Exam 2

Question 1

Agreement between the U.S. Dawes Commission and leaders of the Choctaw and Chickasaw which became the basic allotment formula for these two tribes and paved the way for agreements with the other tribes, despite the fact that the Chickasaw voters rejected it in a required referendum.

Answer 1

Atoka Agreement

Question 2

Skirmish which resulted in Stand Watie’s Confederate troops capturing a supply train of 300 wagons just south of Vinita, on September 19, 1864. These supplies were taken south to the families of Confederate refugees along the Red River.

Answer 2

Battle of Cabin Creek

Question 3

Battle fought on July 17, 1863, twenty miles southwest of Fort Gibson. This battle pitted 5000 Confederate troops under General Douglas Cooper against 3000 Union troops under Major General James G. Blunt. The smaller Union force, which possessed superior arms and artillery power, quickly overwhelmed Confederate troops, whose gunpowder was wet and hence useless, in the most important battle of the war in Indian Territory.

Answer 3

Battle of Honey Springs

Question 4

Albert Pike, requested to provide troops to protect Arkansas from Union invasion, sent Indian troops there in clear violation of the Treaties of Alliance. The battle, fought March 6-8, 1862, resulted in a major Confederate defeat. A bright spot for the Confederates was the capture of a sizable artillery battery by Stand Watie’s men, but Indian troops outraged other combatants by scalping the dead. Following the Confederate defeat, Pike, demoralized by the criticism of his troops, fell back to Indian Territory where he built and garrisoned Fort McCulloch deep in the Choctaw Nation.

Answer 4

Battle of Pea Ridge

Question 5

Attack of November 17, 1868, on Black Kettle’s peaceful band of Cheyenne which was camped on the river by forces under the command of George A. Custer as part of Sheridan’s Winter Campaign. The attack on the sleeping village resulted in the deaths of 102 Cheyenne, including Black Kettle, as well as the village herd of 800 ponies. Every lodge in the encampment was burned and saddles, buffalo robes, arms, ammunition, and the village’s winter meat supply along with 50 captives were taken. The site is near present-day Cheyenne, Oklahoma.

Answer 5

Battle of the Washita

Question 6

57 mile wide strip of land bordering Kansas and extending from the Cherokee Nation west to the 100th Meridian. This land was originally given to the Cherokee by treaty in 1828. As a result of the Reconstruction Treaty, this land was made available to other tribes wishing to resettle in Indian Territory, and the eastern part was purchased by the Osage, Ponca, Kaw, Oto and Missouri, and other tribes. However, the majority of the land remained unsettled and was leased by the Cherokee in the 1880s to the Cherokee Strip Livestock Association for grazing. Homesteaders, however, demanded access and the Cherokee were ultimately forced to completely cede this land to the U.S. Subsequently it was opened for settlement by run in 1893.

Answer 6

Cherokee Outlet

Question 7

A narrow strip of land 1-5 miles wide along the Oklahoma-Kansas border which (as a result of a survey error) was claimed by both Kansas and the Cherokee. Ultimately the Kansas received the land with compensation to the Cherokee. Subsequently, the term it has been used interchangeably with Cherokee Outlet

Answer 7

Cherokee Strip

Question 8

Organization formed by a group of more than a hundred individual cattlemen and corporations at Caldwell, Kansas, in 1883 to gain exclusive use of the Cherokee Outlet for their cattle and to protect their ranges from rustlers. This group negotiated a five-year, $100,000/year lease with the Cherokee Nation in 1883. Association officers hired brand inspectors to police the range and inspect and record livestock shipments. In addition, it adopted roundup schedules and rules, surveyed and mapped the land, assigned ranges to members, and set fencing rules. A second lease at $200,000/year was negotiated in 1888, but was thwarted by the government who said the Cherokee did not have the authority to negotiate such a lease and opened the Outlet for settlement in 1893.

Answer 8

Cherokee Strip Livestock Association

Question 9

Creek movement in protest of land allotment led by Chitto Harjo. Harjo attempted to establish a new Creek government based on old tribal law and custom. His followers arrested and publicly whipped those who accepted allotments. The rebels were rounded up by cavalry from Fort Reno, tried in Federal Court at Muskogee, and forced to accept allotments as a condition of being freed, ending the rebellion.

Answer 9

Crazy Snake Rebellion

Question 10

Passed in June, 1898, which provided for the survey and incorporation of towns in Indian Territory, gave townsmen the right to vote, authorized the establishment of free public schools, and abolished tribal courts. All persons in Indian Territory (Indian and non-Indian) were to be subject to federal law and the laws of Arkansas. The measure served as an Organic Act for Indian Territory.

Answer 10

Curtis Act
by Curtis, Charles the Congressman (later Senator) from Kansas who subsequently served as Vice President. Curtis, a mixed-blood Kaw, was the author of the Curtis Act of 1898

Question 11

Act written which provided for the division of severalty of reservations and the allotment of 160-acre plots to individual Indians. This act did not apply to the Five Civilized Tribes, but it was an omen of things to come.

Answer 11

Dawes Act

by Senator Henry L. Dawes

Question 12

Taking away, by hook or crook, the Indians’ allotments following the allotment of land to individual tribal members.

