CHAPTER XVI. THE LEASING SYSTEM; CHOCTAW AND CHICKASAW; FINAL

RECOMMENDATIONS

Few Indian matters in our honorable Congress have had more publicity than the so-called McMurray contracts. Several chapters of this book could be devoted to describing the propositions made by Mr. McMurray and his associates and the far-reaching effects on the Indians of Oklahoma were these carried into effect. But I must content myself with calling attention to the bibliography at the end of this chapter. The testimony and investigations cover hundreds of pages.

Mr. McMurray made contracts with thousands of Indians on a percentage basis. P. J. Hurley, Esq., attorney for the Choctaw Indians, opposed the McMurray contracts before Congressional Committees and in court. Hurley contended that McMurray would receive at the least possible estimate $3,500,000 in fees, the undistributed portion of the Choctaw and Chickasaw estate being $35,000,000 minimum valuation. The struggle for so large a stake has extended through a number of years. So far Mr. Hurley, and other friends of the Indians, have succeeded in preventing McMurray carrying his contracts into effect.

The Choctaw and Chickasaw affairs are both interesting and complicated, and tell a different story from that of the Creeks. Further reference to Cherokees and Seminoles may be omitted, as their story is practically that of the Creeks.

A little more than two-thirds of the entire acreage—a vast domain over 200 miles east and west, and an average of approximately 100 miles north and south—was allotted and sold for the benefit of these three classes of Indians, the Choctaws, Chickasaws and Mississippi Choctaws, about 37,600 in number—a little more than one-third of the total Oklahoma enrollment.

The eastern third of this territory is especially rich in coal and hardwood timber. What is shown upon the map as the Choctaw Nation contains the largest coal deposits in what is generally known as the Mississippi valley, and when allotment of lands began in 1903, this country was practically covered with a rich growth of pine timber of the finest quality.

The Chickasaw Nation comprised the greatest agricultural and stock-raising lands, some of which had been under cultivation for half a century. By the use of these vast estates, they became well-to-do and self-supporting. The richness of the country becoming known, Whites and negroes flocked to Indian Territory with the idea prominent that they were going to be permitted to homestead the surplus land, as had been the custom in breaking up Indian reservations. With the opening of the Cherokee strip, the Cheyenne and Arapaho and the Iowa and Comanche reservations on the west, comprising all of the western half of Oklahoma, immigrants flocked to these openings. Some of the best of them remained as farmers in that great western country. The riff-raff, after exploiting those western and northern reservations, came back to Indian Territory to ply their vocations at the various allotting agencies among the Five Civilized Tribes.

By 1903 all kinds of land, livestock and timber companies were at work; skillful lawyers schemed to change the laws. More than one Indian, disgusted with the “Christian” white man, stayed in the Choctaw hills among the pine forests and refused to come out and perform the duties necessary under the laws made for him in order that he might receive his allotment. Each man, woman and child was to receive $1040 worth of land, appraised at from twenty-five cents to $6.50 per acre; also 320 acres of average land. He was supposed to look it over, and being satisfied with it, come to the land office and file his “descriptions” with an affidavit that he owned such improvements, if any there were, and the possessary right to the land selected. He could not be induced to come. It cost money to go 200 miles over into the Chickasaw Nation, or even to find suitable land in the Choctaw Nation.

Under the allotment act the members of the tribes were given the right to alienate one-half their lands within five years from date of patents. The more ignorant classes were more easily influenced, and runners were employed to go over in the Choctaw Nation and “shell the woods” for Indians. Sufficient quantities of whiskey, an interpreter, and expense money were all that was necessary. Indians were brought into the allotting agencies by the score. He was taken out in a conveyance and driven a few miles from the agency and shown the best improved farm in the country, a deal made with him to lease the land for five years in consideration of the purchase of the possessary right to the land. His plans were prepared for him. His allotment known as surplus which would be alienable within five years, was plotted upon improved lands which he had never seen and the balance of his land known as homestead selected for him in some out of the way place, generally upon the hills. To this day most of these full-blood Indians have never seen nor set foot upon their several allotments.

