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. II > Part 22
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"Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: Having been permitted to speak, I am pleased to address you this morning. Several gentlemen have talked to the committee on the subject of the Indian question. Many of them seem to be lawyers, men of fine address. I do not fully know what they have said, still I know that they have been talking about the Indian people in the Indian Territory and, that being the case, I, being a full-blood Indian, want to say a few words. I am not a trained lawyer. I have no English education, and I wish you to hear me leniently and not to expect any hair-splitting arguments from me.
THE FULL-BLOOD VIEW
"I am a full-blood Indian. The Indians, as you know, are hunters. I am a hunter myself. I like the chase. The educated man hunts sometimes. He has fine arms. His guns and weapons are of fine material, and they do great execution. I myself, as an Indian, do not know anything but the bow and arrow. It is true I have gotten out of that, but in what I have now to say, my arms will be my bow and arrow. In hunting the game that we shoot, we have to expend many arrows and many bullets when the game is large. But the game in this particular case seems to be very small game, and I do not think that I need to expend a great deal of ammunition upon it. I ask this question to commence with: How do the United States look upon, and what do the United States
2 Hearings of the House Committee on Territories, pp. 46-9.
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think about, these five civilized tribes of Indians down there? I believe that the United States have recognized that we are nations. The evidence of that, so far as I am concerned is the fact that you have made treaties with us; and you have seemed disposed, and from time to time, to comply with these treaties. I can not give statistics, I can not give dates, but you yourselves, gentlemen, will know when the United States first commenced making treaties and agreements with us as a nation. What the gentlemen from Okla- homa ยท have said here has been interpreted to me, and to tell the truth I really pity those gentlemen. As I have told you, I am an old Indian, and I only know one way ; and when you make a contract with me, I expect you to stand by it. I know that you have agreed with me (that is, with the Creek Nation) that, in no time, shall that country be included within the bounds and limits of any state; and I am perfectly satisfied that you will live up to that.
"It has been told to me that one of the Oklahoma gentlemen here has said that a large number of white people have got in among the civilized tribes, and that those people are lawless, and that our country is a harbor for bad white people, and all that sort of thing; and I have been told that that has been urged here as a reason or argument why that country should be included in the State of Oklahoma. There are those in our country who are there in accordance with our laws, Cherokee laws, Creek laws, and other laws. Some are adopted, some are there under a permit, and some are there as tenants; but the lawless and bad elements down there are people who are there not according to any law of ours. And why are they there ? You have agreed in treaties with us that you would protect us against intruders ; and they are there today because you do not carry out that treaty.
"Then, again, there is not any very great matter against us because of lawlessness down there, for the simple reason that there is no State, no country, no county, where there are not lawless people and where there is no crime. There is no such country. These lawless people are to be found in all countries and in all states. They are the people who cause the making of laws. If we had no lawlessness there would be no need of laws. They almost make states; they make governments, and if it were not for the fact that there were lawless people, there would be no government, there would be no law, and no officers, and no army, for the simple reason that there would be no need of any.
"The talks of these gentlemen from Oklahoma, as they have
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been interpreted to me, lead me to believe that that is what they are working for. There is some lawlessness down there, and the lawyers (for I believe that there are many lawyers out there) are having a dearthi of business and are anxious to get at these people down there. They purpose to catch us in their scheme and to give us trouble; but we are not giving anybody else any trouble. That seems to me to be the case.
"Texas wants to take us down to Paris, and Kansas wants to take us to Wichita, and Arkansas wants to take us to Fort Smith,
OLD CHICKASAW ACADEMY, BUILT IN 1851
and now here is Oklahoma holding us on this side. That places us in a very awkward position, and shows, as I think, just about what the case is. But I feel safe. I think that justice and honesty will prevail and I am not much afraid.
"I have read this bill. That is, it has been interpreted to me. I understand that there is a provision in it which includes us in the State of Oklahoma, but goes on and provides that nothing in the bill shall be construed as to interfere with the tribal organizations of the Indians. You can not pass this bill and not violate the treaty or not interfere with our tribal organizations. We have sold you this land. Your people are there. If they want a state let them make a state and leave us alone.
"You see that I am a full-blood Indian. I told you that I was.
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Our language is different. You can not understand ine and I can not understand you. I am a different kind of a person from you. But how came we in that way? The Power that is above us intended that we should be thus and that is why it is so. I think that you, gentlemen, know who were first on this continent. If you look up history you will find that the Indian was here first. A white man by the name of Columbus came here and found the Indians here. If you came here and found a happy race of people, and if they had done nothing special to cause you to extinguish them, and if they are still struggling for existence, a great nation like you can not afford to crush out such people. Why should you ?
