A HISTORY OF THE CHEROKEE OUTLET By WILLIAM GEORGE SNODGRASS ,1 Bachelor of Arts Phillips University Enid, Oklahoma 19.58 Master of Arts University of Oklahoma No?'ma:ri., Oklahoma ..·, 1960 Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements f_or the Degree of · DOCTOR OF EDUCATION May, 1972 OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY AUG 16 1973 A HISTORY OF THE CHEROKEE OUTLET Thesis Approved: ~ Thesis Adviser ~~ DEDICATION Tradition, duty and affection compel me to acknowledge my indebtedness to my wife and family who have sustained me through the several years required to reach this point in the academic world. Their patience and uncomplaining sacri­ fices through difficult times have been the primary sources of inspiration and determination to go on when it would have been easier to quit. The several hundred students who have passed through my classes at Phillips University, Enid, Oklahoma, in the past ten years must also be mentioned as an unfailing source of enthusiasm. The fact that several of them have gone on to achieve their graduate degrees in history has been a compelling force to finish my own. But the greatest accolades must be reserved for a true patron-saint, Mrs. Grace Bergman of San Rafael, California. In the summer of 1954, she appeared at my door with a generous offer which resulted in my belated matriculation at a nearby university, and which has been a dominant force in my life from that date. The following pages are dedi­ cated to her generosity and many kindnesses which have been singularly responsible for what follows. It is admittedly poor recompense, yet it is modestly offered with the hope that its merits, however slight, can be vicariously attri­ buted to her. I willingly accept full responsibility for its shortcomings. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION. 1 II. THE PEOPLE 36 III. FARMING IN THE EARLY YEARS . 58 IV. THE GROWTH OF TOWNS 75 v. CULTURAL AFFAIRS .. 92 VI. OUTSTANDING INDIVIDUALS 116 VII. THE FARMER'S PLIGHT . 155 VIII. BROADER CONSIDERATIONS . • 179 IX. THE PASSING OF THE FRONTIER . • 198 BIBLIOGRAPHY • . 215 APPENDIX A - TABLE OF UNRESERVED LAND OCCUPIED IN EACH COUNTY 1894--1902 • . ••. 228 APPENDIX B - MAP . 229 APPENDIX C - POPULATION OF THE OUTLET FEBRUARY 1894 .. 230 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Perhaps it will never be known positively when and where the first white man gazed upon the lands that would one day be the Cherokee Outlet. However, the Osage Indians were the first people ever to claim this land north of the South Canadian River, including all of Northern Oklahoma and parts of Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. 1 That 2 Coronado was the first white man to cross the area seems fairly certain, 3 but it would be years after this encounter before other Europeans would pass over the country again. Periodically after 1803 explorers sent by the United States government passed through the area recording their impres- 1George Rainey, The Cherokee Strip. (Guthrie: Co­ operative Publishing Co., 1933), pp. 2-3. 2 Bernard Devoto, The Course of Empire. (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1952), p. 37. 3 Herbert Eugene Bolton, (ed.), Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-17060 (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1916), p. 256. 2 sions of it. 4 The first white settlement in what is now the Cherokee Outlet was made by a French commercial company sometime between September 15, 1720, and the middle of the 5 eighteenth century. This French outpost, named Ferdinan- 6 dina, was located near the city of Newkirk on Deer Creek. It is not known why this name was assigned to the outpost though various theories have been advanced by several 7 scholars. Nor is it known when or why the three villages of this trading post finally disappeared. 8 The real history of the Cherokee Outlet properly should begin in 1803, when President Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in one of the most spec- tacular real estate deals of all history. While the Outlet 4 For a good account of these numerous expeditions of exploration, see Rainey, Cherokee Strip,pp. 18-27, 344-349, and Devoto, The Course of Empire, passim. 5Leslie A. McRill, "Ferdinandina: First White Settle­ ment in Oklahoma," Chronicles of Oklahoma, XXXXI (No. 2, Summer, 1963), p. 135. 6 rbid., pp. 142-143. 7rbid., pp. 156-159. 8 rbid., pp. 154-155. The first permanent American settlement established in the Outlet was Fort Supply, es­ tablished in November of 1868 by order of General Phillip Sheridan; this post gained fame when General George A. Cus­ ter passed through it en route to his massacre of the Cheyenne Arapaho at the Washita that same year. When Fort Supply was no longer needed for military purposes, it was abandoned and the state of Oklahoma assumed ownership. Pre­ sently it serves as a state hospital for the mentally ill. See Rainey, The Cherokee Strip, pp. 67-73. 