I want you to try a quick exercise with me. Just
close your eyes for a second and picture the
quintessential classic American image of Oklahoma.
Just bring it to mind. I bet I know exactly what
you're seeing. Right. Chances are you're picturing
the 1889 land run like covered wagons racing
across this dusty wide open plain. People aggressively
staking claims in the dirt. Exactly. The rugged
frontier spirit conquering the wild or Let's
be honest, maybe you're just hearing the soaring
strings of the Broadway musical. You know, with
the wind sweeping down the plane. Yeah, that
is definitely the story we are all told. It is.
It's this highly curated image that's just been
burned into the American consciousness. But today,
for this deep dive, we're going to take that
script, turn it completely upside down, and look
at the actual handwriting on the back. Because
to really understand Oklahoma, You have to look
underneath that very specific, heavily manufactured
mythology. Which brings us to our mission today.
We are looking at the real foundational story
of Oklahoma. We've opened up a massive stack
of historical sources, archaeological records,
treaty documents, firsthand accounts. And we're
using them to track the incredibly complex, often
tragic, but, you know, fiercely resilient experiences
of the Native American tribes in this region.
Right. And our main focus, the thread we are
really going to pull on today, is how the Indian
Removal Act didn't just like move people from
point A to point B. It executed one of the most
radical, calculated, and forced demographic shifts
in human history. It's an immense topic. I mean,
to truly grasp the scale of that forced migration,
we cannot start in the 1830s. We really have
to look at the land before the removal. So set
the stage for us. Well, we have to understand
what was already there. What was thriving and
evolving long before the United States government
decided to treat the entire region like an empty
warehouse for human beings. Let's start right
there, actually, because there's this pervasive
myth that Oklahoma was just this like empty waiting
room. Oh, absolutely. The empty land narrative.
Yeah. I think a lot of people imagine it was
just a vacant, desolate lot out west, sitting
there in silence, waiting for displaced eastern
tribes to be moved in. But looking at the archaeological
records in our sources, that is just Fundamentally
untrue. It's completely false. People have been
living in what is now Oklahoma since at least
the last ice age. Wait, the last ice age? Yeah.
We are talking about deep ancient history that
completely shatters that whole narrative. Archaeologists
have found paleo Indian sites that force us to
rethink the entire timeline. So what are we looking
at in the sources? Take the Burnham site in Woods
County, for example. The sources classify this
as a pre Clovis site. Pre Clovis. What does that
actually mean in terms of? Years in archaeological
terms. It means we are looking at evidence of
human habitation dating back before 11 ,000 years
ago Hang on 11 ,000 years just to put that in
perspective for you listening That is millennia
before the pyramids were built in Egypt, right?
That is an almost unfathomable amount of time
How do we even know they were there? Like, what
survived? It really comes down to what they left
behind in the soil. And it gets even more fascinating
when you look at Harper County, where researchers
uncovered the Cooper bison skull. A bison skull?
Not just a fossil, it's the earliest known painted
object in North America. Wow. Are you serious?
The earliest in all of North America? Yeah. It
dates back between 10 ,200 and 10 ,900 radiocarbon
years. Someone applied a red zigzag pattern,
which was likely representing lightning to the
skull, probably for some kind of hunting ritual.
That is incredible. So you have... thousands
of years of human habitation, complex adaptation,
and artistic culture thriving in this landscape
long before European contact. Exactly. And it
doesn't stay a landscape of just nomadic hunters
either. As we move forward in the timeline provided
by our sources, the societies become incredibly
complex. Right. The sources get into the agricultural
societies. We need to talk about the Caduan Mississippian
culture. Yes. Between 800 and 1450 AD, eastern
Oklahoma was the western edge of this massive
dynamic cultural and trade network. And they
were building permanent, sophisticated urban
centers. They absolutely were. The Spiro Mounds,
located on the Arkansas River, are the premier
example of this. And when we say mounds, we aren't
talking about small piles of dirt. No, these
are massive architectural achievements, right?
Massive earthworks. There were ceremonial platform
mounds, burial mounds, all meticulously arranged
around these vast open plazas. And those plazas
were kept intentionally clean for... major public
and religious events, according to the text.
Right. This was a highly structured, hierarchical
society with a dense population. It wasn't just
a few people camping by the river. The sources
specifically mention elite tombs, too, like the
Great Mortuary at Spiro. What exactly did archaeologists
find in there that points to a hierarchy? They
found immense wealth and symbols of authority.
The tombs were literally filled with exotic grave
offerings. Like what kind of offerings? Well,
they found copper from the Great Lakes region,
conch shells all the way from the Gulf of Mexico,
intricately carved effigy pipes. Oh, wow. So
they're trading across half the continent. Exactly.
The sheer concentration of these rare goods in
specific tombs tells us that certain families
or lineages held immense political and religious
power. They controlled a vast trade network,
connecting the Mississippian world of the East
with the traditions of the Great Plains. Spot
on. It was a major geopolitical hub. That paints
such a different picture. It wasn't an empty
waiting room at all. It was a flourishing economic
hub. And if we look at central and western Oklahoma
during this pre -removal era, you have the Plains
tribes. Right, the Wichita people. Yes, the Wichitas
were living on the terraces above the Washita
and South Canadian rivers. Our sources describe
them living in these large, rectangular, thatched
houses. And they were farmers, right? Not just
hunters. Both, actually. They were farming corn,
beans, squash, and tobacco while also going out
and hunting bison. And they were trading all
the way into what is now Texas and New Mexico.
