Supplemental
Treaty
Here we leave for a time these modern Emigration
Societies and their emigrants, to revert to the Supplemental Treaty for
a short consideration of the laws authorizing and defining allotments.
All incorporated towns and town sites were
reserved from allotment. In like manner were the rich coal fields and beds
of asphalt excluded from division. Provisions were made for a thorough
survey and an accurate location of lands containing these mineral beds,
and these lands not to exceed a certain number of acres were segregated
and excluded from allotment. These coal and asphalt deposits together with
the lands covering them were to be sold subject to the then existing leases
in accordance with the terms of this law, and the proceeds to be added
to the Choctaw and Chickasaw annuity for equal per capita distribution
after allotment. Like provisions were made for the sale of townsites, and
for like disposition of the funds resulting from these sales. After making
these reservations this act approximated the number of successful claimants,
including Mississippi Choctaws, and divided the territory among them, thus
defining an allotment of land. Sections eleven and twelve of this act define
an allotment as follows:
11. There shall be allotted to each member of the Choctaw and
Chickasaw tribes, as soon as practicable after the approval by the Secretary
of the Interior of his enrollment as herein provided, land equal in value
to three hundred and twenty acres of the average allotable land of the
Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, and to each Choctaw and Chickasaw freedman,
as soon as practicable after the approval by the Secretary of the Interior
of his enrollment, land equal in value to forty acres of the average allotable
land of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations; to conform, as nearly as may
be, to the areas and boundaries established by the Government survey, which
land may be selected by each allottee so as to include his improvements.
For the purpose of making allotments and designating homesteads hereunder,
the forty-acre or quarter-quarter subdivisions established by the Government
survey may be dealt with as if further subdivided into four equal parts
in the usual manner, thus making the smallest legal subdivision ten acres,
or a quarter of a quarter of a quarter of a section.
12. Each member of said tribe shall, at the time of the selection of
his allotment, designate as a homestead out of said allotment land equal
in value to one hundred and sixty acres of the average allotable land of
the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, as nearly as may be, which shall be
inalienable during the lifetime of the allottee, not exceeding twenty-one
years from the date of certificate of allotment, and separate certificate
and patent shall issue for said homestead.
To make one’s allotment was known in popular speech
as “filing on one’s claim.” The land was graded according to its quality
into about five or six classes. If a citizen took all of his land in the
first or best class, he was entitled to only about one hundred acres; if
he took all in the last or poorest class he got more than a thousand acres.
Each citizen was free to make his selection wherever he saw fit and to
take whatever class or classes of land he wanted, provided the land selected
had not already been filed on, and even then he was permitted to institute
a contest.
To accommodate the citizens in making their
allotments, two land offices were established by the Commission in April,
1903, -- at Atoka in the Choctaw Nation and one at Tishomingo in the Chickasaw
Nation— and all citizens were required to appear at one of these places
to file on his allotment. Choctaws could allot land in the Chickasaw Nation,
for the two tribes held their lands in common. But all lands in the Choctaw
Nation had to be filed on at Atoka, and the lands of the Chickasaw Nation,
at Tishomingo.
The time for allotment had been looked forward
to for years, and when it arrived there was a great rush for the land offices.
Hotels were built and tents stretched in a vain effort to accommodate the
people. The two land offices were open for the allotment of lands by those
who were on the permanent rolls.
At the same time the Commission was busy passing
on claims, placing some on the rolls and dismissing the claims of others;
the Citizenship Court was busy with the court claimants, they in their
turn adding to the rolls and dismissing claims. All of this was going on
at the same time, to say nothing of the work of the Townsite Commissions,
courts, and other bodies. So up to the last, the complications were many
and the uncertainties great.
The full-bloods, when left to themselves, never
understood their position, or knew what they were doing. Even at the land
office, when they were given their cards at the first window, certifying
to their citizenship and their right to allotment, and passing them up
to the agent making their allotment of record, they would sometimes in
the rush be pushed aside and would march away to their homes their cards
in their hands, fully satisfied that their allotments had been properly
made. But such was not often the case.
