Out West Setting: Oklahoma – Indian Territory
Prior to becoming a state in 1907, Oklahoma was designated the Indian Territory by the U.S. government. This was done in order to provide a place for the Native Americans to relocate to as the United States expanded westward towards the Mississippi River in the 1800s.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 was signed by President Andrew Jackson within a year of taking office. This act gave the President the power to negotiate treaties for removal with Indian tribes living east of the Mississippi River. The treaty called for the Indians to give up their eastern land for land in the west. Those who wished to stay behind were allowed to stay and become citizens in their state. For the tribes that agreed to Jackson’s terms, the removal was peaceful; however, those who resisted were eventually forced to leave.
The northern Indian tribes included the Shawnee, Ottawa, Potawatomi, Sauk, and Foxes. Because of their size and fragmentation, relocation was easier than that of the southern tribes, which were much larger and more organized.
The Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Cherokee tribes (the Five Civilized Tribes) living in the Southern United States were considered civilized because of their adoption of Western customs and in the case of the Cherokee, the development of a written language, as well as having good relationships with their neighbors.
The Choctaw signed relocation treaties in September 1830, notably the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. Those Choctaws that decided to stay in Mississippi were soon forced off of their ancestral lands and moved west.
The Creek also refused to relocate and signed a treaty in March 1832 to open up a large portion of their land in exchange for protection of ownership of their remaining lands. The United States failed to protect the Creeks, and in 1837, they were militarily removed without ever signing a treaty.
The Chickasaw saw the relocation as inevitable and signed a treaty in 1832 which included protection until their move. The Chickasaws were forced to move early as a result of white settlers and the War Department’s refusal to protect the Indian’s lands.
In 1833, a small group of Seminoles signed a relocation treaty. However, the treaty was declared illegitimate by a majority of the tribe. The result was the Second and Third Seminole Wars. Those that survived the wars eventually were paid to move west.
A section of the path of the Trail of Tears, located in Village Creek State Park, Arkansas.
The Cherokee were tricked with an illegitimate treaty, the Treaty of New Echota of 1833. The Cherokee were given two years to move west or else be forced to move. At the end of the two years only 2,000 Cherokees had migrated westward and 16,000 remained on their lands. The U.S. sent 7,000 soldiers to force the Cherokee to move without the time to gather their belongings. This march westward is known as the Trail of Tears in which 4,000 Cherokee died.
Post-Civil War Period
After the American Civil War, in 1866, the federal government forced the tribes into new treaties. Most of the land in central and western Indian Territory was ceded to the government. Some of the land was given to other tribes, but the central part, the so-called Unassigned Lands, remained with the government. Another concession allowed railroads to cross Indian lands. In 1862 Stand Watie was elected principal Chief of the “Southern Cherokee Nation”. Furthermore the practice of slavery was outlawed. Some nations were integrated racially and otherwise with their slaves, but other nations were extremely hostile to the former slaves and wanted them exiled from their territory.
In the 1870s, a movement began by people wanting to settle the government lands in the Indian Territory under the Homestead Act of 1862. They referred to the Unassigned Lands as Oklahoma and to themselves as Boomers. After Watie’s death in 1871 the Southern Cherokee Nation was moved to Kentucky. In the 1880s, early settlers of the state’s very sparsely populated Panhandle region tried to form the Cimarron Territory but lost a lawsuit against the federal government. This prompted a judge in Paris, Texas, to unintentionally create a moniker for the area. “That is land that can be owned by no man,” the judge said, and after that the panhandle was referred to as No Man’s Land until statehood arrived decades later.
In 1884, in United States v. Payne, the United States District Court in Topeka, Kansas, ruled that settling on the lands ceded to the government by the Indians under the 1866 treaties was not a crime. The government at first resisted, but Congress soon enacted laws authorizing settlement.
Congress passed the Dawes Act, or General Allotment Act, in 1887 requiring the government to negotiate agreements with the tribes to divide Indian lands into individual holdings. Under the allotment system, tribal lands left over would be surveyed for settlement by non-Indians. Following settlement, many whites accused Republican officials of giving preferential treatment to ex-slaves in land disputes.