Cheating the Indians:
Schemes of White Men
to Get Possession of Indian Territory

Daniel R. Goodloe

[Reprinted from The Standard, Vol.1, No.1, 8 January, 1887]

President Cleveland's Original Policy - His Surrender to the Ruffian - Swindlers - The Land in Severalty Scheme - The Government's Promises to be broken. Washington, Dec. 27, 1886. - It is now fifty years and more since the Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws and I know not how many other Aboriginal tribes were cajoled and forced to leave their native hunting grounds east of the Mississippi. They were promised a permanent home beyond the Great River - beyond the remotest scattered settlements of the Arkansas territory. A fine district of country, seventy thousand square miles in extent, was set apart and solemnly deeded to them by act of congress. There they and their posterity were to remain forever a separate people under their own tribal laws and usages, but with every possible encouragement from the white race to the acquisition of the arts of civilized life. The enforced emigration of these tribes from States east of the Mississippi was generally regarded as unjust and cruel, but now in their new homes in the Far West they were to be shielded for all time by the national authority and the national honor from further injustice.

But the tide of white emigration which had already passed beyond the Mississippi in a few years swept around and enfolded the Indian reservation within its broad current. The public lands in Missouri and Arkansas, Texas and Kansas, were appropriated by actual settlers, or by wealthy non-resident individuals and companies. Railroad companies asked and obtained leave to extend their lines through the territory, from the borders of Missouri and Kansas to Texas. This privilege necessarily involved a violation of a fundamental law of the Indian reservation forbidding any white man to settle among them. The cattle breeders made contracts with the tribes for the privilege of pasturing their herds upon the reservations. Possession, it is said, constitutes nine points of the law, and it was not long before these tenants and their co-conspirators on the border organized themselves as an army to take possession of the lands on which they had been permitted to graze their cattle.

The good people of the country and the Government branded the conduct of these lawless men as an outrage. Troops were sent to protect the helpless Indians. The conduct of President Cleveland in this matter was heartily approved by all parties. But, alas! his policy has been abandoned.

Incredible as it appears, it is true that the administration of Mr. Cleveland and the congress of the United States now propose to concede to the ruffian invaders of the Indian territory all that they demand. There are now two bills pending in congress, each of which has passed one house, making this concession in the amplest form.

One of these bills provides for the establishment of a territorial government over the Indian territory, to be exclusively for the white men. It covers every foot of the territory which half a century ago was solemnly dedicated to the exclusive and permanent possession of the Indians. It is to be bounded by Arkansas and Missouri on the east, by Texas on the south, by Texas and New Mexico on the west, and by Kansas and Colorado on the north. No Indian is to have a voice or a vote in its government, unless, perhaps, he will consent to abandon his tribe, his kith and kin, and all the institutions under which he and his ancestors have lived for ages. The bill provides for buying out the tribal titles to all the lands not actually lived upon by the Indians, and assumes if it does not actually provide for the subdivision of the remaining Indian lands in severalty. This territory is to be admitted into the Union as a State. It will then make what laws may be desired by the people in regard to land titles. If necessary, the Indians can easily be induced to take their lands in severalty, and then, inexperienced in the management of business, they will be the easy prey of the sharp and unscrupulous white men around them.

The other act pending in Congress, which has passed in the senate, provides specifically for the division of the tribal lands among the individual members. But, strange to say, it is not to be applied to those tribes which are most civilized and most competent to manage their affairs. The Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Seminole, Osages, Miamis, Peorias, Sacs and Foxes, and Senecas, are exempted from the law of severalty titles, while the wild tribes, who have no idea of what a title to a tract of land signifies; who have no conception of the meaning of deeds, of mortgages, and liens, are to be at once subjected to these arrangements. Can any one believe that this bill is in the interest of the Indians?

The commissioner of Indian affairs, it is true, insists strenuously upon the application of the severalty principle to the classes or tribes which are exempted from its operation by the senate bill. His great fear is that the masses of the civilized tribes will be cheated out of the usufruct of their lands by their rich Indian brethren, and his remedy against this apprehended evil is to give to white men an equal chance lo cheat them. In his last annual report he states that "the rich Indians, who cultivate tribal lands, pay no rent to the poorer and more unfortunate of their race, although they are equal owners of the soil. His proposition, like that of the senate bill, is to divide the lands into 160-acre tracts among the members of the tribes. He states that the poor Indians are employed as laborers by their rich neighbors at $16 per month, instead of settling down as farmers. It seems not to have occurred to the head of the Indian bureau that a poor Indian has the same right to take a farm on the tribal lands as a rich one, and that the tribe, or if not the tribe, then the Indian bureau, would see to it that he has his rights.

And again, the head of the bureau seems not to have reflected that if neither the tribe nor the bureau has the power or the authority to protect the poor Indians under existing circumstances, they will be equally powerless or equally wanting in will to protect him when holding his share of the land in severalty. Furthermore, so long as the land is held jointly by the tribe, it is impossible to divest the poor Indian of his rights. But when he becomes the sole possessor of 160 acres, he may alienate it. It is true that the senate bill proposes, and the commissioner suggests that the severalty titles be made inalienable for twenty-five years. But there are many legal expedients for avoiding such obstacles.

The bill provides, and the commissioner recommends, that the surplus lands, after each Indian shall have his 100 acres assigned him, be sold to white men. In some of the tribes, as the commissioner shows, the surplus would be two to four times as large as the allotted lands. It will follow, therefore, that each Indian farmer of those tribes will have two to four white neighbors. These white neighbors will make the laws by which the Indian will be governed, but in the making of which he will have no voice.

The commissioner states that even now there are rich Indians who cultivate a thousand acres of the tribal lands, and claim and fence in a quarter of a mile all around the thousand acres for pasturage. This arrangement gives them a thousand more. The monopoly is tolerated by the tribal government and by the Indian bureau. It devolves upon the commissioner, therefore, to show that a division of the Indian lands in severalty will tend to reform the Indian governments and the Indian bureau. Otherwise, the opportunities of the rich Indians to oppress the poor would seem to increased, rather than diminished, by dividing the lands in severalty.

If the bill shall pass, and if each adult Indian be assigned his 160 acres, the poor will still be poor. They will have nothing to set up house-keeping upon, nothing on which to begin as independent tillers of the soil. No house, no furniture, no provisions for a year, no horse or ox, no plow; and the outcome will be that the poor Indian must go back to the farm of his rich neighbor and work for $16 per month. What, then, will he do with his 160 acres? He will lease it to his rich neighbor, and when tempted to spend more than he makes as a laborer, he will mortgage his land for money. The senate bill provides that the allotment of land to individual Indians will be held in trust by the United States for twenty-five years, after which time the Indian or his heirs is to have a conveyance of the land in fee, discharged of all incumbrances whatsoever. The professed object is to train the Indian to the civilized habits of business; and this is to be done by appointing him a guardian for twenty-five years, during which time he can neither buy nor sell land. Why, then, not allow the land to remain in the joint ownership of the tribe? As a member of the tribe he cannot possibly be cheated out of his birthright, if the land is held as at present. If assigned to him in severalty, albeit without the power of alienation, it is morally certain that he will enter into contracts by which he will encumber it to its full value. The allotments are to be patented to the Indians, and held and conveyed and to descend "according to the laws of the state or territory where such land is located." The laws will be made by white men, for the peculiar advantage of the white men.

These bills, therefore, are admirably contrived for turning the Aborigines of this country into pariahs and outcasts, landless and homeless.