Taking Indian Lands

by Hagan, William T.

• ISBN13: 9780806142364
• ISBN10: 0806142367
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-07-25
• Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr

Summary

Authorized by Congress in 1889, the Cherokee Commission was formed to negotiate the purchase of huge areas of land from the Cherokees, Ioways, Pawnees, Poncas, Tonakawas, Wichitas, Cheyennes, Arapahos, Sac and Fox, and other tribes in Indian Territory. Some humanitarian reformers argued that dissolving tribal holdings would help "civilize" the Indians and speed their assimilation into American culture, but the coerced sales also opened to white settlement vast "unused" expanses of tribal lands.Called the Jerome Commission, after its lead negotiator, David H. Jerome, the commission intimidated Indians into first accepting allotment in severalty and then selling to the United States-at its price-the fifteen million acres declared surplus after allotment. Hagan has mined nearly two thousand pages of commission journals in the National Archives to reveal the commissioners' rhetoric and strategies and the Indians' responses-the words of tribal leaders as they poignantly defended ownership of their land and expressed their fears of impending change.