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 39
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In the general provisions, all four of the treaties-Choctaw- Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek and Cherokee-were practically iden- tical, in that, as origmally drafted, each stipulated the abolition of slavery, the granting of tribal rights and privileges upon the freed slaves of the tribes, the cession of surplus lands for the purpose of settling other tribes thereon, the granting of rights-of-way for the
ALLEN WRIGHT
construction and operation of railways, and the creation of an in- ter-tribal legislative council which, in effect, would have been the beginning of a territorial form of government for the Indian Ter- ritory. After the various delegations reached Washington, in the spring of 1866, drafts of the proposed new treaties were submitted to them for examination and discussion. The several treaties dif- fered in many details of particular import to the respective tribes or nations but, as previously stated, there were certain general terms in each of them that were practically identical.
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One of the delegates from the Choctaw Nation was Rev. Allen Wright, a Presbyterian minister; who was also a man of classical education." He was skilled as a translator, not only in the Englishi
6 Allen Wright was born in Mississippi, in November, 1826. Both of his parents were of pure Indian blood. He belonged to, the Choctaw iksa, or clan, called Hayi-pa-tuk-lah. About 1833 his parents migrated to the Indian Territory. His mother died on the westward journey and was buried by "the Trail of Tears," as the Choctaws called the road over which they traveled away from their old homes. His father settled near Lukfata, in the present MeCurtain County, where he died soon afterward, leaving the son, whose Choctaw name was Killihote, and one daughter. The orphan lad was taken in charge by Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury, who was the senior Presbyterian missionary among the Choctaws, and with whom he lived until he entered Spencer Academy. He was then named Allen Wright, the family name being that of an- other missionary, Rev. Alfred Wright. After being fitted for col- lege by the mission teachers, he entered Delaware College in 1848. The next year he transferred to Union College at Schenectady, New York, whence he graduated in 1852. He then matriculated at the Union Theological Seminary, New York City, where he graduated in 1855. Returning to the Choctaw Nation, he was at once placed in charge of Armstrong Academy and was ordained as a minister by the Indian Presbytery. In 1856 he entered public life, being elected a member of the general council of the Choctaw Nation. He subsequently served as national treasurer, national secretary, and as national superintendent of schools, though actively engaged as a mission worker all the while. In 1857 he was married to Miss Harriett Newell Mitchell, of Dayton, Ohio, who had gone to the Choctaw Nation as a teacher in one of the mission schools. In 1861, as one of the commissioners on the part of the Choctaw Nation, he signed the treaty which was negotiated between his people and the Confederate States. He served in the Confederate Army during the Civil war and, at its conclusion, was selected as one of the Choc- taw commissioners to negotiate a new treaty with the Federal Gov- erment. While he was absent, in Washington on this mission, in 1866, he was chosen by his people to serve them as principal chief. Two years later he was re-elected for another term. In 1876 he was clected by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church as one of the American delegates to the World's Presbyterian Assembly, in Scotland. Union Theological Seminary conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. His later years were largely devoted to literary pursuits. He translated all of the Choctaw and Chick- asaw laws into the tribal vernacular for publication. He wrote and published a Choctaw-English lexicon or definer, and he was the author or translator of a number of hymns in the Choctaw language. His last work, completed just before his death, was the translation of the Psalms of David from the Hebrew direct into Choctaw, without the medium of the Greek or English versions. He died at Boggy Depot, December 2, 1885.
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and Choctaw, but also in the Latin, Greek and Hebrew languages. Parenthetically it should be stated that, in most of the treaties previously entered into between Choctaws and the Federal Govern- ment, they were not referred to as Indians, but almost invariably they were designated as "the Choctaw Nation of Red People." Now, in the Choctaw language, Red People would be rendered thus : Okla (people) homma, or humma (red). It is not improh- able that Allen Wright, who was the scholar of the Choctaw dele- gation, had been engaged in translating the proposed treaty from English into Choctaw. If so, the Choctaw equivalent for Red People must have been very familiar to him. Consequently, when the Government commissioners called in all of the various tribal . delegations for the purpose of discussing the proposed inter-tribal legislative council, which would be the beginning of an organized territorial government, and when, during the course of the discus- sion, the commissioner of Indian Affairs suddenly asked the ques- tion, "What would you call your territory ?" it was but natural that Mr. Wright should have instantly answered "Oklahoma," which he did.
