Kickapoo women around 1900. Nearly 125 years ago, on May 23, 1895, the smallest and last federally-approved land rush in Oklahoma Territory got under way as “surplus lands” of the Kickapoo were thrown open for settlers to homestead. That rip-off had begun in 1889. The Kickapoo had fled their homeland in southwestern Wisconsin after the … Continued
The National Indian Health Board (NIHB) invites applications for the 2018 Tribal Youth Health Policy Fellowship seating the second cohort of Fellows. The cohort will consist of 12 Native youth from around the country to engage throughout the year in Indian health policy and programming efforts. The Fellows will engage in Indian health policy solutions, … Continued
The county and city of Pawnee, Oklahoma are home to the Pawnee (Chahiksichahiks) tribe. Over the course of the 19th century, the tribe declined in numbers from over 10,000 to approximately 4,000 people living on lands along the North Platte river in Nebraska and Kansas. By the 1870s, despite a long history of military service … Continued
At the beginning of the Civil War in 1861, the United States withdrew its troops from Forts Cobb, Arbuckle, and Washita and, afraid that annuity payments might fall into the wrong hands, withheld the annuities which were owed to the tribes. The Confederacy moved into the vacuum left by the federal government and held treaty … Continued
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, that great American visionary Thomas Jefferson proposed that Indian nations be moved to territories west of the Mississippi River so that they would not hinder American economic development. Government policies during the first half of the nineteenth century forced the removal of many Indian nations and thousand of … Continued
Thomas Jefferson was one of the Americans who envisioned removing all Indians from American soil and placing them in a confined territory west of the Mississippi River. In the early nineteenth century, many Indian nations were forcibly removed, often through the use of military force, and resettled in Indian Territory. Here they were to live … Continued
In 1836, under the terms of the Treaty of New Echota, the Cherokee were given a narrow strip of land some 225 miles long and 60 miles wide in what would later become Oklahoma. This strip of land, known as the Cherokee Outlet, was in addition to their reservation and was intended to provide them … Continued
By 1830, the American government had decided that American Indians had no place in the United States and passed legislation calling for their removal to lands west of the Mississippi River. As a part of this removal effort, the Americans negotiated a series of treaties with the various Indian nations in which the Indians ceded … Continued
After their removal to Oklahoma in 1838, the hostile rivalry between two Cherokee political factions—the National Party which had resisted removal and the Treaty Party which had favored removal—became violent. In 1842, James Foreman, a member of the National Party, and Stand Watie, a member of the Treaty Party, encountered each other in a grocery … Continued
Following the Trail of Tears in 1838, there were three groups of Cherokee living in Oklahoma: (1) The Old Settlers who had moved to the west prior to the 1830 Indian Removal Act, (2) the Treaty Party who had signed the removal treaty and had been moved in relative comfort, and (3) the National Party … Continued