So they were deeply established. agricultural
society. And they shared the broader region with
others too. You had the Tonkawa people in north
central Oklahoma and the Plains Apache who migrated
into the southern plains between 1300 and 1500
AD. So you've got multiple distinct nations co
-existing. Right they all coexisted traded and
you know sometimes fought with the Wichita. Then,
as we move into the 18th century, the demographic
tapestry undergoes a massive shift, and this
time it's purely due to technology and migration.
Which is such a fascinating turning point. You're
talking about the introduction of the horse,
right? Yes. The horse completely changes the
game. The Comanche acquire horses and migrate
down into the southern plains from the Great
Basin. And that completely revolutionizes their
mobility. Their mobility, their hunting efficiency,
and definitely their military power. Around the
same time, the Kiowa migrate down from the Rocky
Mountains. And then by 1796, the Osage arrive
in northeastern Oklahoma, pushing down from the
Missouri area. Exactly. The geopolitical map
is constantly shifting, but it is incredibly
full. I'm trying to visualize this for everyone
listening. Imagine looking at a masterfully painted,
incredibly dense Renaissance canvas. Oh, that's
a good way to put it. Right. You have overlapping
trade routes, ancient burial grounds, shifting
political alliances, huge agricultural hubs.
And then the United States government walks up.
assumes the canvas is completely blank, and just
starts slapping a cheap coat of primer over the
whole thing so they can paint whatever they want.
That analogy perfectly captures the sheer arrogance
of the federal policy at the time. Because they
just completely ignored what was already there?
Completely. When the United States later designated
this exact area as Indian territory, they were
superimposing tens of thousands of displaced
Eastern Native Americans directly on top of that
complex Renaissance canvas. Just pretending the
original painting didn't exist. Right. They ignored
the established dynamic travel boundaries. They
ignored the centuries -old trade routes. And
understanding this pre -existing world is so
crucial because it reveals the fundamental flaw
in the U .S. strategy. Exactly. The land wasn't
empty. It was a flourishing, deeply populated
geopolitical ecosystem. Which begs a massive
question. How do we actually get from this thriving
hub at the Spiro Mounds to the Indian Removal
Act? The causal chain is really something. Yeah,
what is the chain of events that turns a populated
sovereign region into a designated holding zone
for a foreign government? The main mechanism
driving everything was land hunger, plain and
simple. And it was facilitated by incredibly
cynical legal maneuvering. Walk us through that
maneuvering. Well, the United States was expanding
its population rapidly, and individual states
desperately wanted the fertile land that Native
American tribes legally held within their state
borders. And the first major domino in our sources
is the 1802 Georgia Compact, right? Yes. The
1802 Georgia Compact is really the blueprint.
Break that down for us. What was the actual mechanism
of that compact? So in 1802, the state of Georgia
claimed a huge swath of Western territory, essentially
what is now Alabama and Mississippi. OK, a massive
amount of land. Huge. And the federal government
wanted that land for the nation, so they made
a deal. Georgia agreed to give up its claims
to those Western lands. But there is a catch.
A huge catch. In exchange, the federal government
promised to extinguish all Native American land
titles within the state borders of Georgia. The
exact phrasing was, as soon as it could be done
peaceably and on reasonable terms. Wow. So Georgia
essentially said, we will give you this massive
Western territory, but your payment to us is
figuring out a way to legally erase the Native
Americans from our state. That is exactly the
mechanism. It was a transaction. But the federal
government immediately faced a logistical problem
with that, didn't they? They did. Because if
you legally extinguish their land titles and
force them out of Georgia, where do you put them?
Right. The U .S. didn't have a designated place
to send them yet. Not yet. But that problem was
conveniently solved just one year later. in 1803.
Ah, with the Louisiana Purchase. Yes. Suddenly,
the U .S. buys this massive expanse of land west
of the Mississippi River from France. And almost
immediately, politicians looked at that newly
acquired, largely unmapped western land and saw
the solution to the promise they made to Georgia.
Exactly. The western lands of the Louisiana Purchase
became the conceptual dumping ground for the
government's removal policies. I want to highlight
a really telling detail from the sources here.
about how haphazardly the government was drawing
lines on maps they frankly didn't understand.
Oh, this is a perfect example of the hubris of
the era. Right. Long before he was president,
Andrew Jackson was involved in defining these
new Western borders, and he made a rather monumental
geographic mistake. The Andrew Jackson border
anomaly? Tell us about this, because it's wild.
So in 1820, Jackson was representing the U .S.
government in negotiations with the Choctaw Nation.
This resulted in the Treaty of Dokes stand. And
the goal there was a land swap, basically. Right.
The goal was to give the Choctaw a piece of the
new western territory in exchange for their eastern
lands. So Jackson drew the boundaries on a map,
but he literally did not know the geography well
enough. He inadvertently ceded a massive portion
of the Arkansas territory to the Choctaw. And
why was that a problem? Because that specific
land was already being heavily settled by white
American citizens. Oh, my God. He accidentally
gave away land to the Choctaw that his own citizens
were already living on just because he didn't
know how to read the terrain. Exactly. Which
naturally caused a massive uproar among the white
settlers in Arkansas. I can imagine. So what
did the government do? Well, in 1824, they had
to go back to the Choctaw, admit the mistake,
and renegotiate. Awkward. Very. The Choctaw actually
agreed to shift their eastern boundary further
west, but they made a very specific, almost petty
stipulation to ensure there was no more confusion.
