A natural result of land cessions by the Indians to the U. S. Government was the establishment of reservations for the natives. This was necessary not only in order to provide them with homes and with land for cultivation, but to avoid disputes in regard to boundaries and to bring them, more easily under control of the Government by confining them to given limits. This policy, which has been followed in Canada under both
French and English control, and also to some extent by the colonies, was inaugurated by the United States in 1786. It nay he attributed primarily to the increase of the white population and the consequent necessity of confining the aboriginal population to narrower limits. This involved a very important, even radical, change in the habits and customs of the Indians, and was the initiatory step toward a reliance upon agricultural pursuits
for subsistence. Reservations in early days, and to a limited extent more recently, were formed chiefly as the result of cessions of land; thus a tribe, in ceding land that it held by original occupancy, reserved from the cession a specified and definite part thereof, and such part was held under the original right of occupancy, but with the consent of the Government, as it was generally expressly stated in the treaty defining the bounds
that the part so reserved was "allotted to" or "reserved for" the given Indians, thus recognizing title in the Government. However, as time passed, the method of establishing reservations varied, as is apparent front the following return, showing the method of establishment of the various reservations, given by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in his Report for 1890: By Executive order, 56; by Executive order under authority of Congress,
6; by act of Congress, 28; by treaty, with boundaries defined or enlarged by Executive order, 15; by treaty or agreement and act of Congress, 5; by unratified treaty, 1; by treaty
or agreement, 51.
The setting aside of reservations by treaty was terminated by the act
of Mar. 3, 1871, which brought transactions with the Indians raider
the immediate control of Congress and substituted simple agreements
for solemn treaties. By sundry subsequent laws the matter has been
placed in control of the President. Reservations established by
Executive order without au act of Congress were not held to be
permanent before the general allotment act of Feb. 8, 1887, under
which the tenure has been materially changed, and all reservations,
whether created by Executive order, by act of Congress, or by treaty,
are permanent. Reservations established by Executive order under
authority of Congress are those which have been authorized by acts of
Congress and their limits defined by Executive order, or first
established by Executive order and subsequently confirmed by Congress.
The Indian titles which have been recognized by the Government appear
to have been
(1) the original right of occupancy, and
(2) the title to
their reservations, which differs in most cases from the original
title in the fact that it is derived front the United States. There
have been some titles, and a few of them still exist, which the Indian
Bureau deems exceptions to this rule, as where the reservation was
formed by restricting the original areas or where reservations have
been patented to tribes by the Government.
Examples of the latter
class are the patents to the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek nations. In
a few instances the Indians purchased the lands forming in whole or in
part their reservations. The construction given to these by the Indian
Bureau and the courts is that they are not titles in fee simple, for
they convey no power of alienation except to the United States,
neither are they the same as the ordinary title to occupancy; they are
"a base, qualified, or determinable fee," with a possibility of
reversion to the United States only, "and the authorities of these
nations may cut, sell, and dispose of their timber, and may permit
mining and grazing, within the limits of their respective tracts, by
their own citizens." The act of Mar. 1, 1889, establishing, a United
States court in ,Indian Territory, repealed all laws having the effect
of preventing the Five Civilized Tribes in said Territory (Cherokee,
Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole) from entering into leases or
contracts with others than their own citizens for mining coal for a
period not exceeding ten years. As a general rule the Indians on a
reservation could make no leases of land, sales of standing timber, or
grants of wining privileges or rights of way to railways without the
authority of Congress. On the other hand, it was obligatory upon the
Government to prevent any intrusion, trespass, or settlement on the
lands of any tribe or nation of Indians unless the tribe or nation had
given consent by agreement or treaty.
The idea of removing the Indians residing
east of the Mississippi to
reservations west of that river was a policy adopted at an early date.
The first official notice of it appears in the act of Mar. 26, 1804,
"erecting Louisiana into two territories, and providing the temporary
government thereof." By treaty with the Choctaw in 1820 they had been
assigned a new home in the west, to include a considerable portion of west
Arkansas, with all that part of the present Oklahoma south of the South
Canadian and Arkansas Rivers. In 1825 President Monroe reported to the
Senate a formal "plan of colonization or removal" (see Schoolcraft,
III, 573 et seq., 1853), of all tribes then residing
east of the
Mississippi, to the same general western region. In accordance with
this plan the present Oklahoma, with the greater portion of what is
now Kansas, was soon after constituted a territory, under the name
of "Indian Territory," as a permanent home for the tribes to be
removed from the settled portions of the United States. Most of the
northern portion of the territory was acquired by treaty purchase from
the Osage and Kansa. A series of treaties was then inaugurated by
which, before the close of 1840, almost all the principal Eastern
tribes and tribal remnants had been removed to the " Indian
Territory," the five important Southern tribes Cherokee, Creek,
Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole, being guaranteed autonomy under the
style of "Nations." By subsequent legislation Kansas was detached
from the Territory, most of the emigrant tribes within the bounds of
Kansas being again removed to new reservations south of the boundary
line. By other and later treaties lands within the same Territory were
assigned to the actual native tribes, Kiowa, Comanche, Wichita,
Cheyenne, etc., whose claims had been entirely overlooked in the first
negotiations, which considered only the Osage and Kansa along the
eastern border. Other tribes were brought in at various periods from
Texas, Nebraska, and farther north, to which were added, as prisoners of
war, the Modoc of California (1873), tho Nez Percé of Oregon and
Idaho (1878), and the Chiricahua Apache of Arizona (1889), until the
Indian population of the Territory comprised some 40 officially
recognized tribes.
An unoccupied district near the center of the Territory, known as
Oklahoma, had become the subject of controversy with intruding white
settlers, and was finally thrown open to settlement in 1889. In 1890
the whole western portion of Indian Territory was created into a
separate territory under the name of Oklahoma. In the meantime, under
provisions of an allotment act passed in 1887 (see
Land tenure),
agreements were being negotiated with the resident tribes for the
opening of the reservation to white settlement. In 1906 a similar
arrangement was consummated with the five autonomous tribes of the
eastern section, or Indian Territory, the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw,
Chickasaw, and Seminole, together with the several small tribes in the
northeast corner of Indian Territory. In the following year, 1907, the
whole of the former Indian Territory was created into a single state
under the name of Oklahoma.
According to the report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, the
number of reservations in the United States in 1908, including the 19
Spanish grants to the Pueblo Indians, was 161, aggregating 52,013,010
acres, as follows:
Source: The Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico,
Frederick Webb Hodge. 1906, Bureau of American Ethnology, Government Printing
Office.
Online Publication: The manuscript was scanned and
then ocr'd. Minimal editing has been done, and readers can and should expect
some errors in the textual output.
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