A case or two illustrating Choctaw and Chickasaw affairs is illuminating of general conditions. Addie B. Fasler was a minor full-blood Indian about twelve years of age in 1907, and a certain man was made guardian for her. Under a new act of Congress an additional judge had been appointed in the southern district, Judge J. T. Dickenson, and he had been assigned the northern half of the district by agreement between himself and the other judge. This application was presented to him for approval. Judge Dickenson refused to appoint the one requested, but upon his own motion selected a man by the name of Wright living at Sulphur. Up to this time such independence on the part of the judiciary was unusual and war from this time on existed between the old and the new judge. Wright found his ward in squalor. He found that she owned, by reason of the death of her family, four allotments besides her own—that they consisted of something like a thousand acres of improved land, the larger part in cultivation; that all of this land had been in the possession of a Mr. Mullen since allotment, and was at that time being rented out by Mr. Mullen for an average rental of $2.50 per acre per year. Mr. Wright employed attorneys and began proceedings to recover these lands for his ward. He was met at the hearing by a subsequently appointed guardian from the central district who had been appointed at the instance of Mullen. The hearing was had before the old judge who promptly held that the domicile of the minor was in the central district and that the United States Court for the southern district had no jurisdiction to appoint Mr. Wright guardian. What has become of Addie B. Fasler or her vast estates? She is one of the many now “unknown” since her property is gone.

After statehood, the Chocktaw and Chickasaw Nations were cut up into many counties and probate matters transferred to the County Courts of the counties which included the court towns. Provisions were made to transfer probate cases to the county which would have had jurisdiction had such case been inaugurated after statehood.

Little effort has been made to transfer these cases, because the Indians themselves are ignorant of the fact that administrators and guardians have been appointed elsewhere and only in those instances where the grafter wants to sell or lease the land is any pretense made to have everything regular. This condition has resulted in the appointment of guardians in the counties of the residence of the minors to recover lands and rentals. Much litigation has grown out of these conflicts, and it is safe to say that in very few instances have the grafters surrendered to the Indian lands allotted to him.

Charles McKinney is an ignorant, easy-going quarter-blood Chickasaw with four or five minor children. Their lands were scattered in Poulatre, Johnson, Marshall and Carter Counties. He was their guardian. He sold these various allotments through the County Court of —— County and received something like $7000. The mayor of the city was on his bond. A certain judge, the mayor and several other politicians decided to buy a local newspaper which was too independent for the good of the party. This money was loaned to the mayor, who gave as security a mortgage upon several tracts of land which he did not own, and used the money in the purchase of the newspaper plant; the latter became insolvent and was sold by its creditors, and the guardian squandered the balance of the money.

The Mississippi Choctaws are Indians of a low order of intelligence. They were imported into this country in 1902 and 1903 by land companies, among which was the Choctaw Investment Company, now defunct, and J. E. Arnold. They were herded in barracks around Ardmore and other places during 1902, 1903 and 1904; the smallpox broke out among them and they died like sheep. Before they left Mississippi, contracts were made with them in which they agreed to prove up on their lands and sell them to the promoters.

The stockholders of the Chocktaw Investment Company and other non-residents furnished the money and have stood the loss, but J. E. Arnold and Senator Owen are now pressing before the Court of Claims large accounts for allowance. To secure these claims if allowed, J. E. Arnold has filed a lien upon almost every allotment of a Mississippi Choctaw in these two nations. Congress has recognized these claims by permitting them to be litigated.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Except a few persons, everybody agrees that affairs in Oklahoma are in a bad shape. The Indian Office is doing all that it can through Mr. Sells’ attorneys to bring about desired reforms and protection, but it is exceedingly slow work. We must adopt Miss Barnard’s plan if we desire to save the remaining Indian peoples in Oklahoma. That is, briefly, to arouse the conscience in hundreds of thousands of good citizens in Oklahoma and persuade them to take a firm stand against further despoilation of Indians. The grafters, through their newspapers, have exerted an influence out of all proportion to their strength. They have dominated in Oklahoma. They have even subsidized. One of the newspapers which attacked Hon. George Vaux, Jr., and afterwards was very bitter toward Mr. Mott and myself, received thousands of dollars from an Indian minor child’s estate. This money was used to boom a political journal.

All who would save the Indian must stimulate the better class of citizens into action. Attacking grafters, is not bringing into discredit the good name of a great State. I mention this because the grafters raise the cry of State persecution. They do not, however, deny the pauperizing of Indians, or the 30,000 specific cases of fraud. Miss Barnard well answers critics with the statement that we are merely attacking forces of evil. The people of Oklahoma themselves can solve the problem promptly and satisfactorily, if they will assert their rights. All the protection and publicity, and legal procedures in the world will not save the Oklahoma Indians, if the better class of citizens (the great majority) do not take a firm stand for right and justice. The ministers, Miss Barnard claims, are already beginning to preach sermons against graft—all of which indicates a trend of healthy public opinion.

Mr. Foreman, who has worked along the same lines as Department of Justice officials, Miss Barnard and Mr. Kelsey, and has been associated with Mr. Mott, takes a rather gloomy view. I present his paragraphs herewith:

“In a few short years, Congress has removed the restrictions on the sale of nearly 70 per cent of the 100,000 Indians of the tribes—on all but the full-bloods. The inevitable has overtaken these mixed-bloods from whom Congress released its protecting supervision, and probably not one in ten of them retains even a considerable part of his original allotment of land.