The United States Government held that the
relation existing between it and the Indians was the relation of guardian
and ward, and sought to protect its ward. Maps, sectional plats, and official
clerks were all furnished the allottees in an earnest attempt to do for
the ignorant ward what he could not do for himself. These clerks did a
great deal of good, but it goes without saying that they could have done
much more than they did do, and that often they fell short of performing
their sworn duty.
Exploitation
The Indian citizen had with him, in nearly
every instance, parties more interested, more courteous and attentive than
a guardian, to wit: lawyers and real estate agents. And it can never be
truthfully charged that our Mississippi Choctaws suffered from neglect
or lack of attention. He had not been brought so far and at so great
expense to be neglected at so important a moment. The danger with him was
on the other extreme, and rather did he suffer from too much attention
than from the lack of it. If the guardian was guilty of culpable negligence
in any one thing it was in turning its wards completely over into the hands
of exploiting land agents, who never ceased from their hors.
They swarmed around the land offices. There
was the ranchman, who wanted to control thousands of acres of the grassy
prairies; the farmer, who longed to cultivate fertile valleys; the timberman,
who coveted the magnificent forests; and the miner, who saw fortunes in
unsegregated coal fields. Each had his lands picked out, and was after
citizens “to hold” them for him. A citizen is captured, put into a buggy,
and driven for miles into an unknown country until he finally arrives at
he knows not where. He is helped to the ground, told to look about him
and see his new home. This is the land he has filed on as his home through
the guidance of his faithful friend, the agent. The Indian knows nothing
of his new home, but his friend is pleased.
Thus the work goes on, day after day, month
after month. Today the ranchman is short of Indians. He says to the
timberman, “Loan me a dozen Indians for to-day, I will have a carload in
tomorrow or next week and I will pay you back.” The loan is made; the Indian
who was intended for a logger becomes a “cow-puncher,” never knowing what
he was intended for or of his change of occupation. At the appointed time
the ranch-man gets in his carload and a dozen Indians to go to the lumberman,
or it may be, that in the meantime, the lumberman has run short and has
borrowed from the farmer, and a dozen “cow-punchers” only become loggers
to become farmers a minute later. Thus this infamous traffic was kept up,
and human beings traded, bartered, and sold as so many goats or mules;
the only difference being that mules and goats have an intrinsic value,
and the Indian has none, and was valuable only because of his claim to
an allotment of lands and an annuity that he carried with him by operation
of law.
Many speculators had come to consider that
it was not wrong to cheat and defraud an ignorant Indian. Some probably
thought that they found a justification for robbing him in the general
treatment that he had received from the hands of the white man for a century
or more. The fact that he was ignorant and an easy prey to the shrewd and
unscrupulous white man should have made the Commission more alert to protect
him and to see that equal justice was done him. But instead of manifesting
this spirit of justice and protection toward the ward of the government
into whose hands he was intrusted by that government, the Commission turned
him over to the exploiters.
Nor is this all. The Commission went into the
robbing business itself. It is now well known that several members of the
Commission were directly interested in one or more of these combinations,
which, putting it in its mildest form, were enjoying a very unsavory reputation.
President Tams Bixby of the Commission, Commissioners Breckenridge and
Needles, and Indian Inspector Wright were, upon official investigation,
found to be interested in corporations dealing more or less extensively
in Indian lands. Whether these men are criminals or not depends upon the
technicalities of the statute, yet they were putting themselves in a position
to do the Indian a greater injury than could be done him by any of the
greedy land agents. They held a position quasi-judicial, which gave them
considerable discretion in matters coming before them for their consideration.
What would be thought of a judge who buys an interest in the lawsuits of
his litigants? The bare fact of the existence of this interest disqualifies
him and removes him from the case; and for him to willfully inject himself
into all matters that he as judge must decide should debar him from the
bench, if not send him to prison.
All this is the more heinous on the part of
the Commission in view of the questionable methods of these land corporations,
which had already fallen into disrepute with the public before the connection
of the officials was known to exist. How long and to what extent their
connection in land speculation existed will probably never be known to
the public; neither will the cause for their unpopularity with the
people probably ever be fully explained. It has been charged almost from
the beginning that the decisions of the Commission in individual cases
were often arbitrary to the extreme. The Commission could be pardoned for
some practices that it permitted, hut the sins committed by its own members
are inexcusable.
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Copyright 2001 - All Rights
Reserved
Ellen
Pack