"When the Great Power above us created you and created us, it created us different from each other. Our customs were different and all our habits were different. He made us in that way. And having done that I can not see that it is right for one to extinguish the other. I do not think it is right and I do not think that He ever intended it.
"We have representatives here from the five civilized tribes, or from most of them. They have no fears that the great Government of the United States would override the treaties which it has entered into with them, by passing such a bill as this. I have no fears of that sort, nor have the members of the other delegations.
"This matter has been up before the committee for several days. It has been shot at, and wounded, and bruised in all shapes, until now it is pretty well understood; and I do not think of taking up much more of the time of the committee, but I want to say one thing. The gentlemen from Oklahoma seem to be anxious to form a state government. Indeed I think it is simply a scheme to get up offices for some of these people down there. Let them go on and do that for themselves; but let them leave us out. We have a free system of government, and have had it for years, and we must insist upon not being included in the proposed State of Oklahoma. "Bear with me a little longer. There was a good deal said about a class of people in the Indian country who could not be reached by law. I want to speak on that point a moment. We have your deputy marshals all over our country-United States deputy marshals. We see them every day. And in all the little towns of the Creek Nation we have officers appointed by the Interior Depart- ment, who are known as Indian police, and who are also conserva- tors of law and order. There are so many of those United States deputy marshals, and Indian policemen there, under appointment from the Government of the United States, that they hardly have
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criminals enough to catch. Sometimes these deputy marshals have trouble among themselves. One will say, 'I had a writ for that fellow and you have gone and caught him.' There is no disposition down there to violate the law or to kill off the people as the gentle- man (Mr. Speed) said there was. My own observation is that we have down there quite as much law and order as you have in the average state of this Union. Of course we have our share of law- lessness, as you have in your own states, but I know of no place where there is a disposition on the part of the authorities or of the people there to be lawless, and to kill off deputy marshals and people who are engaged in the suppression of crime. That is a large extent of country, and one can not go over it and know every- thing that is going on in it, and for that reason the gentlemen from Oklahoma and elsewhere who have charged us with much lawlessness are mistaken. They have not seen it. They have been perhaps in some little locality where there was much lawlessness, and they have seen that and have projected it upon the public as an indication of the general state of affairs there. But that is not the case."
INCREASING INTEREST IN STATEHOOD
The year 1893 saw considerable interest and activity in the matter of agitation for statehood. A statehood convention was held at El Reno, August 8, which was well attended. It declared for statehood for both territories. A few weeks later (September 30) an "inter-Territorial" statehood convention was held at Purcell. In addition to resolutions declaring the desires and the fitness of the people of the Indian Territory and Oklahoma for statehood, a lengthy memorial, reciting the inefficiency, inequity and unworthi- ness of the Indian tribal governments and the tendency toward monopoly in land tentures thereunder, was prepared and adopted. A week later (October 6), Delegate Flynn introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to provide for statehood for Oklahoma and the Indian Territory. By its terms, the proposed new state was to have three congressmen. Two months after the inter-terri- torial convention at Purcell, another statehood convention was held at Kingfisher (November 28, 1893), which urged immediate state- hood.
The Flynn bill was not the only statehood measure before Con- gress, however. The same day the statehood convention met in El Reno (August 8), Senator Joseph M. Carey, of Wyoming, on
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behalf of the Senate Committee on Territories, had introduced an omnibus statehood bill to provide for the admission of the territories of Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Utah. A month later, Representative Joseph Wheeler, for the House Committee on Ter- ritories, had introduced a similar measure in the lower house of Congress. None of these measures reached the stage. of a com- mittee report, however, so the subject did not come up for considera- tion in either house.
At the beginning of the last session of the Fifty-third Congress (December 5, 1894), Senator James H. Berry, of Arkansas, intro- duced a bill to provide for the organization of a territory to be composed of the reservations of the five civilized tribes and to be known as the Territory of Indianola. Senator Berry made an extended speech on the subject of the conditions then existing in the Indian Territory and pointing out the necessity of some decided change of policy on the part of the Government in its relations with the autonomous Indian nations of the Indian Territory. Al- though he carefully refrained from reference to the possibility of joint statehood with Oklahoma, it was evident that his bill had been inspired by influences which were hostile to the proposed union of the two territories in the formation of one state.3 (An effort had been made to hold a statehood convention at Muskogee on the 6th of October preceding but it was captured by the anti-statehood forces and adopted a declaration against the proposed union of the two territories in one state.) At the conclusion of Senator Berry's speech, Senator Platt, of Connecticut, gave notice of his intention to address the Senate the next day upon the same theme. Senator Platt's discussion of the subject differed from that of Senator Berry in that it showed a more comprehensive grasp and presented in a pertinent way more concrete facts, dealing in fewer generalities. Senator Platt spoke in part as follows : 4
"These Indians came from east of the Mississippi; they came to fertile lands. They had in addition to these lands a vast tract west of them, which is now the Territory of Oklahoma by reason of the fact that they have sold their land. They commenced their government as an Indian community, pure and simple ; they formed their constitution as Indians; they organized their courts as Indians ; they passed their first body of laws as Indians, isolated,