I love this part. What was the stipulation? They
demanded the new border start precisely 100 paces
from the military garrison at Fort Smith. That
is incredible. A literal walking measurement.
Yes. So if you look at a map of the United States
today and you see that distinct, weird little
bend in the modern border between Arkansas and
Oklahoma. That exists purely because Andrew Jackson
didn't know his geography. Yep. And the Choctaw
demanded a walking measurement of 100 paces to
set the boundary in stone. It's a permanent cartographic
scar of a bureaucratic blunder. That's fascinating.
But that blunder was just the preamble, right?
Unfortunately, yes. Jackson's attitudes toward
Native Americans didn't soften. They hardened
significantly. So when he becomes president of
the United States, that early land swapping strategy
evolves into sweeping federal law. In 1830, he
signs the Indian Removal Act. And this is the
pivot point. We need to be very clear. about
what this act actually did, because the government's
public -facing stance at the time was that this
was a choice, right? They definitely framed it
as a voluntary exchange of lands. But the sources
show that the mechanics of this law created an
absolutely impossible ultimatum. The ultimatum
was engineered to guarantee removal? It wasn't
a real choice. What were the actual options presented
to the tribes? The federal government said to
the tribes east of the Mississippi, you can sign
a treaty, give up your ancestral homelands, and
move west to this newly defined Indian territory.
OK, that's option A. Or if you choose to stay,
you must completely dissolve your tribal governments,
give up your sovereignty, and become individual
citizens of the states you currently live in.
Which sounds, to a modern ear, almost reasonable
until you understand what state law meant for
a Native American in 1830. Exactly. State laws
in places like Georgia were aggressively, intentionally
hostile. In what ways? Well, if they stayed and
became state citizens, they were subject to laws
that forbade them from testifying in court against
a white person. Oh, wow. They were forbidden
from owning certain property and essentially
stripped of all civil rights. So anyone could
just come and steal their land and they couldn't
even testify about it in court. Precisely. It
was a choice between exile or total subjugation.
This brings up what I find to be the most bitter,
tragic irony in this entire history. Let's talk
about the five civilized tribes. Right. The Choctaw,
Seminole, Creek, Cherokee, and Chickasaw. Why
exactly did white Americans call them that? They
received that moniker because for decades, these
specific nations had strategically adopted many
aspects of European American culture. As a survival
mechanism, right? Exactly. They believed that
if they assimilated, the United States would
respect their sovereignty and let them keep their
land. What did that assimilation look like in
practice? They developed highly advanced agriculture.
They established centralized constitutional governments
modeled after the U .S. They built schools. The
Cherokee famously developed their own written
syllabary, right? Yes, thanks to Sequoia. And
they even published their own bilingual newspaper.
That's incredible adaptation. It was. And tragically,
some wealthy members of these tribes even owned
large cotton plantations and participated in
the enslavement of black people, completely mirroring
the southern white economy. So they looked at
the rules the U .S. government laid out for what
constitutes a civilized society, and they played
the game perfectly. They mastered the game. But
the historical insight here is crucial. Their
assimilation offered absolutely zero protection.
Not at all. In fact, it backfired spectacularly.
How so? By developing their land, building roads,
and proving how incredibly fertile and profitable
their territory was, they made their land infinitely
more desirable to white settlers and cotton speculators.
That is a stunning realization. The narrative
was always civilized and can stay. But the reality
was, assimilation was actually the trigger for
their removal. Because the white settlers didn't
want empty wilderness. They wanted the highly
developed, profitable infrastructure the Native
Americans had already built. You've hit the core
of the issue. When white expansion demanded their
property, the federal government abandoned the
assimilation rhetoric entirely. They just threw
it out the window. Exactly. As our sources explicitly
state, Oklahoma was chosen as the destination
simply because it was at the time the only available
location where the Indians would not be in the
way of white expansion. The goal was simply to
push them past the edge of the map. Out of sight,
out of mind. Let's get into how this actual displacement
happened. Because I think if you ask the average
person on the street about the Trail of Tears,
they picture one single monolithic event. One
long line of people marching in the snow. Exactly.
But the sources make it very clear that the removal
of the five civilized tribes was a multi -faceted,
prolonged, and chaotic campaign. Each nation
experienced it differently. Yeah, framing it
as a single event diminishes the sheer scale
of the logistical nightmare the government engineered.
Let's look at the mechanics, starting with the
Choctaw. They were the first to face removal,
right? Yes, after signing the Treaty of Dancing
Rabbit Creek in 1830. Their removal began in
the winter of 1831, and it was defined by catastrophic
federal incompetence and corruption. What happened?
The government contractors hired to provide food,
blankets, and transportation frequently pocketed
the money instead. Oh my god. So people are marching
into freezing winter storms without the supplies
the government legally promised them. Precisely.
The freezing weather, combined with starvation
and outbreaks of cholera, devastated the population.
