Allotment: The Dawes Act and the Curtis Act

The Dawes Act in 1887 and the Curtis Act in 1898 challenged tribal sovereignty. The Dawes Act, also called the General Allotment Act, called for the dissolution of tribal land held in common and instead the parceling out of individual allotments of 160 acres to individual Native American men, women and children. According to the law, the land would be held in trust by the federal government for twenty-five years. All allottees would be granted US citizenship and would be subject to the laws of their state and local governments. “Surplus” lands—the tribal land remaining following allotment—would be purchased by the federal government and sold or redistributed to non-Native citizens. The Curtis Act called for the dissolution, or breaking up, of all tribal governments in Indian Territory by 1906.

In the United States, the Dawes Act remained at the center of federal Indian policy for the next fifty years, until it was replaced by the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. It dissolved tribal governments and land holdings and integrated Native Americans as individuals rather than as members of their communities. It resulted in massive transfers of land from communal tribal holdings to individual Native holdings and individual non-Native holdings. Between 1881 and 1934, Indigenous land holdings in the United States declined by two-thirds, or more than 100 million acres.

In Oklahoma, the Dawes Act did not pertain to the Five Tribes. Instead, the Dawes Commission established its headquarters in Muskogee, Indian Territory, and negotiated agreements with each of the Five Tribes. Under the Curtis Act of 1898, the commission enrolled more than 250,000 people who applied to have their names placed on the Dawes Rolls and to be allotted land. Following allotment, the remaining lands were deemed surplus and opened to homesteading. The Unassigned Lands, for example, were opened to homesteading under the Homestead Act, resulting in the land runs that followed.

Chitto Harjo (Muscogee Creek) and Crazy Snake Rebellion

In the decades leading to Oklahoma statehood, resistance to allotment persisted among portions of tribal members in Indian Territory. Some Native individuals took action to resist allotment in Indian Territory. The Crazy Snake Rebellion is an example of a movement whose purpose was to resist allotment. Harjo, also called Crazy Snake, did not want the federal government to dissolve Native nations and require their members to accept allotments. Chitto Harjo and others rejected both the established Muscogee (Creek) Nation and American government authority. They also resisted allotment and, later, they resisted statehood. Harjo and others refused to document their Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizenship through enrollment with the Dawes Commission.

FIG. 5.19

Chitto Harjo (Crazy Snake)

Chitto Harjo, also known as Crazy Snake, led a rebellion against the allotment of Muscogee land in an attempt to protect tribal unity and sovereignty. He refused to file for an allotment himself. Beginning in 1900 he used different means to halt the allotment process, including a visit to Washington, DC, to lobby President Theodore Roosevelt.

Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

In 1901, Harjo proposed a new Muscogee government with a new capital in the town of Hickory Ground. Harjo formed a separate government with its own laws. These laws prohibited tribal members from accepting allotments, employing white laborers, or renting land to non-Muscogees. Some estimates indicate that at least 5,000 Muscogee (Creek) people participated in the movement, or about a third of the population of the Muscogee Creek Nation, including Muscogee Freedpeople. At a time when Jim Crow segregation and violence were on the rise in the South, the Muscogee Creek Nation was a place where Black people held positions of political authority, could vote, and govern their own towns.

Among the Muscogee Creeks, resistance turned into violence as the uprising became more militant. On January 25, 1901, a US marshal arrested Harjo and almost one hundred others for their armed rebellion. The Crazy Snake Rebellion was short-lived but significant because it represented a large, interracial movement opposing allotment in eastern Oklahoma. In 1906, Harjo traveled to Washington, DC, to meet with President Theodore Roosevelt to try to persuade him to uphold the 1832 treaty the federal government had made with the Muscogee Creek Nation. Although he did get to meet with President Roosevelt, his efforts were unsuccessful.

FIG. 5.18

Creek Council House, Okmulgee

Founded in 1868, the Creek Council House in Okmulgee, Muscogee (Creek) Nation, included the government offices of the principal chief, Supreme Court, and the National Council. The Muscogee Nation was forced to vacate the Council House when Oklahoma became a state in 1907, and the Council House was eventually sold as federal government property to the city of Okmulgee in 1919. The Muscogee Nation regained the Council House in 2010.

Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Creek Council House

The people of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation originally lived in present-day Georgia and Alabama. Muscogee towns were located as far north as the Tallapoosa River in northwest Georgia, where the people were known as the Upper Creeks. And Muscogee towns were located as far south as the Chattahoochee River in southeast Alabama, where the people were known as the Lower Creeks. After the United States passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had to move to the new Indian Territory, into what is now Oklahoma. The old Creek Confederacy, a coalition of towns, agreed to form a new government for both Lower Creek and Upper Creek people in 1840. This worked until the Civil War threatened to shatter their unity.

The Civil War left the Muscogee (Creek) people politically and socially torn. Some supported the Union. Others fought for the Confederacy. Some wanted to divide into two distinct nations because of opposing viewpoints. But determined tribal leaders decided a constitution would help unify the Muscogee (Creek) people. They built schools, churches, and public houses.

The Creek Council House, located in the town of Okmulgee, was the Muscogee Nation’s seat of government in Indian Territory from 1878 until Oklahoma statehood in 1907. The Council House included the government offices of the principal chief (the executive branch of government), the Supreme Court (the judicial branch of government), and the National Council (the legislative branch of government). The Council House was an important symbol of tribal sovereignty and unity. When Oklahoma became a state, the federal government abolished the Muscogee Nation’s sovereignty and banned the nation from using the Council House for government purposes.

In 1919, the federal government sold the Creek Council House to the city of Okmulgee. The Creek Indian Memorial Association made it a museum in 1923. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. The Muscogee Nation gained ownership of the Creek Council House and museum in 2010 and renovated the building in 2018. Today the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Cultural Center & Archives manages the Creek Council House, also known as the Creek National Capitol.

Guardianship and Graft

Allotment regulations often removed Indigenous people’s authority over their own land. From the federal government’s perspective, most full blood Native Americans were “incompetent” and required court-appointed guardians to sell or buy land. Fullbloods were restricted from selling their lands for twenty-five years from the date of their allotment, unless they could obtain special permission from Congress. In addition, the law required guardians for Native children until they turned eighteen. These guardians often profited from the allotments of children in their care by leasing the allotments. Some guardians supervised the allotments of several hundred children. Guardians, both Native and non-Native, were supposed to be respected citizens of the community, often lawyers, missionaries, bankers. And yet they participated in one of the most corrupt wealth transfers in US history.

The restrictions meant to protect Native Americans and their property may have made graft, or acquiring and leasing Native American allotments, possible. White speculators known as “grafters” were stealing the land from Indigenous people. Restricted land allotments could not be sold for a period of years, but they could be leased for as long as ninety-nine years. So grafters might lease restricted lands for $10 per year and compile several hundred leases. In 1902, Muscogee (Creek) chief Pleasant Porter determined that grafters had already leased more than 1 million acres of Muscogee land. Although the US Senate launched an investigation and filed a two-volume report, the federal government did little to redress the confusion, corruption, and land redistribution resulting from allotment.

FIG. 5.20

Dr. Angie Debo

Dr. Angie Debo, by Charles Banks Wilson, 1985. This portrait of the acclaimed Oklahoma historian hangs in the Oklahoma State Capitol. Historian Angie Debo wrote nine books and many articles on Oklahoma history, Native American history, and the history of the American West.

Courtesy of the Capitol Art Collection, Oklahoma Arts Council.

Historian Angie Debo

Angie Debo was a notable Oklahoma historian. She wrote nine books and many articles on Oklahoma history, Native American history, and the history of the American West. Her family moved from Kansas to Marshall, Oklahoma Territory, when she was almost nine. She taught in one-room schoolhouses starting at the age of sixteen while she waited for the high school to open in Marshall, where she graduated with the first class at the age of twenty-three.

Debo received the PhD in history from the University of Oklahoma. Her dissertation on the history of the Choctaw Nation became a prize-winning book. That book, And Still the Waters Run (1940), describes how graft and guardianship were used to cheat Native people out of their land. Debo also details how federal policies worked to dissolve tribal governments prior to Oklahoma statehood.

Debo was a scholar-activist, who through her writings stood for social justice. Her manuscript collection can be viewed online or by making an appointment to visit the Angie Debo Collection in the Archives of the Oklahoma State University Library in Stillwater. Her portrait hangs in the Oklahoma State Capitol.