Answer 12

Grafting

Question 13

a member of the Creek Nation was Creek Vice-President of the Sequoyah Convention, served as majority (Democratic) floor leader at the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention and was subsequently elected the first governor of the state.

Answer 13

Charles Haskell

Question 14

1862 Congressional act which allowed American citizens to claim up to 160 acres of publicly owned (government) land. After working the land for five years and paying a $10 registration fee, the land became theirs.

Answer 14

Homestead Act

Question 15

Confederate veteran, who during the war obtained a set of field notes from an Arkansas geologist which indicated the existence of significant coal deposits at Cross Roads in the Choctaw Nation. After the war established a store at Cross Roads (later renamed for him), married a Chickasaw girl (thereby gaining the benefits of Choctaw-Chickasaw agreements concerning tribal citizenship and mineral rights), and organized the first coal mining company, the Oklahoma Mining Company (later the Osage Coal and mining Company), in the Territory. Ultimately, as a result of friction with the Choctaw over royalties, he sold his mining interests and concentrated on his lucrative store.

Answer 15

J. J. McAlester

Question 16

Peace summit held in 1867 in southern Kansas as a result of demands from settlers, state and territorial governments that tribal lands be reduced. U.S. Commissioners met with representatives of the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, and Plains Apache (including Black Kettle, Santank, and Santana). More than 7000 members of these five tribes gathered for the meeting. U.S. Commissioners warned those present that the buffalo would soon disappear and that the chiefs must lead their people to settled lives of farming on the reservations in Indian Territory. Despite eloquent protests from a number of Indian spokesmen, the commissioners prevailed and the chiefs consented to drastically reduced ranges. By these terms the Kiowa, Comanche, and Plains Apache were assigned a 3-million acre reservation in the Leased District and the Cheyenne and Arapaho were assigned a reservation in the Cherokee Outlet (later moved to a five-million acre reservation south of the Outlet). Later the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation was reduced to provide a 600,000 acre reservation for approximately 1100 Wichita, Caddo, Absentee Delaware, and the remnants of Texas tribes brought to the Leased District before the Civil War.

Answer 16

Medicine Lodge Council

Question 17

Officially named the Hamilton Statehood Bill, this measure set the guidelines for achieving Oklahoma statehood. It provided that the Twin Territories were to be joined, that constitutional convention would be held consisting of 55 delegates from Indian Territory, 55 delegates from Oklahoma Territory, and 2 from the Osage nation, that it would meet at Guthrie, and that it would write a constitution which would provide for a republican form of government, establish religious liberty, prohibit polygamous marriages, and guarantee suffrage regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. In addition, the new constitution had to provide for prohibition in Indian Territory and the Osage Nation for twenty-one years and the new state capital had to be located at Guthrie until 1913. Congress also appropriated $5 million for the support of public schools in the new state to offset the loss of sections 16 and 36 in each Indian Territory township that had been allotted.

Answer 17

Oklahoma Enabling Act

Question 18

known as the “Hanging Judge,” was named federal judge at Fort Smith in 1875 and charged with restoring order to Indian Territory. With the aid of 200 marshals, he succeeded in bringing order to the Territory, convicting nearly 9000 persons during his 21-year term on the bench.

Answer 18

Judge Isaac Parker

Question 19

The son of a Comanche chief and a white captive from Texas, he led the Quahada Comanche in their resistance to white domination in the early 1870s. Active in the Red River Wars, He surrendered in 1875 at Fort Sill and was never imprisoned. He became a leader of the Comanche, negotiating grazing leases and urging other Comanche to acclimate to reservation life.

Answer 19

Quannah Parker

Question 20

Perhaps the most famous of the Boomer leaders, he led a series of efforts to colonize in the Unassigned lands in the early 1880s. A native of Indiana, came to Kansas Territory in 1858, where he worked as a frontier guide and scout, served in the Union Army, served in the Kansas legislature for several terms, and held the post of assistant doorkeeper for the House of Representatives in Washington. He came to southern Kansas in 1879 to organize the home seekers there, quickly setting up a string of Boomer camps around several Boomer towns, which, collectively, were known as (his last name) Oklahoma Colony. He regularly visited the camps and made speeches to keep morale high. He also published the Oklahoma War Chief, a newspaper which aided morale. Each colony member paid him two dollars for a certificate guaranteeing a quarter section or twenty-five dollars for a town lot in Oklahoma. Between 1879 and his death in 1884, he led several Boomer expeditions into Indian Territory. The most important of these expeditions was in the spring of 1880, when home seekers erected a stockade, platted a town, and began opening fields for planting in the Oklahoma City area. The U.S. cavalry from Fort Reno ultimately arrested him and colonists and escorted them back to Kansas, but he, undaunted, launched another raid several months later. He used the courts in Arkansas and Kansas as a forum to popularize homesteader rights in Indian Territory. At one point, the Topeka Federal judge dismissed government trespassing charges against him and his followers on the grounds that the title to Oklahoma lands was vested in the U.S., thus placing the lands in the public domain, and therefore the settlement of citizens on them was not a crime. He mysteriously died in Wellington, Kansas, in 1884, and leadership of the Boomer movement passed to Crocker and Couch.