3 Congressional Record, Fifty-third Congress, Third Session, pp. 193-6.
4 Ibid., pp. 235-7.
Vol. II-16
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far away from white settlements, and away beyond the line where it was supposed that white civilization and white enterprise would go within a century, and there was to be worked out the problem whether the Indian by himself was capable of self-government and of advancement in civilization and progress until he should become thoroughly dissociated from his former Indian customs and bar- barisms. In other words, the United States guaranteed to these Indians that they should have the opportunity to try that experi- ment, believing that they were capable of doing it.
"The whole guaranty turned upon the idea of giving the Indian a chance by himself to maintain a republican government without the interference of white people, without the baleful influence of white people exerted over him, far removed from any possibility of the greed of the white people. These Indians, like other Indians, felt that the white people were crowding upon them in their old homes ; were taking away from them not only their lands, but their cherished customs and privileges. Therefore they stipulated with the United States that they should be permitted to govern them- selves without the interference or aid of white people.
"Mr. President, they have themselves entirely changed the con- ditions under which these treaties were made; they have entirely destroyed the reason for these treaties and the spirit in which they were made. The Indian no longer governs himself in the Indian Territory. When I say that, it needs a little explanation.
"By the laws which have been passed among these civilized tribes any white man who marries an Indian woman having suffi- cient Indian blood to be entitled to be a citizen of the nation becomes to all intents and purposes an Indian for all the pur- poses of government; the white person intermarrying becomes an Indian. So from small beginnings, where perhaps no particular disadvantage arose from this adoption of white people who inter- married, the matter has gone on until now the white Indians are in control, and the real Indian has little or nothing to say in those governments. Instead of being Indian republics, they are white oligarchies. Other laws which they have passed have enabled these white Indians to acquire all the most valuable lands.
* *
"There is no such landlordism and tenancy existing anywhere in the world that I know of as in this Indian Territory. The laws which have been passed enable any Indian to occupy any unoccupied land. So these white people, these white Indians, have practically occupied all the land of the Territory.
.
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"Some instances might be interesting, Mr. President. Along the line of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, running through the western part of the Choctaw country, there are probably 50,000 white people. They have settled there within the last three years. In all that country tributary to the railroad I suppose there are not 300 Indians. A single instance will show how the white people have absorbed the lands of the Indian Territory to the exclusion of the Indians. At a town named Duncan there was a Scotchman by the name of Duncan who had a trading post. There was also a white woman there who had been the wife of an Indian, but whose husband had died. The white woman, by marrying the Indian,
CHICKASAW CAPITOL
became an Indian citizen. Then, when she became a widow, Mr. Duncan, the Scotchman, married her. By that means he became an Indian.
"Mr. Peffer: Both white ?
"Mr. Platt: Both white; not one drop of Indian blood in the veins of either. These two persons, husband and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Duncan, have 17,000 acres of land under cultivation and grazing by their right of occupancy as Indians. They have also a town of 1,500 inhabitants, the right to occupy which is conveyed by Mr. Duncan, and the yearly rents for occupation amount, I suppose, to from five to seven thousand dollars. As in that nation an equal division of the lands would give to the Chickasaw Indians 647 acres of land each, it will be observed that such a large
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holding by two persons absolutely deprives more than twenty-five other Indians of any opportunity whatever to occupy any land in that nation.
"I want to say here in regard to Mr. Duncan that I believe him to be one of the best of the white Indians in the Indian Territory. The observations which I have made with reference to the cupidity, the greed, and the vicious practices of these white Indians do not apply to him-at any rate not to any such extent as they do to others.
"Mr. President, what has become of the Indian in the mean- time? The full-blood Indian when he entered that Territory had little idea of agriculture. He desired the mountains, where game was abundant, and where the natural scenery coincided with his imagination. So the Indians settled in the mountains and in the hill country. While these white men, calling themselves Indians and running the Indian government as Indians citizens, are thus amassing wealth in almost fabulous amounts, the real Indian is away in the hills. He has perhaps two or three acres of arable land which he occupies. He raises, in a very rude way, some corn on those two or three acres. He pounds it in a stone mortar and mixes it with ashes, and that, with what he can get by hunting and perhaps by the raising of a few pigs and chickens, constitutes not only his entire wealth, but his only opportunity for subsistence. The pos- sibility of his obtaining agricultural land and learning to cultivate it no longer exists, and it can not exist while these white Indians maintain their immense holdings. The civilization, which it has been fondly hoped the Indian would attain to in consequence of the allotment of land to him, has become absolutely impossible. The land, which he ought to have, is held by these feudal lords under the sanction of the Indian governments which they have obtained and maintained.
