Eladidla (Down, Bottom, Underworld)
“Wait, wait, wait. What were you doing just then?” Rachel asked as she watched Phil click, zoom, and compare digitized historical maps of Indian Territory, tracking the territory changes over time.
“I was lining up this county in the corner of the state on these two maps,” Phil responded a little impatiently. “Why you askin?”
“What’s it like looking at these maps as an outsider?” Rachel replied. “Are they becoming more familiar to you?”
Phil paused for a second, digesting Rachel’s questions. “Slowly, yes. I’m starting to recognize the patterns of the rivers and the borders, I guess,“ he said. “It’s still so new to me, and since I’m not from here, it’s requiring a lot more patience to try to fully understand the complex history and its people. What’s it like for you?”
“They are familiar and still very strange, even after living here my whole life. What a mess, right?”
It is challenging to understand and explain the Native American history in Oklahoma in simple terms. Numerically, Oklahoma is home to 39 federally recognized tribes, though a total of 42 tribal nations and towns have jurisdiction within the state’s borders (Clark). All of these tribal nations, except for two, are indigenous to other locations within the United States mainland. Historically, only the Wichita and Caddo Nations can claim actual indigeneity to lands within Oklahoma—meaning they have lived here the longest, prior to written history. Of the remaining tribal nations, many of them, such as the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache (Plains Apache), were forcibly contained here. Most tribes were coerced here, most famously from the Southeastern United States, such as the Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee Creek, Seminole, and Chickasaw.
Native American history in Oklahoma is critical to understanding history in the United States. In total, tribal nations removed to Oklahoma came from all over the country: California, Arizona, Texas, South Dakota, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, New York, Delaware, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Florida. The layers of cultural and historical trauma accumulated on this landscape connects with oppression, violence, and historical erasure on landscapes elsewhere in the United States. All U.S. locations are complicit in the continuing consequences of these histories as they are lived by both Natives and non-Native settlers. These histories tie places and people together in concrete and material ways.
In researching Indian Territory maps to illustrate this history visually, we noticed disparities between dates, but the cartographic trajectory remained the same. Oklahoma became a state in 1907, but prior to that, one sees a steady increase in boundary lines inside Indian Territory that indicates the ongoing removal and containment of Indigenous peoples over the course of the decades preceding statehood. Additionally, the maps show an increase in “unassigned” or open lands in preparation for non-Native settlement. Beginning in 1889, after the passing of the Dawes General Allotment Act of 1887, lands treatied to tribal nations within Indian Territory and held communally by those nations were surveyed, divided, and allotted to individual tribal members. Allotment aimed to destroy traditional communal land tenure practices and impair tribal communities and cultures. As tribal lands were allotted, remaining unallotted land parcels (in some cases referred to as “Unassigned Lands”) were opened for settlement via land runs and lotteries. Tribal jurisdictional boundaries were slowly replaced with counties, many of which are named after regional and national leaders in the settler colonial movement—Custer being the most recognizable example.
Oklahoma State University was founded, prior to Oklahoma statehood, on land that was first treatied to the Muscogee Creek, and then to the Sauk and Fox, and then to the Iowa, before the remainder was opened as “Unassigned Land” in an 1889 Land Run. As Sheeva Sabati explains, “Not only was the wealth of many early campuses built through practices of land and labor extraction, but colleges and universities also played an important role in consolidating ideas of racial difference as scientific truth to legitimize racialized violence within the broader social and political development of the United States” (4). Stillwater, Oklahoma, where OSU is located, is the County Seat for Payne County. This name is significant because, between 1880 and 1884, David Payne organized the “Oklahoma Boomer Movement” and led dozens of groups of colonists into Indian Territory to claim land illegally from Indigenous tribes. We see our project with the Iowa as a decolonial project enacted through the reappropriation of stolen resources and land.
Native American Tribe Arrivals to Indian Territory/Oklahoma
We borrowed the dates listed below from Blue Clark’s Indian Tribes of Oklahoma: A Guide and indicate the ambiguity around Native American removal as recorded by western historians. In some cases, the early date listed indicates the year the corresponding tribal nation signed a treaty with the United States government, and the latter dates indicate the period of time during which they were removed to Indian Territory.
1820 – 1854
Choctaw: 1820 (1830 – 1834)
Yuchi/Euchee: 1820 – 1850
Cherokee: 1828 (1838)
United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees: 1828
Shawnees: 1831
Senecas: 1831
Cayuga: 1831
Muscogee Creek: 1833 (1836 – 1837)
Thlopthlocco: 1833
Seminole: 1833 (1835 – 1842)
Quapaw: 1833
Alabama Quassarte: 1833
Kialegee: 1833
Natchez: 1833
Chickasaw: 1837
Absentee Shawnee: 1839
1855 – 1865
Delaware Nation (Western Delaware): 1859
Kiowa: 1865 (1867)
Comanche: 1865 (1867)
Apache (Plains Apache): 1865 (1867)
1866 – 1889
Delaware Tribe of Indians (Eastern Delaware): 1867
Sauk and Fox: 1867
Peorias: 1867
Ottawas: 1867
Wyandottes: 1867
Pottawatamie Shawnee: 1867
Miami: 1867
Arapaho: 1869
Cheyenne: 1869
Osage: 1870
Kansa/Kaw: 1872
Wichita: 1872
Caddo: 1872
Modocs: 1874
Pawnee: 1876
Ponca: 1881
Otoe-Missouria: 1881
Ioway: 1883
Nez Perces: until 1885
Tonkawa: 1885
Kickapoo: 1889
Ft. Sill Apache: 1894
1891 – 1906 Land Runs, Lotteries, and Allotments
Open by Allotment 1891: Tonkowa
Land Run September 22, 1891: Ioway, Sauk and Fox, and Pottawatamie Shawnee
Land Run September 16, 1893: Cherokee Outlet
Land Run April 22, 1889: Unassigned Lands
Open by Allotment 1892: Pawnee
Land Run April 19, 1892: Cheyenne and Araphaho
Land Run May 23, 1895: Kickapoo
Open by Lottery June 9 – August 6, 1901: Wichita and Caddo
Open by Lottery June 9 – August 6, 1901: Comanche Kiowa and Apache
Open by Allotment 1904: Ponca and Otoe-Missouria
Open by Allotment 1906: Kansa/Kaw
Open by Allotment 1906: Osage Reservation
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