That is horrific. It was so brutal that a Choctaw
leader, being interviewed by an Arkansas newspaper
at the time, described the journey as a trail
of tears and death. Oh wait. That is the actual
historical origin of the phrase. It is. Even
though popular culture most heavily associates
it with the Cherokee today, it originated with
the Choctaw experience. Wow. And then you have
the Creek Nation, who looked at the Choctaw experience
and essentially said, we are not doing that.
Right. They entirely refused to relocate. The
Creek tried to use the legal framework to save
themselves. How did they do that? In 1832, they
signed a treaty agreeing to open up a large portion
of their land in the east to white settlers.
But the crucial caveat was that the U .S. government
legally promised to protect their remaining lands
from encroachment. I feel like I can guess how
well the government kept that promise. They completely
abandoned it. Almost the moment the ink dried,
massive waves of white squatters overran the
remaining Creek lands. And the government just
let it happen. They did absolutely nothing to
intervene. Squatters were stealing property and
violently harassing the population. So the treaty
was useless. Completely. Eventually, starving
and desperate, some Creek factions retaliated
against the squatters. Which is exactly what
the government wanted. Yes. The U .S. government
used that retaliation as the excuse they needed.
In 1837, the U .S. military moved in and forcibly
evicted the Creek. There was no final removal
treaty. It was a military deportation. Which
brings us to the Chickasaw. The way they handle
this is fascinating, purely from a pragmatic
standpoint. Their approach was highly calculated.
Right, because they are watching the Choctaw
freeze to death, they're watching the Cree get
militarily crushed, and they realize the federal
government's promises of protection are completely
worthless. Exactly. The Chickasaw leadership
recognized the existential threat and took a
different route. They signed a removal treaty
in 1832, but rather than rely on corrupt federal
contractors. They did it themselves. Yes, the
Chickasaw essentially managed and funded their
own removal. How do you even do that? They sold
their eastern lands and used the capital to buy
their own supplies, their own wagons, and they
even negotiated to purchase a specific section
of land in Indian territory from the Choctaw.
So they essentially... bought their way out of
the worst of the suffering. They moved early
to avoid the absolute destitution that decimated
the other tribes. It's like having to pay out
of your own pocket to fund your own unjust deportation
just to ensure your family doesn't starve on
the way. It's a tragic pragmatism. But then you
look down at Florida and the Seminole Nation
takes the exact opposite approach that the Chickasaw.
They decide to fight. The Seminole resistance
is one of the most intense guerrilla conflicts
in American history. What sparked the actual
fighting? The U .S. government managed to get
a small, completely unrepresentative group of
Seminoles to sign a relocation treaty in 1833.
But the rest of the nation didn't agree to it.
Right. The vast majority of the Seminole population,
along with the Black Seminoles, formerly enslaved
people who had escaped and integrated into the
tribe, rejected the treaty as entirely illegitimate.
And when the U .S. military tried to enforce
it, it sparked the Second and Third Seminole
Wars. And the government wasn't fighting on open
plains either. They were fighting in the Florida
swamps. The Seminoles used the geography to their
absolute advantage. They waged a bloody, incredibly
expensive guerrilla war that lasted for years.
It had to be a nightmare for the US military.
It was. They ambushed supply lines, disappeared
into the Everglades, and completely frustrated
the US forces. The conflict cost the US government
millions of dollars and thousands of lives. Do
the U .S. ever actually win? Not a total victory,
no. The military eventually realized they could
not root them all out. So for the Seminoles who
survived the wars, the U .S. government literally
resorted to paying them cash bounties to board
the ships and move west. They had to bribe them
to leave. That is wild. It really is. Finally,
we have to talk about the Cherokee. Their story
might be the most famous, but the details in
these sources are still shocking. The Cherokee
removal is a profound tragedy of broken faith.
Right, because in 1835, a minority faction of
the Cherokee signs the Treaty of New Okota, which
gives the tribe two years to voluntarily move
west. But when that deadline hits in 1838, there
are still 16 ,000 Cherokee living on their land.
Why didn't they leave? Because they deeply believed
in the American legal system. Wait, really? That's
for everything. Yes. The principal chief, John
Ross, and the vast majority of the Cherokee people
had formally protested the treaty. They had gathered
tens of thousands of signatures proving the treaty
was fraudulent. So they took it to the government?
They believed that the U .S. Congress or the
Supreme Court would look at the rule of law,
see the fraud, and protect their property rights.
They thought the system would work the way it
was written on paper. But the system was rigged.
President Martin Van Buren ignored the petitions
entirely. And he sent the military instead. He
sent 7 ,000 federal soldiers commanded by General
Winfield Scamp to force them out. The military
moved rapidly, pulling families out of their
homes at Bayonet Point. With no time to pack.
Almost no time to gather food or winter clothing,
they were forced into internment camps before
being marched westward in what became the most
infamous Trail of Tears. And because of that
rushed eviction, roughly 4 ,000 Cherokees, a
quarter of their entire population, died on that
march from exposure, disease, and starvation.
staggering. And we have to make it clear for
you listening. The removal policy didn't just
stop at those five tribes. The sources list dozens
of others over the following decade. Well, absolutely.