3 was included within that purchase, it was not known until the conclusion of the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 what the specific boundaries of that purchase were. By the terms of that treaty, a portion of the boundary was set at the south bank of the Red River to the lOOth meridian, then due north to the Arkansas River, thus forming the southern and west­ ern boundaries of Oklahoma--and thus the western limit of the Cherokee Outlet. This was the first boundary line of the Cherokee Outlet to be drawn. Many of the early explorers reported that lands in this general area were a part of the "Great American Desert," and consequently unfit for the white man's use. Their recommendation, therefore, was that the land be utilized as Indian country. For many years, cartographers rather reck­ lessly encircled a large land area in the very heart of the continent and labeled it a great desert with boundaries that varied according to the particular map one happened to be looking at at the time. To the majority of the American people, this was a forbidden land, an American Sahara, to be avoided at all hazards. No practical use was made of this territory until Andrew Jackson assumed the presidency. The pressures of white settlement in the Eastern portion of the nation, and the 11 0ld Hero 1 s 11 hatred of the Indians com­ bined to force the Eastern Indians to remove to the West. 4 By an act of Congress, May 28, 1830, the President was authorized to begin placing Eastern Indians in lands west of the Mississippi River; 9 specific boundaries were not drawn. This was a large, amorphous land area on which Indians could be settled. Then in 1834, Congress created a permanent Indian Territory to be occupied by the Five Civi­ lized Tribes of the Southeastern United States; 10 this was an area embracing a large portion of Kansas and all of 11 present day Oklahoma except the Panhandle. Among the more than one hundred treaties of removal negotiated with the Eastern Indians by the Jackson adrninis- tration were those with the Five Civilized Tribes, who agreed to accept reservations in this Indian Territory, but principal to this study was the agreement with the Cherokees. Earlier clashes in the Southeast between the Cherokees and whites had caused many of the Indians to be receptive to the idea of removal to western lands free from the evil in- fluence of Georgia frontiersmen. Church missionaries and 9Berlin B. Chapman, "How the Cherokees Acquired the Outlet," Chronicles of Oklahoma, XV (No. 1, March, 1937), p. 35. 10 Solon J. Buck, The Settlement of Oklahoma. (Wisconsin Academy of Science, XV, Part 2. [n.d.]), p. 2. 11 Rainey,· Teh Ch ero~ee,_ Strip,. pp. 43 -44 . 5 teachers further cultivated this attitude.12 Two men, Major Ridge and Elias Boudinot, went to Washington without tribal authorization for the purpose of negotiating a re- moval treaty. At the same time, the state of Georgia was renewing its efforts to crowd out the tribe.13 Boudinot and Ridge worked openly, honestly, and tirelessly for what they believed to be a patriotic duty: to act as the enlightened minority in leading their stubborn, illiterate brothers to the desirable western lands.14 Boudinot was a "full blood in whose heart the flame of fierce nationalism burned," and "loyalty drove him to what bis people called disloyalty. 1115 The principal chief of the Cherokees, John Ross, was by- passed by followers of Boudinot and Ridge, and after unre- mitting pressure by President Jackson, a removal treaty was 16 exacted. In the Treaty of New Echota, concluded in 1835, the Cherokees agreed to join their western kinsmen who pre- viously had removed to the Arkansas Territory by the treaty 12Marion L. Starkey, The Cherokee Nation. ( New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946), pp. 250-253. 13rbid., pp. 347-350. 14rbid., pp. 254-255. 15Ralph Henry Gabriel, Elias Boudinot, Cherokee, and His America. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1941), p. 154. 16 Starkey, The Cherokee Nation, p. 255. 6 of 1817, and in 1828 had agreed to move again to a new home int. h e north eastern corner o f t h e new Ind' ian Territory.· 17 The Osages previously had been removed from these 18· lands by a treaty of 1825, and the Treaty of New Echota granted the Eastern Cherokees the same terms as the treaty of 1828 had granted to the Western Cherokees. In addition to their home in northeastern Indian Territory, they were to be given the "perpetual" and "unmolested" use of an Outlet to the West as far as the sovereignty of the United States extended, but if "the saline, or salt plain" should fall within their Outlet, other tribes would be permitted to use it.