Answer 20

David L. Payne

Question 21

1866: By the terms of these treaties negotiated in Washington in 1866, the Tribes were to abolish slavery and give their freed slaves citizenship and property rights; agree to the construction of one north-south and one east-west railroad across each of their nations; form an intertribal council to work for unification; a cede a considerable portion of their lands. In return, their annuities would be restored. As a result, the Chickasaw and Choctaw ceded the Leased District, the Cherokee ceded their Outlet and lands in Kansas, the Creek ceded the western half of their nation, and the Seminole lost their nation and were forced to purchase new land from the Creek.

Answer 21

Reconstruction Treaties

Question 22

The engagements fought between renegade war parties of plains Indians and the U.S. Army in 1874. The most famous of these was the Battle of Adobe Wells (although it involved buffalo hunters, not the army). The army relentlessly pursued the marauding bands. When they surrendered, the army appropriated their horses, disarmed the warriors, and arrested the chiefs. This represented the last major uprising in Indian Territory.

Answer 22

Red River Wars

Question 23

(1867-84): The removal of tribes to Indian Territory reservations after the Civil War. The tribes settled on reservations in Oklahoma in this period included sedentary tribes from reservations to the north and northeast such as the Kaw, Iowa, Otoe, Missouri, Seneca, Ponca, Shawnee, and Pottawatomie as well as nomadic plains tribes such as the Kiowa, Comanche, Plains Apache, Cheyenne, and Arapaho who were not yet confined on reservations. While the former groups suffered dislocation and despair as a result of removal, their lifestyles were not fundamentally altered as they already lived sedentary lives on reservations. The plains tribes, however, were forced to make a complete change in lifestyle, abandoning their nomadic chase of the buffalo for a sedentary life of farming and ranching.

Answer 23

Second Trail of Tears

Question 24

(1905): The inevitability of statehood and attachment to Oklahoma Territory led leaders of the Five Tribes to convene a statehood convention in Muskogee in August, 1905, to write a constitution for a proposed Indian State of Sequoyah. The resulting constitution was a well-written document incorporating most of the progressive proposals of the era. It was overwhelmingly approved by the voters of Indian Territory, but rejected by the United States Congress which was in favor of joint statehood for Oklahoma and Indian Territories. The convention proved a rehearsal in politics and constitution making for the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention and led to leaders from Indian Territory playing a dominant role in the Constitutional Convention. Among those who led at the Sequoyah Convention were Pleasant Porter (Creek), Green McCurtain (Choctaw), John F. Brown (Seminole), Charles N. Haskell (Creek), and William H. Murray (Chickasaw) . In all, 34 delegates at this council subsequently served in the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention.

Answer 24

Sequoyah Convention

Question 25

Lands ceded by the Creek and Seminole by the Reconstruction Treaties of 1866 to be used for the resettlement of other tribes. These lands, located in central Oklahoma, had not been used for that purpose, however, and remained virtually empty. Beginning in 1879, they became the target of the Boomer Movement. Ultimately they were designated Oklahoma Territory and opened for settlement by Land Run in 1889.

Answer 25

Unassigned Lands

Question 26

Cherokee political party which emerged after the Civil War. Led by Lewis Downing and composed of Stand Watie’s Confederate Cherokee and former full blood followers of John Ross, it dominated Cherokee Politics from 1867 until Oklahoma statehood. It was opposed by the National party led by Ross’s nephew, William Potter Ross.

Answer 26

Union Party

Question 27

Organizer and commander of a Cherokee regiment which fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. Watie, who was the nephew of Major Ridge and brother of Elias Boudinot, had signed the Treaty of New Echota prior to removal and had narrowly escaped assassination when his brother, uncle, and cousin were murdered. He subsequently became a leader of the Ridge/Boudinot faction and an opponent of John Ross. He urged the Cherokee to sign a Treaty of Alliance with the Confederacy and preceded to organize a Cherokee regiment even before the Cherokee allied with the Confederacy. During the war, he proved an outstanding commander, particularly in the later, guerrilla stages of the war. As part of his guerrilla activities, he seized the cargo of a steamboat on the Arkansas and later supplies from a wagon train (at Cabin Creek) and transported these supplies south to Confederates in camps along the Red River. Watie, who achieved the rank of General during the war, was the last Confederate General to surrender. Following the war, he remained active in Cherokee political affairs and, among his other activities, established a tobacco business with his nephew, Elias C. Boudinot (the subject of the Cherokee Tobacco Case).

Answer 27

Stand Watie

Question 28

Major effort mounted by General Philip Sheridan in the winter of 1868-69 designed to force the plains tribes to lead more sedentary, reservation lives. Winter was viewed as a time of truce This campaign involved the establishment of Fort Supply in the Cherokee Outlet for use as a base of operations. As part of the Winter Campaign, Custer attacked the camp of Black Kettle in the Battle of the Washita. This campaign resulted in some Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kiowa moving onto reservations.

Answer 28

Winter War/ Winter Campaigning