The policy which had been recommended since the time of Schurz became the accepted policy of the United States in 1887. "I fail to comprehend the full import of the allotment act if it was not the purpose of the Congress which passed it and the Executive whose signature made it a law ultimately to dissolve all tribal relations and to place each adult Indian on the broad platform of American citizenship," wrote the Commissioner in 1887. For the next twenty years the reports of the office were filled with details of subdivision of reserves and the adjustment of the legal problems arising from the process. And in the twenty-first year the old Indian Country ceased to exist as such, coming into the Union as the state of Oklahoma.
The progress of allotment under the Dawes bill steadily broke down the reserves of the so-called Indian Territory. Except the five civilized tribes, Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles, the inhabitants who had been colonized there since the Civil War wanted to take advantage of the act. The civilized tribes preferred a different and more independent system for themselves, and retained their tribal identity until 1906. In the transition it was found that granting citizenship to the Indian in a way increased his danger by opening him to the attack of the liquor dealer and depriving him of some of the special protection of the Indian Office. To meet this danger, as the period of tribal extinction drew near, the Burke act of 1906 modified and continued the provisions of the Dawes bill. The new statute postponed citizenship until the expiration of the twenty-five-year period of trust, while giving complete jurisdiction over the allottee to the United States in the interim. In special cases the Secretary of the Interior was allowed to release from the period of guardianship and trusteeship individual Indians who were competent to manage their own affairs, but for the generality the period of twenty-five years was considered "not too long a time for most Indians to serve their apprenticeship in civic responsibilities."
Already the opening up to legal white settlement had begun. In the Dawes bill it was provided that after the lands had been allotted in severalty the undivided surplus might be bought by the United States and turned into the public domain for entry and settlement. Following this, large areas were purchased in 1888 and 1889, to be settled in 1890. The territory of Oklahoma, created in this year in the western end of Indian Territory, and "No Man's Land," north of Texas, marked the political beginning of the end of Indian Territory. It took nearly twenty years to complete it, through delays in the process of allotment and sale; but in these two decades the work was done thoroughly, the five civilized tribes divided their own lands and abandoned tribal government, and in November, 1908, the state of Oklahoma was admitted by President Roosevelt.
The Indian relations, which were most belligerent in the sixties, had changed completely in the ensuing forty years. In part the change was due to a greater and more definite desire at Washington for peace, but chiefly it was environmental, due to the progress of settlement and transportation which overwhelmed the tribes, destroying their capacity to resist and embedding them firmly in the white population. Oklahoma marked the total abandonment of Monroe's policy of an Indian Country.
[CHAPTER XXI]
THE LAST STAND OF CHIEF JOSEPH AND SITTING BULL
The main defence of the last frontier by the Indians ceased with the termination of the Indian wars of the sixties. Here the resistance had most closely resembled a general war with the tribes in close alliance against the invader. With this obstacle overcome, the work left to be done in the conquest of the continent fell into two main classes: terminating Indian resistance by the suppression of sporadic outbreaks in remote byways and letting in the population. The new course of the Indian problem after 1869 led it speedily away from the part it had played in frontier advance until it became merely one of many social or race problems in the United States. It lost its special place as the great illustration of the difficulties of frontier life. But although the new course tended toward chronic peace, there were frequent relapses, here and there, which produced a series of Indian flurries after 1869. Never again do these episodes resemble, however remotely, a general Indian war.
Human nature did not change with the adoption of the so-called peace policy. The government had constantly to be on guard against the dishonest agent, while improved facilities in communication increased the squatters' ability to intrude upon valuable lands. The Sioux treaty of 1868, whereby the United States abandoned the Powder River route and erected the great reserve in Dakota, west of the Missouri River, was scarcely dry before rumors of the discovery of gold in the Black Hills turned the eyes of prospectors thither.
Early in 1870 citizens of Cheyenne and the territory of Wyoming organized a mining and prospecting company that professed an intention to explore the Big Horn country in northern Wyoming, but was believed by the Sioux to contemplate a visit to the Black Hills within their reserve. The local Sioux agent remonstrated against this, and General C. C. Augur was sent to Cheyenne to confer with the leaders of the expedition. He found Wyoming in a state of irritation against the Sioux treaty, which left the Indians in control of their Powder River country—the best third of the territory. He sympathized with the frontiersmen, but finally was forced by orders from Washington to prevent the expedition from starting into the field. Four years later this deferred reconnoissance took place as an official expedition under General Custer, with "great excitement among the whole Sioux." The approach from the northeast of the Northern Pacific, which had reached a landing at Bismarck on the Missouri before the panic of 1873, still further increased the apprehension of the tribes that they were to be dispossessed. The Indian Commissioner, in the end of 1874, believed that no harm would come of the expedition since no great gold finds had been made, but the Montana historian was nearer the truth when he wrote: "The whole Sioux nation was successfully defied." It was a clear violation of the tribal right, and necessarily emboldened the frontiersmen to prospect on their own account.