The Shawnee, the Delaware, the Kickapoo, the
Miami, the Modoc, the Ponca. The government just
kept sweeping populations westward. If we step
back and look at the aggregate effect. The U
.S. government was fundamentally re -engineering
the demographics of an entire continent. They
were playing a massive lethal game of chess with
human lives. They took historically unrelated
tribes, some of whom were ancient enemies, some
who spoke completely different language families.
Some from the deep agricultural southeast, others
from the Great Lakes region. Right. And they
forcefully packed them all into a single arbitrary
geographic box called Indian Territory. Which
brings us back to the Osage, the Wichita, and
the Comanche, the people who are already living
in that box. Right. How do you suddenly drop
tens of thousands of desperate displaced Eastern
Native Americans into a territory that is already
claimed and populated? You can't do it peacefully.
It created immediate desperate conflict over
resources. Because everyone needs to survive.
Exactly. The Eastern tribes arrived traumatized,
but they needed hunting grounds and land to establish
agriculture. As they pushed westward into Indian
territory, they encroached directly on lands
claimed by the Osage and the Plains tribes. Do
the sources give a specific example of this clash?
They do. As early as 1828, the relocation of
the Cherokee old settlers from Arkansas into
Indian territory led directly to a bloody war
between the Osage nation and those newly arrived
Cherokees. So the federal policy didn't just
displace people, it manufactured a war. It violently
pitted indigenous nations against one another
over rapidly shrinking resources. It is just
compounding trauma upon compounding trauma. But
incredibly, despite the wars, the disease and
the displacement, these nations do what they
have always done. They adapt. They adapt and
they begin to rebuild. They establish new capitals
in Oklahoma, new constitutional governments,
new farms, new schools. But just as they start
to stabilize. A massive national conflict. tears
the entire region apart again, the American Civil
War. The Civil War in Indian Territory is a chapter
that is almost entirely omitted from standard
American history classes. It really is, yet it
was absolutely devastating. To understand it,
we really have to look at the demographics of
Indian Territory by 1860. OK, lay it out for
us. You had about 55 ,000 Native Americans, roughly
3 ,000 white residents, and critically 8 ,400
enslaved black people owned by members of the
native tribes. I want to pause there because
I think for a lot of people listening, the idea
of Native Americans owning enslaved black people
is a jarring historical fact. It is, but it ties
directly back to that concept of assimilation
we discussed earlier. Right. When the five civilized
tribes were trying to assimilate in the American
South before removal, they adopted the Southern
white economic model. which was built on the
institution of chattel slavery. Wealthy tribal
members established plantations, and when they
were forced onto the trails of tears, they brought
that institution and those enslaved people with
them to Indian territory. So the territory is
economically and politically tied to the South.
Then in 1861, the Civil War breaks out. And Indian
territory is geographically wedged right between
the Union forces in Kansas and the Confederate
forces in Texas. But here is the critical turning
point. What does the United States government
actually do? They simply pack up and leave. They
just abandon them. Completely. Union forces,
led by LT Colonel William H. Emory, literally
abandoned their major military outposts in the
territory, Fort Washita, Fort Arbuckle, and Fort
Cobb. And retreated north. They retreated north
to Kansas, leaving the tribal nations completely
defenseless against the encroaching, highly motivated
Texas Confederate forces. Let's put this in perspective.
Imagine you live in an apartment complex and
your landlord has spent the last 30 years harassing
you, breaking into your unit, and brutally forcing
you into a smaller and smaller room. Okay, tracking.
Then the building catches on fire. The landlord
locks the door from the outside and run the way,
leaving you trapped with the fire. That is essentially
what the union did to these tribes. That is a
phenomenal analogy. It was viewed as a profound
betrayal. I mean, how could it not be? From the
perspective of many Native leaders, the U .S.
government had systematically broken every single
treaty they had ever signed, violently evicted
them, and now they were abandoning them to a
hostile Confederate military force. Why on earth
would they maintain loyalty to the Union? Exactly.
And into this massive power vacuum steps Albert
Pike. Who is Albert Pike? He was a Confederate
commissioner sent specifically to negotiate with
the tribes, and he understood exactly what they
needed. What did he offer them? He offered them
everything the Union wouldn't. He offered formal
treaties of alliance, guaranteed military protection
from the South, assuming of their annuity payments
that the Union had cut off. Wow, so actual financial
support too? Yes. And he even promised them representation
in the Confederate Congress in Richmond. Did
the tribes uniformly accept this? I imagine there
had to be severe internal debate. They were not
a monolith by any means. Principal Chief John
Ross of the Cherokee fought— desperately to maintain
neutrality. Because he knew getting involved
in a white man's war would just lead to destruction.
Exactly. But his position was impossible. He
had no union support. He was surrounded by Confederate
forces. And a powerful pro -Confederate faction
within his own tribe was ready to ally with the
South. Who was leading that faction. A man named
Stan Waity. Eventually, recognizing the geopolitical
reality, Pike managed to sign treaties with all
the major tribes. But this didn't unite the territory,
did it? Not at all. It fractured it completely.
The sources describe it as a civil war inside
a civil war. That is exactly what it was. Minority
factions within the tribes who remain fiercely
loyal to the Union or simply hated the Confederate
factions completely oppose the alliances. Which
leads to local fighting. Brutal, localized, neighbor
against neighbor fighting. And when Union troops
and loyalist Native Americans eventually reorganized
and invaded Indian territory to take it back.