“The experiment of turning these mixed-blood Indians loose has been a lamentable mistake. But at least some good should be extracted from it. The lesson should be employed to emphasize the need for protection of the full-blood. The mixed-blood as a land owner is no more. He is gone and there is practically nothing to be done for his class except in the protection of his minor children.

“But the full-blood still has his land, for his restrictions have never been released. There is no obligation to these Indians so commanding as the duty of seeing to it that they are protected in their property; this means that the restrictions against the sale of their lands must not be relaxed except under the supervision of the Interior Department. To permit them to sell their lands without this protection would expose them to their own inexperience and improvidence, to the cunning of the shameless horde of white land grafters.

“It was claimed that at least the mixed-bloods are competent to handle their property, and developments have shown the fallacy of that claim. Many of the full-bloods are but little more fortunate. Totally unprepared they have had thrust upon them individual ownership of their lands. In 1906 Congress provided that full-blood Indians might sell lands inherited from deceased relatives. As the rate of mortality is high among these people, there are many such inheritances and many such sales have been made. In a great number of instances they have been swindled out of their inheritances for a pittance.

“Congress unwisely permitted these full-bloods to lease most of their land for five years without supervision. Thousands of them were induced by white speculators to lease their land, including their homes and little cultivated farms which were capable of making them comfortable. Inexperienced in such transactions, they gave the white man their home for five years for little or nothing, the consideration depending on the extent of fraud practiced on them. The speculator in turn sublets the land to a renter and makes a handsome profit on the transaction. The Indian was then forced to move on the land of a relative, or into the hills on unimproved land, with practically nothing to sustain his family. In many cases only the first year’s rent is paid the Indian and the lessee refuses to pay more. The Indian in his helplessness knows no remedy and suffers almost a total loss of the consideration agreed upon. This situation is particularly distressing in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations.

“These leases are extended by methods which the mind of the Indian cannot comprehend, and once out of possession it is practically impossible for the Indian to get his land back. When the restrictions are removed from the sale of this class of land, which is looked forward to by the people holding them, they will make the most of their advantage over the Indian, by making it practically impossible for the Indian to get any other buyers than the lessees, who will buy on their own terms. This mean advantage is evidenced now in another way. The Indian Department can sell part of the Indian’s allotment for the Indian’s benefit, but in many cases a sale for an adequate consideration is defeated by the presence of leases often taken by white speculators for no other purpose than to prevent anyone else buying the land, or to demand a heavy tribute for a surrender of the lease.

“The newspapers and the court files of the eastern half of Oklahoma for several years have been filled with the stories of the Indians’ undoing which explains the swift impoverishment of the mixed-blood Indian. If the mixed-bloods could not stand up against this condition, what chance, would the full-bloods have?

“When the hardy pioneer ventured within the domain of the aboriginal proprietors of this country he found himself among what are often described as “hostile” people. It is a strange caprice of fortune that with the coming of the white man’s civilizing influence, the description “hostile” should be shifted from the Indian to the white man, and the submissive red man, remaining upon his own land, should discover himself surrounded by the perils of hostile white people. Perils less bloody but more insidious and relentless; the thirst for blood supplanted by the thirst for the Indian’s property; the Indian’s ambush exchanged for the white man’s ambush of intrigue and deception; conquest of the stout of heart and arm routed by the conquest of the pen and deceit and of the brain befuddled by the devastating alcohol.

“The Indian is groping his way through the dusk of his day upon earth and soon he will pass from our sight and the sound of his footsteps will cease. As he proceeds falteringly, this shred of a great race is comforted by no expressions of good will. The road is rough and the guideposts are far between and hard to read. The only light that would reveal his path to him shines distantly but faithfully. From this light, from the voices and counsels of a few distant friends unselfishly striving for him, comes the only promise of amelioration.”

Miss Barnard’s assistant, Mr. Huston, at Lake Mohonk, dictated to me the following two paragraphs as indicative of the essential things for which the Department of Charities and Corrections is fighting. It must be understood that the second paragraph from the end is not aimed at the Indian Office personnel. It is merely a statement of fact, that the new attorneys labor under disadvantage.

1st. To elect a Legislature pledged to appropriate sufficient funds to make effective the Department of Charities and Corrections,—the only arm of Government, Federal or State, which is clothed with legal authority to intervene in the probate courts of Oklahoma on behalf of Indian minor heirs.

