IT Administrator
Billie Walsh

Assitant IT Administrator
Linda Simpson

    The Indian Territory was land set aside within the United States for the use of Native Americans. The general borders were set by the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834. The Indian Territory had its roots in the British Royal Proclamation of 1763, which limited white settlement to Crown lands east of the Appalachian Mountains. Indian Territory was reduced under British administration and again after the American Revolution, until it included only lands west of the Mississippi River.
    In time, the Indian Territory was gradually reduced to what is now Oklahoma; then, with the organization of Oklahoma Territory in 1890, to just the eastern half of the area.
    The Indian Territory served as the destination for the policy of Indian Removal, a policy pursued intermittently by American presidents early in the nineteenth century, but aggressively pursued by President Andrew Jackson after the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Five Civilized Tribes in the South were the most prominent tribes displaced by the policy, a relocation that came to be known as the Trail of Tears during the Choctaw removals starting in 1831. The trail ended in what is now Arkansas and Oklahoma, where there were already many Native Americans living in the territory, as well as whites and escaped slaves. Other tribes, such as the Delaware, Cheyenne, and Apache were also forced to relocate to the Indian territory.
    The Five Civilized Tribes set up towns such as Tulsa, Ardmore, Tahlequah, Tishomingo, Muskogee, and others, which often became some of the larger towns in the state. They also brought their African slaves to Oklahoma, which added to the African-American population in the state. Members of these tribes fought primarily on the side of the Confederacy during the American Civil War in Indian territory. Following the Battle of Doaksville, Brigadier General Stand Watie, a Confederate commander of the Cherokee nation, became the last Confederate general to surrender in the American Civil War on 23 June 1865.
   The citizens of Indian Territory tried, in 1905, to gain admission to the union as the State of Sequoyah, but were rebuffed by Congress and an Administration which did not want two new Western states, Sequoyah and Oklahoma. The State of Sequoyah was the proposed name for a state to be established in the eastern part of present-day Oklahoma. In 1905, faced by proposals to end their tribal governments, Native Americans of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory proposed such a state as a means to retain some control of their land. Their intention was to have a state under Native American constitution and rule. The proposed state was named in honor of Sequoyah, the member of the Cherokee Nation who created a writing system for the Cherokee language.
   Citizens then joined to seek admission of a single state to the Union. With Oklahoma statehood in November 1907, Indian Territory was extinguished

Index to the Final Rolls of Citizens and Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes in Indian Territory (Dawes)

Nation

Nation Administrator

Linda Simpson