When the federal government sent the Cherokees to Indian Territory it only sent one branch of the tribe, the one that was on land where gold had been found. The Cherokee were so Europeanized, the wore European clothing, lived in European style houses, even owned slaves, and were for all intents and purposes acclimated to the settlers way of life.

But they were Indians and there was that gold, so they had to go to an out of the way place where they could live their traditional tribal ways without or without any European influences.

They were told that the new land upon which they lived was theirs “As long as the grass grows, and the waters run” which is basically until the end of time.

Times changed, the country changed, and while the gold ran out in their old lands, the relocated Cherokee had ended up on land on which and under which where the natural resources that had become important to the industrial revolution, lumber above, oil below.

Once, again, those people were in the way and either they went or the grass will be eliminated and the rivers dammed up, so their land would be up for grabs.

So much land; so few Indians on it.

So, in 1883, congress assigned Henry L. Dawes to evaluate Indian Territory and, if possible, entice the Five Civilized Tribes, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole, so designated because they were the first five tribes to acclimate to European ways to cede lad to settlers since the government could not do it as the grass was still growing and the water flowing, but the Native Americans could dispose of their land, whole or in part.

To do this, instead of all land being communal, there was no private land ownership and without land being allotted to each tribal member the federal government did not know how much potential land they could play around with, Dawes was commissioned to convince the tribes to abandon communal to private ownership.

What Dawes found was that because of the Communal structure and accompanying culture, there was no poverty in the tribes as each person looked out for the other, no hunger as food production was done on a communal basis, no abandon children as family required that members take care of all family members regardless of depth of relationship, and no jealousies or resulting conflicts as you cannot be jealous that someone has that which you and everyone else own equally.

He found that while conditions were must better among the tribes than in other parts of the country’s cities and rural areas alike, it was inconveniently un-American. Un-American because well that is not how American society based on Europe was run, and inconvenient because then Tribes were once again in the way.

So, Indian nations had their communally held national lands taken from them, divided into single lots with each member of the tribe living at the time receiving a an established allotment of land which introduced private land ownership, reduced interdependency, and allowed for negative behaviors that a communal culture had controlled. Now you could steal someth9njg that someone else owned that you didn’t.

Although intertribal marriage existed with family members being from more than one tribe, the Dawes Commission forced individuals to claim membership in only one tribe, thus by federal action and requirement, wiping out the ancestorial lineage of Native Americans, an important part of the culture.

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Genocide by paper.

The tradition of many tribes was that anyone becoming a member of the tribe, no matter what the entrance was, that person was a full member and part of the tribe in all things. You could have been captured in a battle, rescued as you wandered in the wilderness, married someone, or were bought as a slave, you were still a full member of the tribe.

Freed slaves after the Civil War and Black or interracial members of tribes had to register on the Indian Rolls separate from the rest of the tribe which did not consider them tribal members.

If any member of a tribe not sent off to Indian Territory were to willingly move there, their tribal membership in their tribe would end, and they would have to appeal to the Dawes Commission to get it back, with little to no success.

Once the allotments were assigned, the federal government sold the surplus land to European-American settlers. In addition, by the laws around inheritance, a Native American male marrying a White woman got to keep his allotment. If a Native American woman married a White guy, haye would then own the land. Also because the land was allotted to all living tribal member, children also got the allotments, but since they were considered too young to know what to do with their land, the courts assigned guardians to manage the land until the child reached majority, but having no say in the land usage many children finally came into possession of land stripped of natural resources and with minerals rights signed away so that others, not they, profited.

That rich Oklahoma oil baron with the money and the political influence and because of it to have all laws go in their favor should have been a Native American.

Is it any wonder that the Republican legislature passed the bill and the governor of that state signed it, banning the treatment of Critical Race Theory or anything remotely close to it from being taught in a state that lives off systemic racism.

Looking beyond my having received the Angie Debo Civil Liberty Award from the Oklahoma ACLU, I recommend Angie Debo’s book And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes as it  details how the allotment policy was systematically manipulated to deprive the Native Americans of their lands and resources through continual governmental actions, state and federal, was rife with  Corruption, moral depravity, and criminal activity that gave advantage to non-Indians who benefit from it even today and will into the future, while the Native Americans will not.

But don’t tell your children. It might disturb them. Better to just let it sit there and let the self-chosen benefit from it quietly and conveniently blind.

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