These Indians are known by ethnologists to belong to the great Muskhogean stock, and lived in the South, east of the Mississippi. They constitute a third of our Indian population. As to why they were removed—that is another story. Suffice it to say that the year 1850 found them in that region known as Indian Territory. Here they located upon large tracts of tribal land amounting to 19,475,614 acres.
Treaties setting forth that they were to remain in undisturbed possession of their new homes were duly signed by the United States Government. Although the treaty of 1866 stipulated that they were entitled to send a delegate to our Congress, when Congress authorized the admission of a representative from Indian Territory, and in spite of the fact that some of the tribes made an effort to bring about this result, nothing effectual was ever accomplished.
May 2, 1890, the laws of Arkansas were extended to cover Indian Territory, and March 3, 1901, every Indian of the Territory was declared to be a citizen of the United States.
March 3, 1893, President Cleveland appointed the famous Dawes Commission. This undertook to allot to all the Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes lands in severalty. There were 200,000 claimants and about 90,000 were allotted.
Although I am tempted to present a mass of statistics and facts proving that these most advanced Indians were robbed and despoiled, without let or hindrance, that the treaties made with them were cooly set aside, statehood promises broken, and finally even the very farms and tracts, on which they were to live as citizens and enjoy the blessings of liberty and equality, were taken away, I must confine myself to a consideration of the subject in its broad aspect.
It is stated by apologists that Indian Territory became an impossible country in which to live, that crime was rampant, and that the Five Nations included among their membership thousands of outlaws and robbers. This is a gross exaggeration. There were some hundreds of undesirable citizens who made Indian Territory their habitat from just previous to the Civil War to about the year 1880. Most of these were white men, although there was a sprinkling of mixed-bloods and that worst citizen, the individual whose blood is made up of a mixture of negro, Indian and white. The older Indians, who are more competent to judge, and many of the white persons who long ago settled in Oklahoma, maintain that while this class of citizens caused a good deal of trouble, yet on the whole the Indians were vastly better off between the years 1855 and 1900 than they are at the present time.[[21]] There was some violence, murder, train robbing and attendant evils. As against this, however, the great body of Indians were self-supporting, there was no general graft, and very little pauperism.[[22]] There is evidence of the correctness of this statement even at the present time. In traveling through Oklahoma, overland, for 600 miles, I noticed in scores of places the type of house erected by the Indians forty or fifty years ago either still standing or in ruins. Their houses were superior, as a rule, to the present flimsy, cheap structures erected either by the natives themselves, or by Government or State employees for the Indians. The old houses were of logs, or heavy boards, the walls being thick. They were thus cool in summer and warm in winter. Near every house was an orchard. The tracts owned by the Indians were extensive, and cattle, horses and hogs had free range. Thus, every Indian family was assured necessary beasts of burden and meat for winter use. Now that the allotments have passed into the hands of white persons, or are restricted in size, or are leased, practically everything is fenced, there are no ranges of consequence; the old-style house is gone, the trees in the orchards have decayed and fallen, or are cut down, most of the remaining orchards are those of white people, although, of course, a few Indian orchards survive. The houses built for the Indians, or by them, are wretched affairs, small, the walls thin, and not substantial. They are hot in summer and cold in winter.
The Indians having settled down in Oklahoma under their various tribal governments, made great progress.[[23]] They published papers in their own language. The Cherokee capital at Talequah contained creditable buildings—a good administration building and two fine Indian schools, which may be seen on pages [138] and [146]. This school, by the way, built by the Cherokee Indians with their own money, is now occupied by white pupils. It was the finest building I observed in all Oklahoma, and it is a standing repudiation to the statement that the Indians were not progressing and that they did not afford proper educational facilities to their own people.
At the end of the Civil War, a number of outlaws belonging to guerilla bands, both North and South, came into the State. White persons migrated to the country and occupied it. The Indians complained, and our authorities at Washington made a few abortive attempts to keep them out, but, as inevitably, the whites dominated. The Dawes Commission was formed, and after years of negotiation and coercion, enrollment of the Indians began. The rolls are now completed and include the totals mentioned in my statistics upon a previous page.
There were a few Indians who held out against this arbitrary action on our part, and right here I wish to pay a compliment to a few old men and women, who were treated with contempt, who were called “Snakes” in the Creek and “Nighthawks” in the Cherokee nation by the unthinking. Why? For the reason that they have a simple, a child-like faith in the great United States Nation. They believe that we will keep our pledged word. They are not educated and therefore they cannot grasp the essentials of our civilization as it applies toward Indians; that when we execute a ninety-nine year lease among ourselves, we keep it; but that a solemn covenant entered into with the Indians is a very different matter. So these poor old Snakes and Nighthawks refused to be enrolled and to receive allotments, trusting in the honesty and integrity of the Great Father at Washington. One of the most pathetic sights I ever witnessed in my life, was when old Fixico Harjo and Okoskee Miller, and a few other fine old men, of the best type of American Indian, called my attention to our solemn covenant with these people, stating that they were helpless, that allotments had been forced upon them, that they expected to see even these little tracts taken away from them, that they could not understand the speeches of the clever, shrewd, oily, forked-tongued lawyers and land-buyers who came among them; they asked not charity but justice. The only thing in this world that was positive, that was true, that was inevitable, was this fact: that every time they touched a pen they lost something; that every promise made to them by a white man was broken; that they had abandoned all hope save one—that when they are gathered to their fathers, in the great beyond, they hope to find some place where they may live in peace and contentment, as in ancient days.