Chapter 3 | Section 3
Removal
Fort Gibson played an important role at several stages of removal and resettlement in Indian Territory. Fort personnel served as mediators between Native nations, including the Osages and Cherokees. As outside tribes such as the Cherokees moved to the area, the Osages came under pressure from the US government to revise their previous treaty agreements. This resulted in the Osage Treaty of 1825, which required that the Osages give up all land in Missouri and Kansas. The treaty stipulated that the Osages would move to land between the Arkansas River and the Kansas border. A specific clause allowed Osage people to hunt freely in lands to the west. Fort Gibson was abandoned by the US military in 1857 only to be reactivated during the Civil War. Fort Gibson later served as the headquarters of the Dawes Commission for their work in enrolling members of the Five Tribes. Commission members focused on Cherokee Freedpeople, formerly enslaved people and their descendants.
The removal of the Five Tribes. Following removal to Indian Territory, the Five Tribes spent much time and investment rebuilding their nations. They opened new schools, businesses, and churches.
Courtesy of Brad Watkins, PhD.
The pressure on southeastern tribes to move to Oklahoma increased throughout the 1820s. In the minds of those who pushed for removal, the Great American Desert, as Oklahoma continued to be characterized, seemed like the right place for Indigenous tribes to go. The Muscogees were among the first to agree to western removal. They signed the Treaty of Indian Springs in 1825, which was replaced the following year by the Treaty of Washington). The new treaty was less harsh and allowed the Muscogees to keep a small amount of land on the border of Alabama and Georgia. Most Muscogee people opposed the move, but they worried that they had no real choice. When the Muscogee (Creek) Nation tried to fight the move, things only got worse for those who refused to leave. In 1832, tribal leaders signed the Treaty of Cusseta, which required that the Muscogees give up their remaining small portion of land in Alabama and Georgia in exchange for land in present-day Oklahoma. Tribal leaders then realized that little could be done to stop the forced removal from taking place. The federal government had grown impatient with trying to convince the remaining Muscogee people and other members of the Five Tribes to exchange their land in the Southeast for land in present-day Oklahoma. Some members of the Five Tribes had already relocated. However, the government’s efforts at persuasion were not well received by most of the remaining members of the Five Tribes and became a source of great division within the tribes. The Muscogee (Creek) Tribal Council, for example, passed a law that sentenced tribal members to death if they ceded (gave up) Muscogee land without the approval of the council. By then it was too late, though. Today some Muscogee historians debate whether the law was formally adopted. Nevertheless, the law as it was initially proposed still provides insight into the painful nature of persistent attacks on land and sovereignty.
In order to complete the process and end any genuine effort to persuade tribes, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law in 1830. This gave the president the authority to oversee the removal of tribes from one area of the country to another. It also meant that tribal leaders had little choice but to negotiate the best treaties they could to ensure that their people would be able to survive the move and have the resources necessary to rebuild. Over the course of the next decade, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee, and Seminole Nations endured multiple waves of dispossession and relocation to Oklahoma. The process unleashed great trauma and is often called the Trail of Tears because of the large amount of suffering and death that took place during the journeys. For example, Choctaw men, women, and children were forced to travel from Alabama and Mississippi to what would become Oklahoma during the bitter winter of 1831. They did not have enough food or warm clothing. Many people got sick and died. Other tribes had similar experiences. Muscogee people refer to their removal as their “road of misery and suffering.” These words reflect the deeply traumatic nature of their experience.
Following the signing of the Treaty of New Echota in 1835, which laid out the terms of Cherokee removal, approximately 25 percent of the people who left Georgia on the Trail of Tears died within one year of completing the journey. The following year, in 1836, Seminoles began their removal process from Florida to what would become Oklahoma. A small number managed to stay but most ended up moving to present-day Oklahoma over the next few years. Most Chickasaw people left Mississippi in 1837 following the Treaty of Doaksville, which specified the terms of their removal. Even though Chickasaws were able to sell their land in Mississippi to pay for their removal (which they had no real choice but to do), they suffered in much the same way as did the other tribes. Today the Chickasaw Nation describes their removal to Oklahoma as “the most traumatic chapter in Chickasaw history.”
