admendments adopted and the tribal capital moved to Doaksville.6
The Cherokee Nation was divided into nine districts, for the purpose of civil administration and the apportionment of legis- lators, and respectively named as follows: Canadian, Illinois, Sequoyah, Flint, Delaware, Going-snake, Tahlequah, Saline and Cooweescoowee. These districts resembled counties in size and form of organization.
The Choctaw Nation was divided into three districts, called respectively, Apukshunnubbec, Pushmataha and Mosholatubbee. The first of these was divided into seven counties, the second into four counties and the last mentioned district was divided into five counties. The names of the sixteen Choctaw counties were as fol- lows: Towson, Cedar, Red River, Eagle, Wade, Boktucklo, Nashoba, Kiamichi, Blue, Atoka, Jack's Fork, Sugar-Loaf, Skullaville, San Bois, Gaines and Tobucksy.
The Chickasaw Nation was divided into four counties, namely, Panola, Pickens, Pontotoc and Tishomingo.
The Creek Nation was never divided into counties or districts as were the tribal domains of the other civilized tribes. Instead the
6 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1858, letters of Elias Rector, superintendent, pp. 130-1, letter of Douglas H. Cooper, agent, pp. 156-7, and letter of Charles E. Mix, commis- sioner, pp. 135-6; also, Ibid., 1859, letter of Elias Rector, superin- tendent, pp. 160-1, and letter of Douglas HI. Cooper, agent, p. 188.
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ancient town organization was still maintained. There were forty- seven Creek towns, or communities, each of which had its own petty government. Each of these towns was entitled to representation in the national council.
Shortly after the Choctaw tribal government was reorganized under the constitution of 1857, the general council, or legislative assembly, adopted outright a large part of the statute laws of the State of Mississippi, as the laws of the Cherokee Nation. Whether they were found suited to the administrative requirements of the Choctaw Nation is not recorded, but the compiled laws of the . Choctaws, published in 1868, do not contain many if any specimens of legislative statutes which originated outside the boundaries of the Choctaw Nation.
After the adoption of the Chickasaw constitution, the tribal legislature met and enacted a number of laws. A young man, who was a member of the tribe, was sent into Texas with the original copies of the statutes (no duplicates being retained) for the pur- pose of having them printed. The young man who had been entrusted with this important mission disappeared very mysteri- ously and the newly enacted laws with him. As a result of this condition, it became necessary to reconvene the tribal legislature in a special session for the purpose of re-enacting the laws which had been thus lost.
TERRITORIAL ORGANIZATIONS PROPOSED
In February, 1854, Senator Robert W. Johnson, of Arkansas, introduced a bill in the United States Senate to create three ter- ritories to be known respectively as Chelokee, Muscogee and Chatah and to have their respective capitals at Tahlequah, the Creek Agency, and Doaksville. The Senate Committee of Territories made a favorable report on the bill in July following, but it never came up for consideration. The object aimed at in creating three territories instead of one was to induce the various tribes to accept territorial organizations in order to pave the way for the union of all of them under one state government later. The matter of the organization and admission of an Indian state had been mooted at various times before the introduction of this measure.7 As early
7 The most complete and comprehensive discussion of the legis- lative history of territorial and state organization in the Indian. Territory and Oklahoma is that contained in "The Evolution of the State of Oklahoma," by Prof. Roy Gittinger, of University of
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as 1845 Peter P. Pitchlynn had advocated the organization of the Choctaw Territory.8
Oklahoma, Chapter IV of which is entitled "The Proposed State of Neosho," and gives in detail the account of Senator Johnson's bill for the creation of the three territories the purpose back of the movement.
8 Niles' National Register, Vol. LXVIII, p. 325.
CHAPTER XXIX
EXPLORATIONS, SURVEYS AND TRAILS
Some of the early explorations and surveys of the region now embraced in the State of Oklahoma would be difficult to differen- tiate from the military expeditions of the period. Thus, the expe- dition commanded by Capt. Nathan Boone which, in 1843, traversed extensive sections of south central Kansas and north central Okla- homa, although primarily undertaken as a military movement, was scarcely less of a geographical reconnoissance. Other expeditions were undertaken solely for the purposes of geographical and topo- graphical exploration.
In 1845 Capt. John C. Fremont, on his third western expedition, detached a party under Lieutenants James W. Abert and William G. Peck, near Bent's Fort, on the Upper Arkansas, and sent it southward to explore the Canadian River region. This party fol- lowed the course of the Canadian from its source to the central part of the Texas Panhandle, whence it crossed over to the headwaters of the North Fork of the Red River, which was descended to a point near the state line, and from thence northeastwardly across the valley of the Washita to that of the Canadian, which was descended to Chouteau's Trading Post, from which a road led to the settlement.1
THE CALIFORNIA TRAILS
As early as 1846 small parties of adventurous emigrants traversed Oklahoma on the way to California. In the late summer and early autumn of 1848, Lieut. Abraham Buford, in command of a company of the First United States Dragoons, journeyed to Santa Fe from Fort Gibson over a new route, namely, by follow- ing the Arkansas River to the mouth of the Cimarron; thence, fol- lowing the course of the last mentioned stream to the salt plain