While none can question thie appropriateness of the meaning, and while the name thus suggested is euphonious and even musical, it did not meet with the approbation of all of the Indian delegates who were present. In the first place, the response to the question of the commissioner of Indian Affairs had been instantaneous while a due regard for decorum among the Indians would ordinarily dic- tate that a matter of such importance should be subject to delibera- tion and consultation before making any suggestion. Several of the delegates from other tribes showed evident displeasure at the precipitate haste with which the name "Oklahoma" had come in answer to the commissioner's query.7 Although it was the sug- gestion of a full-blood Indian, no white man could have surpassed it for aptness or timeliness and, though some of the Indians of the other delegations resented it at the time, neither then nor afterward did any of them see fit to try to suggest a better name.
When the Choctaw-Chickasaw treaty was finally completed and ready to sign, one clause, as already stated, provided incidentally that the name of the proposed new territory should be Oklahoma. Later, when the House Committee on Indian Affairs was preparing to report a bill for the organization of the Indian Territory under
7 Personal information secured by Rev. Dr. J. S. Murrow from Rev. Allen Wright.
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a territorial form of government, Col. Elias C. Boudinot, of the Cherokee Nation, advised that the name already suggested by Allen Wright, and embodied in the Choctaw-Chickasaw treaty be used in the bill as the name of the proposed new territory. The same name was used for a similar purpose in subsequent bills in- troduced into Congress for the purpose of providing a territorial government for the Indian Territory and thus, in time, it became so associated with the suggestions of an organized commonwealth so bounded as to include the old Indian Territory, that it practically attached itself to the region now included in the State of Oklahoma without the sanction of legislative act or resolution.
CHAPTER XLV MOVEMENT OF INDIAN TRIBES
Within a decade after the close of the Civil war, the Indian population of the Indian Territory was considerably increased by the removal or settlement of tribes from other states and territories, in accordance with the terms of the new treaties which were made at Washington in the spring and summer of 1866. Most of these tribes were small in size as compared with those of the larger civi- lized tribes. Their removal and settlement in the Indian Territory is of historical interest, however, because of the connection which they had with the subsequent "land openings" for white settle- ment.
RETURN OF THE REFUGEE TRIBES TO THE WASHITA
During the first years of the war, the people of the federated tribes which had been settled on the Washita River in the autumn of 1859, including the Wichitas, Wacoes, Towakonies, Keechis, Caddoes and Anadarkoes, left their new settlement and sought refuge elsewhere. About two-thirds of them went north, most of the Wichitas forming a temporary settlement on the site of the present City of Wichita, Kansas, and the major portion of the Caddoes locating for the time being on the Arkansas River, in Eastern Colorado. Not all of them went north, however, as there were about 1,000 of them who held to the treaty made with the Confederate states. Most of these took refuge in the Chickasaw country and were encamped near Fort Washita at the close of the war.
For some reason (probably due to the frequent changes which were made in the Indian service under the Andrew Johnson admin- istration), the Wichitas remained in Kansas until the summer of 1867. A small detachment of Federal troops arrived and went into camp near the Wichita Village. The cholera broke out among them and soon it was communicated to Indian settlement. Many Vol. I-26
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of them died. Efforts were made to induce them to move then, but they professed to want to wait until their crop of corn was ripe. (In reality, they probably wished to remain and mourn for their deceased relatives.) Along in the following autumn, after they had gathered their corn, they finally started on their return to their own country on the Washita. Their first camp was on the north bank of the Ninescah River, where misfortune again overtook them. They had hobbled their horses and turned them loose. During the night a "norther" set in, driving down upon them a furious prairie fire and eighty-five head of their best horses were burned to death. This made it impossible for them to transport all of their provisions (consisting principally of corn), so they dug holes and "cached" (i. e., buried) what they could not carry, and then proceeded on their journey, many of them afoot. Then the cholera broke out among them again and there were many more deaths-about 100 in all-during the latter course of their journey down the Chisholm Trail and after their arrival on the Washita.1
REMOVAL OF THE TRIBES FROM KANSAS
Among the first tribes of Indians that were removed from Kansas to the Indian Territory were the Wyandottes, Delawares and Shawnees. The Wyandottes had been contemplating such a change even before the outbreak of the Civil war, and had con- cluded an agreement in 1859 with the Seneca Indians, who had a reservation in the northeastern part of the territory, whereby the former were to secure possession of a tract of land in token of the gratitude of the Senecas of Sandusky who had received the favor of similar grants of lands from the Wyandottes, many years before, while both tribes were still living in Ohio.2 By virtue of some of
1 Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1867, pp. 316 and 322; also, "The Wichita Indians in Kansas," by James R. Mead, "Kansas Historical Collections," Vol. VIII, pp. 171-7.
