Oklahoma State University - Redskin Yearbook (Stillwater, OK)

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A youthful, sturdy nation of whites were undaunted. Westward I-Io! was the cry. It echoed from the rambling plantations of the south to the log cabins of Illinois. General Andrew Iackson destroyed forever the military power of the southern Indians in his cam- paigns of 1815 and 1814. In quick succession came treaties and as rapidly they were broken. A fast and loose policy of nullification of federal instruments made the treaties of that time, meaningless parchment. White men wanted the Indian lands. Politicians used the promises and treaties as pawns in chess. The southern civilized tribes were soon driven from Mississippi and Alabama, and, traversing the famous Trail of Tears, found Uklahoma, the haven at the end. New hopes kindled in the hearts of the young in the bountiful Indian territory. Wild game was plentiful. Succulent grasses grew in abundance. Ponies did not want for feed. Broken spirits were revived. Perhaps bluster and fighting would vanish forever from their new frontier. But the old Indians maintained silence. Stoicism prevailed. The Chickasaws still remembered President Andrew Iackson's ultimatum delivered to them in 1850, before they left Mississippi: Friends and brothers:-you have long dwelt on the soil you occupy, and in early times before the white men kindled his fires too near yours . . . you were happy people. Now your white brothers are around you . . . your great no - father . . . asks if you are prepared and ready to submit to the laws . . . there is no alternative . . . Those laws meant that their lands had been annexed, and their tribe iostled westward. Unmo- lested, would the new Indian territory remain theirs, and theirs alone for always? Reconstruction after the Civil War brought more treaties. The five civilized tribes-the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminoles-through new treaties with the Great White Father, were allocated certain lands in the Indian Territory in 1866. But those tribes were required, as their part in reconstruction, to cede part of their lands back to the government that other Indian tribes could he re-located in the Indian territory. By 1879, twenty-tvvo tribes had taken abode within its boundaries. Elements that hoded no good for the security of Indian treaties began to reappear from beyond the horizon after the Civil War. Heavily loaded river boats chugged their ways up and down the Mississippi with holds well loaded with merchandise. Western expansion was under way! Covetous eyes were upon Oklahoma, which translated means Bed Man. Iesse Chisholm's trail from Wichita, Kansas to the Wichita-Caddo Agency near the present state city of Anadarko, had been laid out in 1865. A great cattle industry was developing in Texas. Intrepid cowboys, seeing quick, easy profits, en- croached upon both the assigned and unassigned lands of the Indian Territory, until the war department forced them to withdraw. Alarmed and angry Indians found that their game was disappearing. Intruders were making their appearance. The great industrial development of the United States was taking form rapidly. Shoving its gleam- ing steel rails into the southwest was the Missouri, Kansas and Texas railroad. Coming down the Neosho river from Kansas, the railroad entered the Indian Territory in 1870. Rapidly it pushed southward across the Bed river into Texas. Clauses in treaties of 1866 were being exercised. The live civilized tribes found that they had given consent for railroads to be constructed across tribal reservations - another wedge that tended to split tribal solidarity. 1814 1866 1870

