Indian Chieftain on the Dawes Commission and other topics

Here are some excerpts from interesting articles in the Vinita newspaper, the Indian Chieftain, during territorial days. The period from 1866 to 1907, the process that led from collectivism and oligarchy to private ownership and democracy, would be worth a book-length study. And is it still possible to find "bacchanalian debauch" in Wagoner and Muskogee?

Click the links to find the original newspapers on the Oklahoma Historical Society's website.

May 23, 1895, p. 2:

Inexorable Law:

A point has been reached where it is scarcely possible to continue Indian automony [sic] over this or any other Indian reservation. Aside from the expense, not to say utter impossibility, of longer protecting these people as wards of the government from the encroachments of people from the states -- foreigners so far as the Indian citizen is concerned -- the Indian has reached a point where he must be protected from the more avaricious of his own kind. His system of holding land in common is a failure, practically and thoroughly demonstrated. The same thing has eventually happened here that would happen in any civilized community in the world. The big fish eat up the little ones; the more capable of our people have got in possession of the lion's share and a division is the only remedy left.

The only reason that the government has not laid hands on these Indian oligarchies long ago and changed their government into a state is the desire to fulfill certain treaty stipulations made at a time when the conditions were far different from what they are at present.

The Dawes commission comes to the five tribes very much as a surgeon goes to a patient to perform a dangerous operation--an operation that may cost the life of the afflicted. Indeed, it is certain that the operation as suggested by surgeon Dawes will utterly destroy the body politic of these Indian nations. But the surgeons have come for the second time with their instruments, fully determined to perform the operation, notwithstanding the patient is in a high fever and opposed to the knife being applied. But the sick in such cases are not to be consulted very far, so the operation is going on.

Adair Remarks: "A bicyclist passed through town Tuesday en route from St. Louis to Mexico. He made it from St. Louis to Adair in one week's run."

April 23, 1896, p. 3

There is a report on the Cherokee Nation Republican convention at Fort Gibson, which will elect a delegate and an alternate to St. Louis and also 35 delegates to the Indian Territory convention at Muskogee, which will elect two delegates and two alternates for the territory at large.

"Dr. A. W. Foreman will receive in a day or two, from Boston, Mass., a handsome Soda Arc, one of Tuft's latest designs.... Mr. Highwood will conduct the soda water business in a strictly first-class manner and will be prepared to serve all of the latest drinks, besides mead, phosphates, egg drinks, plain sodas, ice cream served with crushed fruits, cherry bounce, water ices, etc., absolutely ice cold."

March 3, 1898, p. 2:

Saloons for Vinita: "The people who leave town because there are no saloons, houses of ill fame, or gambling halls, are a good riddance. The traveling men who prefer to spend their sabbath days in bacchanalian debauch at Wagoner and Muskogee, would not sweeten the atmosphere of Vinita." Proposal to license saloons and issue monthly fines on gamblers and prostitutes.

A Chaotic Condition: "First the laws of the Indians were abolished, and the act solemnly declared: 'That on and after the passage of this act [Curtis Act?] the laws of the various tribes shall not be enforced at law or in equity by the courts of the United States in the Indian Territory.'... About the time the lawyers were laying aside their Cherokee law books as relicts of a bygone age, emmisaries of the United States were sent down to put in force some portions of this very law that 'should not be enforced at law or in equity.'"

Story of Sequoyah: "It is told of Sequoyah that he lived and died a heathen and that when the missionaries employed his alphabet to publish the new testament he said he wished he never invented it."

5 per cent alcohol: "Mist, the decoction shold at wholesale by B. F. Lissauer and dispensed by joint keepers in most all territory towns except Vinita, comes under the ban.... Alcohol, "by volume" was found to the extent of about 5 1/2 per cent and "extract" about 6.... (anything over 2 per cent is prohibited)."