2 The Senecas of Sandusky, as they were known prior to their removal from Ohio to Kansas, were in reality the same tribe that had once been known as the Mingoes and had lived on the Ohio River above the mouth of the Kanawha until after the American Revolution. They are believed to be the descendants of a remnant of an Iroquois tribe known as the Eries, who were nearly ex- terminated by the Six Nations of New York, late in the seventeenth century. The agreement between the Senecas and the Wyandottes, made in 1859, was printed in the Annual Report of the Commis- sioner of Indian Affairs for 1866, pp. 255, 256.
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the provisions of the treaty of February 23, 1867, this proposed cession of a part of the Seneca Reservation to the Wyandottes was given force and effect, the Government being a party to the treaty as well as both tribes. Shortly afterward, the Wyandottes were removed to the Indian Territory from their former reservation near the mouth of the Kansas River, where they had lived since their migration from Ohio, in 1844.
Other parties to the treaty of February 23, 1867, were the Otta- was of Blanchard's Fork and Roche de Boeuf, the Western Miamis and the remnants of the Peoria, Wea, Piankeshaw and Kaskaskia tribes, all of whom secured reservations within the limits of the Quapaw Agency and to which they were removed shortly after- ward.
Representatives of the Cherokee Nation and of the Delaware Tribe of Indians met in Washington City, where after some nego- tiation, they signed a treaty, April 8, 1867, by the terms of which the Delaware Indians were to move from Kansas and be incorpo- rated in the citizenship thereof upon the payment of certain speci- fied sums or the transfer of certain bonds belonging to the Dela- ware Tribe to the credit of the Cherokee Nation, in lieu thereof. The Cherokee representatives who signed this treaty were William P. Ross and Riley Keyes; the Delaware representatives were Charles Journeycake, John Connor, Isaac Journeycake and John Sarcoxie. The Delaware agent, John G. Pratt, and Col. William A. Phillips, who had commanded a regiment of Cherokees in the Federal army during the war, signed the treaty as witnesses. The Delawares, who removed to the Cherokee country shortly after- ward, thus lost their political identity as an independent tribe. Some of their ancestors had sold Manhattan Island to the Dutch traders; others had bartered the site of Philadelphia to William Penn; their people had resented the intrusion of the white settle- ments in the valley of the Susquehanna ; had helped to ambuscade the army of Braddock on the Monongahela; were with Cornstalk and his Shawnees, and Logan and his Mingoes, at the battle of Point Pleasant, at the mouth of the Kanawha, in Lord Dunmore's war; they had helped to defeat St. Clair and had suffered their full share of losses in the crushing defeat at Tippecanoe. Convinced at last of the folly of trying to make further war on the white men, the Delawares became the most trusted friends that the Govern- ment had among the Indians. Many were the Government explor- ing expeditions which relied implicitly upon the keen eyes, saga- cious reasoning powers and cool courage of Delaware guides, hunt-
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ers and interpreters. And the Delawares, who were implacable ene- mies in war who proved their trustworthiness and fidelity when aiding the Government to thread the trackless wilds that trails might be made and that the plains and mountains might be mapped, have made good citizens since the changes of time have thrown them into more peaceful and less exciting environments. As a people, they have lacked either the ability or disposition to drive good bargains with the Government in the sale of lands, so they have never been rich as compared with some of the other tribes. But it has ever been manhood rather than money, deeds rather than dollars with the Delawares and, if the traditions of a heroic past count for aught, they are a rich people. They have probably left more names on the geography of the United States than any other tribe. They have lived in ten different states of the American ยท Union and have blazed the trails and pointed out the paths for the exploration of as many more. Possibly no other single tribe has had as much to do with the march of civilization across the con- tinent.
