Cherokee Mythology (Illustrated Edition). James Mooney
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support of the two seminaries, an orphan asylum, and over one hundred primary schools, besides which there were a number of mission schools.388
For a number of years the pressure for the opening of Indian territory to white settlement had been growing in strength. Thousands of intruders had settled themselves upon the lands of each of the five civilized tribes, where they remained upon various pretexts in spite of urgent and repeated appeals to the government by the Indians for their removal. Under treaties with the five civilized tribes, the right to decide citizenship or residence claims belonged to the tribes concerned, but the intruders had at last become so numerous and strong that they had formed an organization among themselves to pass upon their own claims, and others that might be submitted to them, with attorneys and ample funds to defend each claim in outside courts against the decision of the tribe. At the same time the Government policy was steadily toward the reduction or complete breaking up of Indian reservations and the allotment of lands to the Indians in severalty, with a view to their final citizenship, and the opening of the surplus lands to white settlement. As a part of the same policy the jurisdiction of the United States courts was gradually being extended over the Indian country, taking cognizance of many things hitherto considered by the Indian courts under former treaties with the United States. Against all this the Cherokee and other civilized tribes protested, but without avail. To add to the irritation, companies of armed “boomers” were organized for the express purpose of invading and seizing the Cherokee outlet and other unoccupied portions of the Indian territory—reserved by treaty for future Indian settlement—in defiance of the civil and military power of the Government.
We come now to what seems the beginning of the end of Indian autonomy. In 1889 a commission, afterward known as the Cherokee Commission, was appointed, under act of Congress, to “negotiate with the Cherokee Indians, and with all other Indians owning or claiming lands lying west of the ninety-sixth degree of longitude in the Indian territory, for the cession to the United States of all their title, claim, or interest of every kind or character in and to said lands.” In August of that year the commission made a proposition to Chief J. B. Mayes for the cession of all the Cherokee lands thus described, being that portion known as the Cherokee outlet or strip. The proposition was declined on the ground that the Cherokee constitution forbade its consideration.389 Other tribes were approached for a similar purpose, and the commission was continued, with changing personnel from year to year, until agreements for cession and the taking of allotments had been made with nearly all the wilder tribes in what is now Oklahoma.
In the meantime the Attorney-General had rendered a decision denying the right of Indian tribes to lease their lands without permission of the Government. At this time the Cherokee were deriving an annual income of $150,000 from the lease of grazing privileges upon the strip, but by a proclamation of President Harrison on February 17, 1890, ordering the cattlemen to vacate before the end of the year, this income was cut off and the strip was rendered practically valueless to them.390 The Cherokee were now forced to come to terms, and a second proposition for the cession of the Cherokee strip was finally accepted by the national council on January 4, 1892. “It was known to the Cherokees that for some time would-be settlers on the lands of the outlet had been encamped in the southern end of Kansas, and by every influence at their command had been urging the Government to open the country to settlement and to negotiate with the Cherokees afterwards, and that a bill for that purpose had been introduced in Congress.” The consideration was nearly $8,600,000, or about $1.25 per acre, for something over 6,000,000 acres of land. One article of the agreement stipulates for “the reaffirmation to the Cherokee Nation of the right of local self-government.”391 The agreement having been ratified by Congress, the Cherokee strip was opened by Presidential proclamation on September 16, 1893.392
The movement for the abolition of the Indian governments and the allotment and opening of the Indian country had now gained such force that by act of Congress approved March 3, 1893, the President was authorized to appoint a commission of three—known later as the Dawes Commission, from its distinguished chairman, Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts—to negotiate with the five civilized tribes of Indian territory, viz, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole, for “the extinguishment of tribal titles to any lands within that territory, now held by any and all of such nations and tribes, either by cession of the same or some part thereof to the United States, or by the allotment and division of the same in severalty among the Indians of such nations or tribes respectively as may be entitled to the same, or by such other method as may be agreed upon ... to enable the ultimate creation of a state or states of the Union, which shall embrace the land within the said Indian territory.”393 The commission appointed arrived in the Indian territory in January, 1894, and at once began negotiations.394
At this time the noncitizen element in Indian Territory was officially reported to number at least 200,000 souls, while those having rights as citizens of the five civilized tribes, including full-blood and mixed-blood Indians, adopted whites, and negroes, numbered but 70,500.395 Not all of the noncitizens were intruders, many being there by permission of the Indian governments or on official or other legitimate business, but the great body of them were illegal squatters or unrecognized claimants to Indian rights, against whose presence the Indians themselves had never ceased to protest. A test case brought this year in the Cherokee Nation was decided by the Interior Department against the claimants and in favor of the Cherokee. Commenting upon threats made in consequence by the rejected claimants, the agent for the five tribes remarks: “It is not probable that Congress will establish a court to nullify and vacate a formal decision of the Interior Department.”396 A year later he says of these intruders that “so long as they have a foothold—a residence, legal or not—in the Indian country they will be disturbers of peace and promoters of discord, and while they cry aloud, and spare not, for allotment and statehood, they are but stumbling blocks and obstacles to that mutual good will and fraternal feeling which must be cultivated and secured before allotment is practicable and statehood desirable.”397 The removal of the intruders was still delayed, and in 1896 the decision of citizenship claims was taken from the Indian government and relegated to the Dawes Commission.398
In 1895 the commission was increased to five members, with enlarged powers. In the meantime a survey of Indian Territory had been ordered and begun. In September the agent wrote: “The Indians now know that a survey of their lands is being made, and whether with or without their consent, the survey is going on. The meaning of such survey is too plain to be disregarded, and it is justly considered as the initial step, solemn and authoritative, toward the overthrow of their present communal holdings. At this writing surveying corps are at work in the Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Nations, and therefore each one of these tribes has an ocular demonstration of the actual intent and ultimate purpose of the government of the United States.”399
The general prosperity and advancement of the Cherokee Nation at this time may be judged from the report of the secretary of the Cherokee national board of education to Agent Wisdom. He reports 4,800 children attending two seminaries, male and female, two high schools, and one hundred primary schools, teachers being paid from $35 to $100 per month for nine months in the year. Fourteen primary schools were for the use of the negro citizens of the Nation, besides which they had a fine high school, kept up, like all the others, at the expense of the Cherokee government. Besides the national schools there were twelve mission schools helping to do splendid work for children of both citizens and noncitizens. Children of noncitizens were not allowed to attend the Cherokee national schools, but had their own subscription schools. The orphan asylum ranked as a high school, in which 150 orphans were boarded and educated, with graduates every year. It was a large brick building of three stories, 80 by 240 feet. The male seminary, accommodating 200 pupils, and the female seminary, accommodating 225 pupils, were also large brick structures, three stories in height and 150 by 240 feet on the ground. Three members, all Cherokee by blood, constituted a board of education. The secretary adds that the Cherokee are proud of their schools and educational institutions, and that no other country under the sun is so blessed with educational advantages at large.400
At this time the Cherokee Nation numbered something over 25,000 Indian, white, and negro citizens; the total citizen population of the three races in the five civilized tribes numbered about 70,000, while the noncitizens had increased to 250,000 and their number was being rapidly augmented.401 Realizing that the swift, inevitable end