"Under the condition which I have been describing-and no man dare paint it in its true colors for fear he will not be believed- the real Indian is not only arrested in the progress of civilization, but he is actually deteriorating and returning to barbarism. Yet we are told that we must keep faith with the Indians and that we must not meddle with these Indian republics !
"As I said, Mr. President, the spirit of that guarantee and the reason for it and the value of it have gone long ago by the acts of the Indians themselves. So far as the Indians are concerned, the laws are made in their legislatures by the influence of white men exerted as I have described ; the laws are administered in the
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Indian courts by the influence of the white men and by the methods which I have described; but the republican government, the courts, the machinery for the administration of justice are as bare of life as a skeleton. The life, liberty, and property of the real Indians are without protection in those governments. The very spirit of the government has been destroyed; the object of the government has been perverted.
* *
"But, Mr. President, there are two parties to a treaty, and
CHEROKEE CAPITOL
when one party breaks it there certainly can be no obligation on the other party to maintain it. Every vital clause of these treaties has been broken or overridden by the Indians themselves. They received the lands by patents to their tribe. In some of the patents it was expressed and in other cases it was expressed in the treaty that the land was to be held for the equal benefit of each member of the tribe. I do not give the exact language, but that is the substance of it. Yet the Indians themselves have put those lands in the hands of a few white people and have practically excluded the large body of the Indians from participation in them. Never- theless it is said that the treaty must be kept; that faith must be kept with the Indians; that the treaty binds the Government of the United States, and that the Indian governments must not be interfered with. Why ? In order that the white Indians may still hold on to their spoils !
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"The United States, I think, is not only no longer bound to keep the treaty, so far as this particular matter is concerned, but in my opinion it is bound to step in and execute the trust which was created by the conveyance of the land to the tribe or nation for the common benefit of all. A trust went with it-a trust that those governments should see to it that no man got the benefit of the land to the exclusion of the others. If the chief of one of the nations had seized all the land in the nation for himself it would be no more a violation of the treaty on the part of the Indians than what has taken place under the laws which they have passed. Yet I imagine that even the most sentimental philanthropist would scarcely hold that we should keep the treaty with the Indians if one man had seized all the land. The present situation comes pretty near to that condition. The commission reports that in one of the tribes, whose whole territory consists of but 3,040,000 acres, within the last few years laws have been enacted under which sixty-one citizens have appropriated to themselves and are now holding for pasturage and cultivation 1,237,000 acres.
"What was the treaty? What did the Indians stipulate in the treaty ? What duty was put upon them to observe? That the lands should be held for equal benefit of all? When sixty-one persons get practically half of the land in one of these nations and two-thirds of all the arable and grazing land, is there any longer reason why the United States should keep its hands off because of its guarantee to those people that they shall have the right of self- government ? I think, too, that when the Indians have so far failed to maintain a proper government that the life, liberty, and prop- erty of the Indian are no longer safe under its laws or in the admin- istration of its justice they have also violated the treaty.
"If it were not expressed, it was at least implied that the government should be for the benefit of all the people, and it was stipulated that no laws should be passed by the Indian governments which were contrary to the Constitution of the United States. The laws which they have passed may not be contrary to the letter of the Constitution of the United States, but they are in absolute defiance of the spirit of the Constitution; and even the laws for the protection of life, person, and property which have been passed are not executed and are not pretended to be executed, except where it suits these lords of the soil that they shall be executed.
"I think I have said all I desire to say to show the importance of this subject, and to show that the Government can no longer rest quiet and secure upon its original proposition that it leave the
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government of the Indians to the governments which they should erect. There is a higher faith to be kept with the Indians than the letter of the treaties which they have violated, and which. to keep further, will relegate the Indians to barbarism. If when we made those treaties we absolved ourselves from all obligations to the Indian to look after him, to care for him, to see that he enjoyed his rights, to see that he advanced along the road of civilization, then, possibly, the arguments may be still held up to us that we have nothing to do except to keep faith with the Indian, so far as the letter of the treaty is concerned, and let him go to destruction. But I apprehend that we have a higher duty than that toward the Indians. I apprehend that it is the duty of the United States to take care of them still; to see that they are not despoiled of their lands by those white people whom they have admitted to Indian citizenship; to see that life, liberty, and property are still pro- tected in those nations, and that the Indians shall still have the opportunity and be encouraged to make progress rather than that they shall go steadily back to that barbarism from which we have attempted to raise them."
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