Which led to a strategic Union victory at the
Battle of Honey Springs in 1863, right? Yes,
and that caused a massive refugee crisis. Thousands
of pro -Confederate Native Americans had to flee
south, becoming starving refugees in the Choctaw
and Chickasaw nations. While loyalist refugees
froze in Kansas, it was a humanitarian disaster
on all sides, and the fighting was relentless.
The dedication of some of these Native Confederate
units was intense. The sources point out a truly
wild fact about Stan Waddy. Oh, this is one of
those incredible historical footnotes. Right.
Confederate Brigadier General Stan Waddy, who
was the Cherokee leader who opposed John Ross,
was literally the absolute last Confederate general
to surrender. He surrendered in June of 1865.
That is months after Robert E. Lee surrendered
at Appomattox. Wadey waged a highly effective,
deeply disruptive guerrilla insurgency. He captured
union supply trains and kept the entire territory
destabilized. Why did he keep fighting for so
long? He wasn't just fighting for the Confederacy
at that point. He was fighting for what he believed
was the survival of his specific faction of the
Cherokee Nation. But when the war finally ended,
the political fallout was catastrophic, wasn't
it? Immensely catastrophic. The fact that these
tribes had allied with the Confederacy, even
out of sheer survival necessity and union abandonment,
gave the U .S. government the ultimate leverage
they had been waiting for. Which brings us to
the next phase of this demographic shift, the
systematic erasure of Indian territory. Yes.
This is a pivotal moment in the sources. Because
when the war ends, the U .S. government doesn't
sit down and look at the nuanced context of why
the tribes allied with the South. No, they don't
apologize for abandoning the forts. They just
use the Confederate alliance as a weapon to punish
the tribes and take more land. We see the federal
strategy transition here from physical removal
to legal and bureaucratic erasure. In 1866, the
federal government forced the tribes to sign
the Reconstruction Treaties. And the terms were
draconian. Right. Extremely. The government essentially
said, because you rebelled, your previous treaties
are void. They forced the tribes to cede the
entire central and western portions of Indian
territory back to the federal government. So
they sliced the pie again. taking the entire
middle section. Yes, and this huge, incredibly
fertile swath of land in the middle of the territory
became known as the unassigned lands. These treaties
did more than just take land, right? Sources
mention railroads. Much more. They mandated that
railroads be allowed to cross Indian lands, which
was the Trojan horse for massive white settlement,
commerce, and timber extraction. It just opens
the floodgates. Exactly. The treaties also legally
outlawed slavery within the tribes and required
them to adopt the freedmen, the formerly enslaved
black people, into the tribes as citizens. Which
created incredibly complex ongoing issues of
integration and sovereignty that still resonate
in tribal politics today. It's a hugely complicated
legacy. But I want to focus on those unassigned
lands in the center. Because that creates the
catalyst for the image we talked about at the
very beginning of this deep dive. Ah, the Boomers.
Yes. In the 1870s and 80s, you have this relentless
pressure from organized groups of white settlers
known as the Boomers. The Boomers were highly
organized agitators. They looked at the unassigned
lands and demanded that the federal government
open them up for white homesteading. What was
their justification for that? Their argument
was incredibly cynical. They claimed that because
the land was taken from the tribes as a punishment,
it was now public domain. Oh, I see. And therefore,
they argued it was their God -given right as
American citizens to settle it. Wait, let me
make sure I'm getting this timeline straight.
The famous 1889 land run, the one celebrated
with the covered wagons, the soaring music, the
pioneer spirit. was essentially just the government
handing out the exact same land they had explicitly
promised to Native Americans for as long as the
grass grows and the rivers flow, just a few decades
earlier. That is exactly what it was. On April
20th, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison yielded
to the boomer pressure and opened two million
acres of the unassigned lands. And that's the
starting gun. Tens of thousands of settlers lined
up at the borders and literally raced in to claim
a plot. And the Sooners. Some people, known as
the Sooners, illegally sneaked over the border
early to steal the best plots before the starting
gun even fired. So the land run is romanticized
as the opening of an empty frontier. But historically,
it was the aggressive colonization of a space
that was deliberately carved out of sovereign
tribal territory. And as the sources show, the
government didn't stop at the unassigned lands.
The boomers got a taste, and they wanted the
rest of the territory. They wanted all of it.
Which is where we get to two incredibly destructive
pieces of legislation. The Dawes Act of 1887
and the Curtis Act of 1898. Yes. Because if the
land run was a physical invasion, these acts
sound like the ultimate bureaucratic weapons.
Bureaucratic weapon is the perfect term. The
U .S. policy had fundamentally shifted again.
They no longer wanted to isolate Native Americans
geographically. They wanted to force total assimilation
by destroying the very concept of the tribe.
How did the Dawes Act do that? Well, the Dawes
Act authorized the federal government to break
up communal tribal lands. For centuries, these
nations held their land in common. There was
no private real estate. Right, it belonged to
the whole nation. So the Dawes Commission was
sent in to literally survey the land, draw grids
over it, and force individual ownership. They
assigned small, specific allotments, usually
160 acres, to individual Native American families.