In 1832, two years after President Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law, the Supreme Court weighed in on the issue of state power over Native nations. In Worcester v. Georgia, the Court ruled that Georgia did not have the right to impose its laws on tribal nations. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that “Indian nations had always been considered as distinct independent political communities.” He added that they retained “their original natural rights as the undisputed possessors of the soil.” However, in the haste to take away Indigenous land, the sovereignty of Native nations was ignored. As we will see in later chapters, disputes concerning states’ rights versus tribal sovereignty continued to arise. The spirit of the 1832 Supreme Court decision resurfaced in the 2020 case McGirt v. Oklahoma, which is discussed in the final chapter of this book. However, at the time of the Court’s 1832 ruling, protecting tribal sovereignty from the encroachment of state power was not a national priority.
Built in Park Hill, Cherokee Nation, in 1845, Hunter’s Home was the plantation estate of George Murrell and his wife, Minerva Ross Murrell, niece of Principal Chief John Ross. The Murrells were among a class of wealthy Cherokee enslavers who lived in Indian Territory prior to the American Civil War. Other buildings on the property included cabins for more than forty enslaved people. Hunter’s Home is the only remaining pre–Civil War plantation home in Oklahoma. The home is a National Historic Landmark and part of the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Despite the hardships of removal, the Five Tribes did in fact rebuild and flourish. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s, members of the Five Tribes cultivated new farms, established new trade relationships, and explored and adapted to their new surroundings. Their exploration and adaptation to what would become Oklahoma took place as a result of dispossession and involuntary removal. Despite the involuntary nature of what brought them to Oklahoma, it is important to understand that the Five Tribes spent considerable time restoring their nations. They opened schools, businesses, and churches. They reestablished tribal governments. They sought new partnerships. And they held on to hope. They hoped that the worst was behind them and that they would finally be left alone to thrive in their new homes. Unfortunately, further struggles were ahead; the entire country was on the brink of the worst war in its history.
The Civil War
When the Civil War erupted in 1861, not many people were thinking about Indian Territory. The country was torn apart. More Americans died in the four-year conflict than all other wars in American history combined. The death of more than 720,000 people in such a short span of time upended American life. Many wondered if the country would ever recover, would ever again be united.
The war tore apart families, friendships, and neighbors. Nowhere was this more apparent than among the Cherokee people. The bitter divide in the Cherokee Nation first occurred over removal when a faction of the tribe, led by John Ridge, signed the Treaty of New Echota. Elias Boudinot initially opposed removal, but changed his mind because he did not think it could be stopped. He focused instead on securing the best terms possible for the Cherokee people. Chief John Ross and his supporters, who were mostly traditionalists, had strongly opposed removal, but once in Indian Territory they made the most out of rebuilding. The onset of the Civil War led to renewed division.
Civil War battle sites. More than one hundred small engagements or skirmishes took place in what would become Oklahoma. The most significant action took place at the Battle of Honey Springs in 1863.
Courtesy of Brad Watkins, PhD.
Ross remained a powerful leader on the eve of the Civil War. He called for the tribe to stay neutral. He worried about the consequences of choosing sides, any side. When pressed, he initially sided with the Confederacy but later switched sides to support the Union. Ross spent much of the war in Washington, DC, trying to secure support for the Cherokee Nation, whose people were suffering from hunger and violence. He remained principal chief of the Cherokee Nation until his death in 1866. In contrast, his rival, Stand Watie, who was elected chief by a band of his own followers, became a general for the Confederate army. (He was the last Confederate general to surrender.) However, the US government always recognized Ross as the legitimate leader of the Cherokee people. Other Native nations experienced similar divisions over the Civil War. In the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Opothleyahola and his followers supported neutrality and were more inclined toward the Union while William McIntosh and his followers supported the Confederacy. In the winter of 1861, tensions became so great that Opothleyahola and his followers fled to Kansas for refuge. The journey of these Muscogees to Kansas (sometimes called the Trail of Blood on Ice) led to great suffering. A lack of supplies, extreme cold, and attacks from Confederate troops resulted in many deaths. The splits within both the Cherokee Nation and Muscogee (Creek) Nation illustrate how deep the divisions were not only within these two Native nations but throughout Indian Territory and indeed the whole country.
The war put Oklahoma tribes in an impossible situation. All were eventually forced to choose sides. For the Five Tribes, including the Cherokee Nation, slavery and the geographical location of their native homelands meant that they were culturally closer to the South than the North. However, it was the South that had pushed so hard for them to leave their ancestral homelands. At different points during the war members of each of the Five Tribes fought for both sides. And at one time or another, especially early in the war, members of the Five Tribes and the Confederacy entered into alliances. These did not always represent the full will of the tribe (especially in the case of the Seminoles, Cherokees, and Muscogees), who had regiments that fought on both sides. Some of the tribes switched sides over the course of the war.