1 Senate Document No. 438, Twenty-ninth Congress, Ist Session.
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near the Kansas line; thence, crossing to the valley of Beaver Creek (North Canadian) and following the same to a point on the Santa Fe Trail in the present County of Cimarron. Although the route was reported to be a practicable one for a wagon road, it was not used as such.2
In the great rush of gold seekers who crossed the continent to California in 1849 and the years immediately following, many passed through Oklahoma from east to west. During the early part of 1849, hundreds of people gathered at Fort Smith and Van Buren, on the eastern border of the territory, prepared to start on the long journey through the wilderness as soon as spring should open. There was great excitement and many unwarranted rumors as to the most available routes. There was also not a little con- fusion in the councils of the emigrants. The value of a good road westward from the head of navigation on the Arkansas River seemed to be fully appreciated. As early as August 23, 1848, the Fort Smith people were suggesting the survey of such a road and a month later a public meeting was held there for the purpose planning definitely to that end.3 After the rush of emigration began, the construction of a railroad from Memphis, Tennessee, to California, was seriously proposed. Indeed, a Pacific railroad had been suggested more than a year before that.+
Capt. Randolph B. Marcy, Fifth United States Infantry, was ordered to assume command of a military escort and accompany the overland emigrants to Santa Fe. Those who gathered at Fort Smith represented a great many states, but most of them were from the South. As they could not all agree concerning the road to be followed, those on the north side of the Arkansas (at Van Buren) followed that river and crossed above the mouth of the Canadian, the north bank of which was then followed to a point in the southern part of Cleveland County where a crossing was effected. Those encamped on the south side of the Arkansas (at Fort Smith), with the military escort, marched westward on the south side of the Canadian and the two parties were united at a point in MeLain County, west of the Canadian Crossing. From thence the caravan followed the divide between the Canadian and Washita rivers most of the way to the Texas line, in Roger Mills County. Lieut. James H. Simpson, of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, accompanied the escort and surveyed the road from
2 Niles' National Register, Vol. LXXIV, p. 258.
3 Fort Smith Herald, August 23 and September 27, 1849.
4 Niles' National Register.
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Fort Smith to the Rio Grande.5 Among the people who went to California in the caravan which crossed the Indian Territory in 1849, was a party of about 150 Cherokees, mostly mixed-bloods, but including some full-bloods and white men.
In returning to Fort Smith, instead of retracing his course directly from Sante Fe, Captain Marcy followed the Rio Grande to Doña Ana, in Southern New Mexico, from whence he chose a new route leading in a northeasterly direction, across the Pecos, Colorado, Brazos and Red rivers, and forming a junction with the Canadian River Road in the castern part of MeLain County. Captain Marcy arrived, on his return, at Fort Smith about the middle of November." As this new route to California was 300 miles shorter than the one by way of Santa Fe, it was highly recommended.7
The discovery of gold in California resulted in a flood of rumors of similar discoveries elsewhere-in New Mexico and on the Gila River, in what later became the territory and state of Arizona. Curiously enough, among the other places in whichi gold was rumored to have been found in 1849, was a reputed discovery of the yellow metal in the Wichita Mountains, in Southwestern Oklahoma. A party was organized at Fort Smith to go to the Wichita range and prospect for gold. The results of the investi- gation, like those of like efforts made in the same region more than fifty years later, were never heralded to the world.
In 1859 and 1860, the "Pike's Peakers" (as the gold hunters bound for the Rocky Mountains of Colorado were called) from the southern states passed across Oklahoma, following the Arkansas River to a junction with the Santa Fe Trail, in Central Kansas.
SOURCE OF THE RED RIVER FOUND
During the spring of 1852 an expedition under the command of Capt. Randolph B. Marcy, of the Fifth United States Infantry, and Lieut. George B. MeClellan, of the Corps of Engineers, was
5 Senate Document No. 64, Thirty-first Congress, 1st Session.
6 Senate Executive Document No. 12, Thirty-first Congress, 1st Session.
7 Lieut. Montgomery Pike Harrison, one of the officers of Cap- tain Marcy's command, was enticed away from the encampment one morning while on the march across Texas, and was treacherously slain by a party of Kiowa Indians in whose apparent friendliness he placed too much confidence. Lieutenant Harrison was a nephew of ' President William Henry Harrison.
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ordered to explore the sources of the Red River.8 The expedition entered Oklahoma from the south, crossing the Red River near the mouth of Cache Creek, and thence marehing up the valley on the north side of the river to a point near the mouth of the North Fork of Red River (called by the Comanches Mobeetah Hono). The course of the last mentioned stream was followed, through the western spurs of the Wiehita range of mountains. During the course of the march up the valley of the North Fork, Otter Creek, Elk Creek, Sweetwater Creek and several smaller streams received the names by which they are still known.9
After reaching the source of the North Fork, the course of the expedition was changed to the south. Reaching the valley of the Red River, proper, a smaller party followed the course of that stream to its source. Thus, for the first time, the exact location of the source of the Red River was ascertained and definitely located. Capt. Richard Sparks had started on the same mission forty-three years before, only to be turned baek by the jealous Spanish offi- eials. Maj. Stephen H. Long had also attempted to explore the Red River, fourteen years after the Sparks expedition, but he had mistaken the Canadian for the Red River and thus failed to find the source of the latter, which was on the plains instead of in the Rocky Mountains. The same year that Major Long marched down the valley of the Canadian, the Choctaw chieftain, Pushmataha, told Gen. Andrew Jackson that the source of the Red River was mueh farther east than that of the Canadian.
The narrative of the Marey expedition, which was written in the form of a daily journal, is even yet a splendid description of the natural features of the country through which it passed, though of course, great changes have taken place since that time. The report of the expedition, with accompanying papers, was issued in the form of a bound volume with a separate atlas containing maps, in 1854. An odd mistake was made by the draughtsman who drew the maps of the country through which the expedition passed, the location of the Wichita Mountains and of the principal tribu- taries of the Upper Red River being indieated one degree farther west than they actually were. This mistake complicated if it
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