Let's use an analogy to understand how devastating
this is. Okay, let's hear it. Imagine a tribal
nation is like a successful, employee -owned
corporation where everyone shares the profits
and the land. The Dawes Act is like a hostile
corporate takeover. The government comes in,
forces every single employee to take one single
share of stock, dissolves the board of directors,
and says, you're all just independent contractors
now. That's a great way to explain it. It isolates
everyone so their collective power is entirely
destroyed. And let me guess, after everyone got
their 160 acres, there was a lot of leftover
land. Your analogy is spot on, and you hit on
the exact mathematical mechanism of the theft.
By breaking the land down into individual 160
-acre plots, the government generated millions
of acres of surplus land. Which they just took.
That surplus was immediately opened up to white
settlement and corporate purchase. The Dawes
Act was a mathematically designed system to legally
strip the tribes of their land base while pretending
to turn them into yeoman farmers. And then the
Curtis Act. The Curtis Act of 1898 was the final
nail in the coffin. It officially abolished tribal
courts, dismantled tribal governments, and brought
all of Indian territory under federal law. I
really want to highlight something specific from
our sources here, because it shows how deeply
corrupt this process was on the ground. There
is a mention of a landmark historian named Angie
DeBeau and her 1940 book, And Still the Waters
Run. Yes, her work is absolutely foundational.
The sources say she detailed the massive corruption,
moral depravity, and betrayal orchestrated by
the Dawes Commission. What did she actually uncover?
Debo dug into the local courthouse records and
proved that the allotment process wasn't just
a misguided, paternalistic, philanthropic effort.
It was a massive criminal enterprise sanctioned
by the state. How were they stealing it specifically?
She documented how white lawyers, judges, and
businessmen colluded to declare Native adults
incompetent so they could be appointed as their
legal guardians. Oh my god. They would then legally
siphon off the resources, the timber, and eventually
the massive oil wealth found on those individual
allotments. This is literally a legal mafia.
Worse, there were cases of Native children being
assigned land only to mysteriously die, allowing
their white guardians to inherit the oil rights.
It was systemic legalized robbery designed to
ensure the territory could eventually become
a white -dominated state. That is sickening,
but here is a part of the story that I had literally
never heard of before reading these sources.
The Sequoia Convention. Yes. The tribes did not
just roll over. They fought back politically
using the government's own system. In 1905, they
organized the Sequoia Constitutional Convention.
It is one of the greatest what -ifs of American
history. Set the scene for us. Well, the leaders
of the five civilized tribes saw the Curtis Act
dismantling their governments. They realized
Indian territory was about to be swallowed up
completely. So what did they do? They decided
to try and enter the United States on their own
terms. Leaders from all five nations met in Muskogee.
They drafted a highly progressive, fully formed
state constitution. They mapped out counties.
They established a bill of rights. And they formally
proposed the creation of the state of Sequoia.
Let me make sure I'm understanding this. It would
have been a U .S. state. with a Native American
majority population governed by Native leaders
entirely separate from the white -dominated Oklahoma
territory next door. That was exactly the proposal.
And the sources say the residents of Indian territory
overwhelmingly voted to approve this constitution.
They approved it by a massive margin. It was
wildly popular. But... Statehood requires approval
from Washington. Yes, it requires approval from
the US Congress and the President. And President
Theodore Roosevelt, along with a Congress deeply
resistant to the idea of a native controlled
state wielding power in Washington, rejected
it entirely. They would even consider it. They
refused to even entertain the idea. Instead,
they forced Indian territory to merge with the
Oklahoma territory to the west. And in 1907,
those two halves were combined to create the
single state of Oklahoma. That feels like the
ultimate final erasure. I mean, they went from
flourishing sovereign nations at Spiro Mounds
to a designated holding zone, to individual surveyed
plots, to having their proposed state rejected,
to being completely absorbed and legally dissolved
by the state of Oklahoma. That was certainly
the federal government's intent. And if the story
ended in 1907, it would be nothing but a tragedy
of erasure. But history doesn't stop. Exactly.
If you look at the trajectory of the 20th century,
you realize that despite this massive systemic
attempt to destroy tribal sovereignty and force
assimilation, the Native American spirit in Oklahoma
did not vanish. The canvas wasn't wiped clean.
No. The nations merely went dormant, adapting
and surviving until they could surge back. Which
brings us to the modern era and the incredible
resurgence of Native voices. We jump forward
in our sources to the 1960s and 70s. A fascinating
time period. The entire country is going... through
a massive civil rights awakening, protesting
the Vietnam War, fighting for voting rights,
and Native Americans in Oklahoma are right at
the forefront of what becomes known as the Red
Power movement. This era is vital because it
marks the explicit pivot from mere survival back
to demanding self -determination. The activists
of the 70s weren't just asking politely anymore.
They were taking direct action. A great example
detailed in our sources is the 1972 action by
the American Indian movement, commonly known
as AIM. About 40 to 50 members marched into the
state office and literally took over the office
of the Indian education director Overton James.
A literal occupation of the office. What was
the specific mechanism they were protesting?
They were outraged by the misuse of funds from
the Johnson O'Malley Act. Let me explain how
that worked for everyone listening. This was
federal money specifically allocated to support
Native American students in public schools, paying
for things like supplies, tutoring, and lunches.