Early on in the war, tribes in Indian Territory, such as the Wichitas, Caddos, Plains Comanches, Quapaws, Osages, Senecas, and Shawnees, allied themselves with the Confederacy, but as the war continued many of them changed their loyalties, just as members of the Five Tribes did. They did so for a variety of reasons. Some saw the switch as an act of sovereignty while others made the shift in opposition to slavery or because they resented the mistreatment they received at the hands of Confederate forces. It is important to remember that Indigenous people in Indian Territory were citizens of their Native nations, not citizens of the United States. Their independent nationhood further complicated their place in the conflict between the North and South. They were caught in the middle, and ultimately suffered a great deal.
More than one hundred small engagements or skirmishes took place in present-day Oklahoma, but the most significant conflict was the Battle of Honey Springs, which took place on the lands of the Honey Springs settlement in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation on July 17, 1863. Indigenous fighters outnumbered whites on both sides of the battle.
The Confederate Indian Brigade was led by Brigadier General Douglas H. Cooper while Major General James G. Blunt commanded the First Division Army of the Frontier, fighting on the side of the Union. Over 9,000 men participated in the battle, including the First Kansas Colored Infantry Regiment, an all-Black Union Army regiment. Union forces declared victory in the battle, suffering fewer than 100 casualties while they stopped the advance of Confederates, who suffered nearly 500 casualties.
This sketch from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper depicts the end of the Battle of Honey Springs, which took place on July 17, 1863, and was the largest Civil War engagement in Indian Territory.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Ultimately, the war proved just as destructive for the tribes as it did for the rest of the country, if not more so. Indigenous people experienced the horrors of war firsthand no matter which side they served. Like many white Americans during the Civil War, Indigenous communities found themselves divided over which side they supported. And like others who lived through the Civil War, they too lost their belongings, suffered from food shortages, disease, and violence. They lost family members and faced great uncertainty. Thousands of civilians from the Five Tribes lived in refugee camps in the bordering states of Texas (Choctaws and Chickasaws) or Kansas (Muscogees, Cherokees, and Seminoles). Roughly 25 percent of the population of the Five Tribes died during the Civil War from fighting, starvation, and diseases like cholera.
Supporters on both sides sometimes sought opportunities to exact revenge against the opposing side. Violence became an everyday reality for many. Sallie Peacheater Manus (Cherokee) grew up in Indian Territory and was a young woman during the Civil War. Her father had opposed removal but sided with the Union during the war. He came home after losing his eyesight, and Sallie Manus recalled in an interview having to hide her father in a cave, then covering the opening with brush and grass, to protect him from Confederate supporters looking for revenge against those who supported the Union. She also described the food shortages that she and others endured during the war. She said that dead soldiers were buried in such shallow graves that hungry scavengers, including hogs, would dig them up and eat them. Eventually, Manus and others had to stop eating pork because the quality of the hog meat became so poor. This was only one of many problems Indigenous women faced during the war. There were several times when what little food she had was stolen from her by hungry troops or roaming thieves.
After the Union regained control of Fort Gibson in 1863, Sallie Manus was able to travel to the fort for supplies. “I was given a great number of shoes and other things,” she recalled, and she was told to share with her neighbors what she did not need herself. When she returned home and began distributing shoes and supplies, she “had those starving women, some of whom were barefoot, looking up to me like I were a God.” Sallie Peacheater Manus survived the Civil War but narrowly escaped death on more than one occasion. Violence against both men and women grew commonplace. She recalled a harrowing experience where she encountered a group of Confederate soldiers who were about to shoot her. A former neighbor, who was a minister serving with the Confederacy, recognized her and stopped the soldiers from shooting her, saying, “This war will not be won by killing the women, I want her released.” Others not so lucky. Many civilian women were brutalized and killed during the war.
At times the shared experience of deprivation blurred the lines between supporters of the Union and supporters of the Confederacy. Those who lived and remain in present-day Oklahoma during the Civil War suffered unimaginable hardships. And the end of the war ushered in a new era of difficulties regardless of which side Indigenous people had supported. After the war ended, even though some had been loyal to the Union or had switched sides to support the Union, members of the Five Tribes were harshly punished for their earlier support of the Confederacy. The Reconstruction Treaties of 1866 took land and other resources from them. The result was another phase of removal, where more tribes were forced to relocate to what would become Oklahoma. The treaties also set in motion the weakening of tribal governments and sovereignty.