2nd. To enact a law embodying adequate probate procedure. The probate procedure recently agreed to between the probate judges of Oklahoma and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs is substantially the same procedure which was prepared by M. L. Mott and put into effect in five out of the eight counties of the Creek Nation several years previous to the present administration. Mr. Mott had this procedure embodied in a bill which passed the lower house of the Oklahoma Legislature two years ago, but which was defeated through the influence of grafters in the Senate. Mott knew that the probate procedure, depending for its force and effect merely upon the personal agreement of county judges elected by a constituency hostile to the Indians, would be ineffective to protect Indian minors, unless the same had the force of law, and provided adequate penalties for violation of same.

Finally, all good citizens in the United States must rally to the support of those who are making a fight for simple justice and decency in Oklahoma. If the better element in that State is defeated by a combination of oil, coal, gas, timber, land, and asphalt interests, the taxpayers of this country will be called upon to support 100,000 homeless paupers. Nowhere else in the United States are 100,000 citizens to be dispossessed, and if this calamity is permitted to occur, the blackest page in all American history shall have been written. A helpless, a trusting, and a dependent people look to us to keep the final one of all our promises.

PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY ON OKLAHOMA

Lengthy discussion of Indian Affairs. Both branches of Congress. _Congressional Record_ for 1914. Jan., 22; Feb., 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 16, 17, 19, 20, 26, 28; March, 10, 11, 12, 21, 26, 27, 28, 31; Apr., 24, 28, 29; May 4; also Dec., 20, 1913.

Detailed reviews of satisfactory conditions of Five Civilized Tribes; statistics of some; need of protection; legislation recommended. Board of Indian Commissioners reports to President and Secretary of Interior. 1869–1890

Letters expressing the favorable cooperation indorsing the work of, or urging the retention of District Agents in the Five Civilized Tribes. Washington 1912. Printed for the use of the Committee on Indian Affairs.

Choctaw-Chickasaw Tribal Affairs. _Patrick J. Hurley._ Thirty-first Annual Report Lake Mohonk Conference, P. 29. 1913.

Toward “Restricted” and “Unrestricted” Indians of Five Civilized Tribes, Should the Law and its Administration be the same?—_William H. Murray._ Thirty-first Annual Report Lake Mohonk Conference. P. 35. 1913.

Memorial of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, Relative to the Rights of the Mississippi Choctaws. Submitted for consideration in connection with H. R. 19213. 1913.

Five Civilized Tribes, Conditions—_George Vaux, Jr._ The Red Man. Dec., 1912. P. 135.

Report of the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes to the Secretary of the Interior. June 30, 1912.

The Reorganized Schools in the Five Tribes.—_J. P. Brown._ Twenty-eighth Annual Report Lake Mohonk Conference, 1910. P. 79.

Report on School Taxation in Indian Territory. House of Representatives Doc. No. 34. Fifty-eighth Congress, 3rd Session, Dec. 6, 1907.

Education Among the Five Civilized Tribes.—_J. P. Brown._ Quarterly Journal of the Soc. Amer. Indians. Oct.-Dec., 1913. P. 416.

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Suppressing the Liquor Traffic in Indian Territory and Oklahoma.—_William E. Johnson._ Twenty-fifth Report Lake Mohonk Conference, 1907. P. 27.

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The U. S. Government and the Indian Problem.—_Hon James S. Sherman._ Twenty-seventh Annual Conference Lake Mohonk, 1909. P. 74.

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The Need of Publicity in Indian Affairs.—_John M. Oskisen._ Twenty-fourth Annual Report Lake Mohonk Conference, 1906. P. 38.

Indian Territory Tribes. The Cherokees, Chapter VIII. Pp. 257–297. Indian Territory pp. 425–431. Century of Dishonor.—_Helen Hunt Jackson._ 1886.

The Five Civilized Tribes—Why They Employ Attorneys.—_Speech of Hon. William H. Murray, Congressional Record_, No. 78, Vol. 51. Feb. 11, 1914.

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The Shawnee Indians: Their Customs, Traditions, and Folk-lore.—_Rev. Jacob Spencer._ Kansas City Historical Society, 1907–1908. P. 382.

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Choctaws and Chickasaws. Fifth Annual Report of the Board of Indian Commissioners. 1873. P. 52.

First to Fifth Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Charities and Corrections of the State of Oklahoma. Dec. 10, 1908 to 1913.—_Kate Barnard._

McMurray Contracts. Hearings Before the Committee on Indian Affairs. U. S. Senate, 63rd Congress. First Session on H. R. 1917. pp. 338–353, 354–456.

Our National Problem. The Sad Condition of the Oklahoma Indians.—_Warren K. Moorehead._ 1913.

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Mott Report Relative to Indian Guardianships in the Probate Courts of Oklahoma.—_Honorable Charles H. Burke._ House of Representatives, Dec. 13, 1912.