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Z Q A5 , . 1541 4,4 'sr .11 Nf -.. 1 f 1' fr- x E a V, , f N OKLAHOMAN may gaze back through 5O years, to the day when the Indian territory was opened for white settlement. . .Frontiers always have blustered and fought back, but always they have yielded their lavish treasures to the mightier forces. Aggressive and conquering groups recognize not the desires and wants of others but their own. Treaties are written, but time and human elements often reduce them to scrap and dust. The settling of Oklahoma affords a colorful and typical chapter in the history of the frontier. For Oklahoma, once a haven for the Indian, became a frontier. Hopes of the American Indians for a commonwealth on a plane of political, economic, and industrial equality with the whites were crushed finally and forever on one dramatic day. That day was April 22, 1889. The salvo of shots, from carbines clutched in the brawny hands of United States troopers, hurtled tens of thousands of pioneers loose in a wild race for homes on that memorable day of April 22. Pandemonium reigned! An ominous shout resounded into the heavens. A wave of mounted humanity, tapering into the horizon, surged forward. Women shrieked. Chunking of wagon hubs in a mad careen over the prairie played a rumbling symphony in keeping with the wild scene. Two million acres of unassigned land awaited settlement-homes for everybody! Bolling, tumbling clouds of dust hovered in the wake of those determined men and women who were in the act of siring the State of Oklahoma-the 46th state of the imion. The gray dust settled like a henediction on the newly opened territory. As the light faded on that April day, so faded the era of Indian domination of lands that were given them, a domination that had endured much longer than half- century of settlement that whites are celebrating this year. Let us delve in retrospect. . .Noble is the Indian, but fate decreed the perishing of the vast empire once his. At least ten tribes of aborigines claimed domain over what is now Oklahoma in the 16th century. They peered from bluffs as Francisco Vasques de Coronado, the first white man to set foot on the soil of Oklahoma, wended his way in 1541 in search of gold, silver, and precious stone. Through the years came more white men filtering through the frontiers in quest of treasure and booty. The redman held the upper hand. Bleached skeletons bore mute memento of Indian retaliation on the rolling prairies between the Arkansas and Red rivers.

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1874 1885 1' -an. Probably the crucial blow to the Indian hopes of non-interference from the ! '3 whites came when the Federal government reversed its policy in treating the ff-mgpifixv Indian nations. It had been the dream of Thomas Iefferson that the American , ,W Q . Indians, some day, would progress far enough in civilization and attain such a degree of independence that a race unmixed, an Indian commonwealth, could be created. This policy sought to make the isolation of the Indians complete, later this policy was revised to make possible the utilization of the Indian A' Territory not only for the Indians but also for the white man. The ways of civilization were making their way into Indian territory. Indians who wished to keep their lands intact, found their ranks being weakened. Money and boot-legged liquors played their part. White men hunted and killed buffalo for sport. That was squandering the Indian's food and clothes. Frontiers always have blustered and fought back. Wrath of the Indians culminated in outbreaks. The last occurred in Oklahoma in 1874. A wagon train on the Chisholm Trail was attacked. Pat Hennessey, the train-master, was killed. A town is named after him today near the site of his burial. Tribe chieftains were exerting every effort to protect the rights provided under treaties by 1879. Their representatives beat back issue after issue that would have encroached upon guarantees in treaties. But a joker was in the card pack. Land ceded to the United States by Creek and Seminole nations in the treaty of 1866, bounded on the north by the Cherokee strip, on the east by the Indian Meridian and on the south by the South Canadian river, on the west by the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservations, was never assigned to any Indian reservation. This tract included portions of the present counties of Payne, Logan, Oklahoma, Cleveland, Canadian, and Kingfisher. It was called Oklahoma Country until the opening in 1889. White invaders, termed boomers, sought to locate on this unassigned land from 1879 to 1885. From this period on, constant agitation for opening flared. Consequently, President Grover Cleveland, on March 5, 1885, was authorized by Congress to open negotiations with the tribes for the purpose of opening for settlement, under homestead laws, the unassigned portions of Oklahoma and the Cherokee strip. g Immediately, delegates from the tribes gathered at Eufaula on Iune 15, 1885 to discuss the threat to their security. Out of this international convention came a resolution protesting that the proposed action did not coincide with the 1866 treaties. Forsaking the usual weapons of the prairie, tribal delegates were sent scurrying to Washington to oppose the Opening question in Congressional lobbies and galleries. They were successful until Ianuary, 1889, when Congress ratified and accepted the last of the cessions made by the Creek nation. By proclamation on March 25, 1889, President Harrison opened the Oklahoma Country for settle- ment! The object of the former Ieffersonian policy of an Indian commonwealth, not trammeled and an entirety within itself, was defeated. Crumbling, the dykes of the Indian frontier were swept away in the avalanche of humanity that dashed pell-mell for new homes in the unassigned Indian Country on that memorable April 22, 1889, with the present city of Guthrie the focal point. Other openings soon followed in its wake. This year, 1959, Oklahoma observes the golden anni- versary of that day- a day that heralded a commonwealth destined to absorb the rich lore, history, and vigor of the Indian into a state in which both Indian and white can fulfill their highest destiny.