Right. But the activists, led by regional AEM
coordinator Carter Camp, argued that the state
and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the BIA, were
hoarding the money, mismanaging it, and completely
ignoring any input from Native parents on how
it should be spent. So they occupied the office
and demand control over their own education funds.
Did it actually work? Did the BIA listen? It
worked remarkably well. By forcing a highly visible
confrontation, Carter Camp and AIM forced the
BIA's hand. What did the government concede?
The federal government actually froze the Johnson
O'Malley funds and agreed to negotiate. The activists
won the right to establish parent committees,
ensuring direct, native input into how those
education finances were utilized. It proved that
direct action could force the massive federal
bureaucracy to yield. Yes. And AIM kept pushing.
The sources mentioned them protesting at the
Fort Hill Indian School over administrative neglect
and terrible living conditions. But AIM wasn't
the only group moving the needle. The sources
also highlight the creation of the National Indian
Youth Council, or the NIYC, which was co -founded
by a brilliant Oklahoman named Clyde Warrior.
Clyde Warrior is a legendary figure in modern
Native activism. He was an incredibly charismatic
orator who sparked decades of grassroots organizing.
What is crucial to understand about the NIYC?
and leaders like Warrior, is the distinction
in their goals. They were not just fighting for
civil rights. Right. And that's a profound difference
in this context. Because civil rights sounds
like the ultimate goal to most people. Break
that down for us. Civil rights essentially means
treat me equally within your established system.
Sovereignty means, recognize my right to govern
my own system. Warrior and the NIYC wanted the
nationhood that was stolen from them by the Curtis
Act and Oklahoma statehood to be legally recognized
and restored. They wanted the right to self -determination,
not just integration. That is a brilliant distinction.
Sovereignty is saying, we are a nation, not just
a minority demographic. Exactly. And you see
the power of that grassroots fight for sovereignty
perfectly illustrated in the tactile youth movement.
According to the sources, in the 1970s, the federal
government was utilizing a policy known as termination.
They were actively trying to legally dissolve
the Choctaw Nation entirely. The termination
era was the government's final attempt to wash
its hands of treaty obligations. There was a
specific bill known as Belvin's Law, named, incredibly,
after the principal chief of the Choctaw, Harry
J .W. Belvin. Wait, the chief of the tribes supported
the termination bill? He did, initially, because
he believed assimilation was inevitable and this
was the best way to manage it. This law was set
to finalize the total dissolution of the tribe's
assets and government. So an activist named Charles
E. Brown. steps up. He starts organizing urban
Choctaw youth. And they don't do this with violence.
They do it with incredible grassroots organizing.
They literally went door to door. They printed
and mailed newsletters across the country that
explicitly criticized Chief Belvin and broke
down the legal mechanisms of the law. They explained
exactly how it would strip the Choctaw people
of their remaining legacy and land control. It
was the power of the press and collective education.
Those newsletters created a sudden unified realization
among the Choctaw people, many of whom had been
relocated to cities far away from Oklahoma. What
was the result? Brown and the youth movement
launched a massive petition drive. They intensely
lobbied Congress, and they successfully fought
off the termination bill. That's amazing. They
deposed the leadership that supported it, and
they kept their sovereign nation legally alive.
And that specific grassroots activism laid the
bedrock for the reality of Oklahoma today. If
you drive through Oklahoma now from the late
20th century to the present day, you see a massive,
undeniable rise in the assertion of tribal sovereignty.
You really do. You see tribal nations issuing
their own vehicle license plates. You see them
operating massive state -of -the -art health
care systems. They run major economic enterprises,
smoke shops, enormous casino resorts, and corporate
tech entities that are major drivers of the entire
state's economy. They are political and economic
powerhouses today, and it is a testament to an
endurance that a century of targeted federal
policy could not break. It's just a wildly incredible
timeline from the Spurrow Mounds to the Trail
of Tears to total legal dissolution back to powerful
modern political entities. Because, you see,
the Indian Removal Act was cynically designed
to clear land in the East. But what it inadvertently
did was create a dense, complex and politically
brilliant concentration of native nations in
the West. Their subsequent fight for survival,
their ability to adapt to catastrophic betrayal,
and their modern economic resurgence is the actual
defining DNA of the state of Oklahoma. So bring
it all together for you listening. Oklahoma's
history is not a simple pioneer story. It is
fundamentally a story of indigenous displacement,
profound bureaucratic portrayal, and unyielding
survival. It definitely is. The covered wagons
and the land runs you pictured at the beginning,
those are just the very tip of a much deeper,
much older iceberg. I would like to leave you
with a final thought to mull over, building on
everything we've uncovered today. Think about
the concept of a border. Okay. When you look
at a map of Oklahoma today, you see rigid, perfectly
drawn state and county lines. But underneath
that modern map are the invisible, overlapping
geographies of ancient hunting grounds. And the
hard one, incredibly complex boundaries of modern
tribal sovereignty. What does it actually mean
to be a citizen of a state that was built directly
on top of a broken promise? That's a powerful
question. And how does knowing the precise mechanics
of that history change the way you look at the
ground beneath your own feet today? That is exactly
what we want you to take away from this. The
map is never the whole territory. Thank you so
much for joining us on this deep dive. We highly
encourage you to look into these sources, read
up on the history of the nations whose land you
live on, and keep exploring. There is always
more beneath the surface.