On June 7, 1869, representatives of the Cherokee Nation and the Shawnees of Kansas, after an extended conference at Washing- ton, signed an agreement similar to that which had been entered into by the Cherokees and Delawares and under the provisions of which the Shawnees were removed to the Indian Territory and merged into the citizenship of the Cherokee Nation during the course of the following year.3 The Shawnees, like the Delawares,
3 The Shawnees had long been known as wanderers. Of Algon- quin stock, they had drifted farther south than any of the kindred tribes before the time of the first white settlements on the Atlantic Coast. When they first came to the notice of the English colon- ists, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, they were living in two detached groups, with the domain of the Cherokees between them. One of these branches, known as the Savannahs, lived in South Carolina, in the upper valley of the river which still bears their name. The other, or western branch, lived in the lower valley of the Cumberland River in Tennessee. Shortly before the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Savannahs began to move north, presumably because of wars with the Catawbas and pos- sibly other tribes. They settled in Pennsylvania. A few years later, the Tennessee Shawnees moved to the country north of the Ohio River. When the Indians of Pennsylvania were crowded west to Ohio, after the end of the French and Indian war, the two branches of the Shawnee Tribe were reunited. They were hostile to the white settlements most of the time between 1755 and the treaty of Greenville, in 1795. Part of the Shawnees left the United
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had long been in contact with the whites. In fact, the two tribes, which were originally of the same stock, had been generally allicd together in their struggles against the westward extension of the white settlements. Like the Delawares, also, the Shawnees were never hostile toward the whites after the close of the War of 1812. On the contrary, they had given abundant proof of their peaceable and friendly disposition. Their people had moved to Kansas from Missouri and Ohio in 1825 and 1831. The signers of the Cherokee- Shawnee agreement of 1869 were H. D. Reese and William P. Adair, on the part of the Cherokees, and Graham Rogers and Charles Tucker on the part of the Shawnees.
The Pottawatomies of Kansas entered into a treaty with the Government, February 7, 1867, whereby they were to receive a new reservation in the Indian Territory. Eight days later, the Sac and Fox Indians of Kansas entered into a similar treaty. The reservation set apart for the Pottawatomies was located between the North and South Canadian rivers, and was bounded on the east by the Seminole Nation and on the west by the Indian Meridian. The new Sac and Fox Reservation was located between the North Canadian and Cimarron rivers, immediately west of the Creek Na- tion. Both tribes were moved to their new homes during the course of the following two years. The Absentee Shawnees, who had left the main body of the tribe more than twenty years before, who had lived in the region of the Canadian River for some years and had then drifted down into Texas, where they were settled with other fragmentary tribes and bands on the Brazos Reserve, whence they came to the Washita in 1859, were induced to join the Pottawato- mies and settle on the new reservation west of the Seminole country.
The Osage Indians, having agreed to dispose of their lands in Southern Kansas, were assigned to a new reservation in the Indian
States and moved to the Spanish dominions west of the Mississippi, in 1785, settling near Cape Girardeau, Missouri, whence in after years they drifted southwestwardly across Arkansas and Oklahoma to Texas, where they remained until 1839. (The old Shawnee Vil- lage, in LeFlore County, and Shawneetown, near the Red River, in McCurtain County, are marks of their southward movement.) Returning to the main body of the tribe in Kansas after the troubles with the Texans in 1839, a few years later, in 1845, another party returned to the South, living in the territory and Texas until the Civil war. This part of the tribe is known as the Absentee Shaw- nees. Small bands of Shawnees have long been affiliated with and absorbed by the Senecas and by the Creeks.
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Territory in 1870 and removed thither during the following two years. Their new reservation was located west of the 96th meridian and north of the Arkansas River and was therefore a part of the old Cherokee outlet. The Kansa, or Kaw Tribe of Indians, who had long had a reservation in the valley of the Upper Neosho, in Kansas, also entered into an agreement whereby the sale of the lands was authorized and, having been assigned to a new reserva- tion, they moved to the Indian Territory in 1873. A small band of captive Modocs, from Oregon, were colonized on a small reserva- tion under the Quapaw Agency, in the northeastern part of the state about the same time.
THE END OF INDIAN TREATY MAKING
After 1868, there were no more treaties made with Indian tribes by the Government. Up to that time, formal treaties with Indian tribes were subject to confirmation by the United States Senate, just as treaties with foreign nations were. The House of Repre- sentatives, at the instance of its Committee on Indian Affairs, of which Sidney Clarke, of Kansas, was chairman, objected to voting further appropriations for the fulfilment of Indian treaties which were ratified by the Senate without advice or consent on the part of the Lower House. The result was the discontinuance of the sys- tem of making treaties and the substitution of agreements instead. This gave the House of Representatives an equal voice with the Senate on all matters pertaining to the administration and conduct of Indian Affairs.+
+ Sidney Clarke, who had much to do with this measure, after- ward took a leading part in the agitation for the opening of Okla- homa to settlement and eventually became a citizen of Oklahoma. He was born at Southbridge, Massachusetts, in 1831. In early life he embarked in the newspaper business. In 1858 he emigrated from his native state to Kansas, settling at Lawrence. He soon became actively identified with the political affairs of that new state. In 1862 he was elected a member of the Legislature. In 1863 he was commissioned an assistant adjutant general in the volunteer mili- tary service with the rank of captain. In 1864 he was elected to Congress, and was re-elected in 1866 and 1868. In 1879 he was a member of the Kansas State Legislature, being elected speaker of the House. From December, 1885, to March, 1889, he was actively engaged in the work of trying to secure the opening of the Oklahoma lands to settlement. In the closing hours of the Fiftieth Congress he aided in drafting the amendment to the Indian Appro- priation Bill, the final passage of which resulted in opening of Okla-
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Because of disagreement between the two houses of Congress in the matter of vitalizing Indian treaties which had been regularly negotiated and ratified by the Senate, chiefly in the matter of fail- ing to make the appropriations necessary to carry out the stipula- tions of such treaties, Indian hostilities had been renewed in a num- ber of instances in which a more prompt compliance with the spirit
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SIDNEY CLARKE
and terms of the treaty would have had the effect of averting such a calamity. The blame for such failures was generally laid upon the House of Representatives. The House leaders therefore
homa a few weeks afterward. Coming to Oklahoma at the time of the opening, in April, 1889, Mr. Clarke settled at Oklahoma City, where he lived the rest of his life. In 1898, and again in 1900, he was elected a member of the upper branch of the Territorial Legis- lative Assembly. He took a very active part in the agitation for statehood. Mr. Clarke died in Oklahoma City, June 18, 1909.
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decided that the popular branch of the national law-making body should threafter be consulted in the approval of such agreements if it was to be held equally responsible for the legislation which was necessary to give force and effect to the same.5
5 Section 2 of the Indian Appropriation Act of March 3, 1871, contained the following clause, which had been "inadvertently" omitted as section 14 of the Act of July 15, 1870: "And be it further enacted, that nothing in this act contained, or in any of the provisions thereof, shall be so construed as to ratify, approve and disaffirm any treaty made with any tribes, bands or parties of In- dians since the twentieth of July, eighteen hundred and sixty-seven, or affirm or disaffirm any powers of the Executive and Senate over the subject."
Less than a year later, March 3, 1871, another act of Congress provided that "No Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an inde- pendent nation, tribe or power with whom the United States may contract a treaty ; but no obligation of any treaty made and ratified with any such nation or tribe prior to March 3, 1871, shall be hereby invalidated or impaired.""
CHAPTER XLVI
THE MEDICINE LODGE COUNCIL
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