How The States Got Their Shapes Too Part 13

Technically, Dundy's decision applied only to Standing Bear and his companions. If, however, the Supreme Court upheld his decision, it would apply to American Indians nationwide. The Hayes administration feared that, because of the wrongs done to the Poncas, not to mention the legal basis for Standing Bear's case, the Supreme Court might well uphold Dundy's decision.

The case reverberated in other directions as well. It stirred public sentiments regarding the treatment of Indians. The Senate launched an investigation into the manner in which the Poncas had been relocated (at which no one testified about the Senate having ratified a treaty with the Sioux that conflicted with a treaty with the Poncas). At these hearings, the most significant reverberation of Dundy's decision was voiced by Interior Secretary Schurz. Asked about the future security of tribal lands in the Indian Territory, he answered: I have no doubt that, in the course of time, the land in the Indian Territory not occupied by Indians, will be occupied by whites. But there are certain things that ought to precede that development. The t.i.tle to the lands occupied by the Indians ought to be ... divided among the Indians in severalty ... each upon his own farm, like the white people, and get individual t.i.tles.... When such an arrangement as this has once been made, the question whether that part of the Indian Territory not occupied by Indians shall be open to occupation by whites changes entirely.

To shift Indian land from tribal ownership to individual ownership-and with it, the right of each Indian to sell his land-would end the tribal way of life in all but its spiritual aspects (the dismantling of which was being handled by missionaries and their schools). On the other hand, as tribes had increasingly been forced to relinquish good land for desolate land in return for payments, rations, and supplies, the tribal way of life had become vulnerable to ma.s.sive graft and fraud on the part of government agents, their suppliers, and on occasion the Indians' own leaders.

Among the committee members hearing this suggestion was Ma.s.sachusetts Senator Henry L. Dawes. Quite likely, Dawes played a role in getting the suggestion into the record, for seven years after the 1880 hearings, the Dawes Act mandated exactly the change in land ownership that Schurz had described. For better or for worse, Indian life would never be the same (see "Alfalfa Bill Murray, Edward P. McCabe, and Chief Green McCurtain" in this book).

For journalist Tibbles, the news event ended with Dundy's decision ... unless a new event were to occur. Tibbles therefore replaced his reporter's hat with that of an impresario and undertook arrangements for a speaking tour for Standing Bear-a challenging project, since the speaker spoke no English. To serve as a translator, Tibbles arranged for an appealing young woman from the Omaha tribe, Susette LaFlesche, whose uncle was one of the Ponca chiefs. Miss LaFlesche spoke impeccable English, having recently graduated from the Elizabeth Inst.i.tute for Young Ladies in New Jersey. Tibbles introduced her to the American public using the English translation of her Omaha name, Bright Eyes. Five months after the court case concluded, the trio spoke at a church gathering in Omaha; in October 1879 they began a nationwide tour. The Chicago Inter-Ocean found it to be a highly polished performance: Last evening at the New England Congregational Church ... Bright Eyes, a comely young Indian maiden ... attired in Indian costume ... [detailed] the wrongs committed by the federal authorities ... in simple but forcible style.... Mr. Tibbles, who seems to be a sort of a manager for the Indian troupe ... gave a bragging account of what he had done for the Poncas.... Standing Bear, the Ponca Chief, was then introduced and spoke in his own language, which was translated by Bright Eyes. The chief ... wore a bright blanket in sash form and a heavy necklace.

Meanwhile, back among the Poncas in the Indian Territory, life continued as if nothing had ever happened. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported in early November: Some time ago, a report was received by [Indian] Commissioner Hayt from the Ponca Reservation ... that Big Snake ... who last summer caused his arrest and imprisonment for a month at Fort Reno for brutal and disorderly conduct, was making himself a terror to the Indians as well as the agency employees. His rearrest was ordered.... Big Snake, resisting arrest, was shot dead by a soldier. The occurrence caused considerable excitement among the Indians, but it was soon quieted.

Despite the death of Standing Bear's brother (and, days later, the death of Tibbles's wife), the show went on. The tour made its way to Boston, where standing-room-only audiences energetically responded. Carefully ch.o.r.eographed or not, the event made its point: Indians were people with the same inalienable rights as other Americans to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That point became ironic as they arrived at their final destination, New York City. In the Fifth Avenue hotel where they were staying, Standing Bear mentioned to Tibbles that he was going to the hotel's barber shop to get a haircut. Tibbles was aghast; he insisted that Standing Bear keep his braids. The day after the tour ended, Standing Bear got a haircut and changed into his normal clothes.5 Standing Bear returned to his ancestral land, but it was now desolate. The Poncas were gone. The Sioux had never settled there. The homes and structures had been demolished on government orders.

But big things were about to happen, beginning with the arrival of the Central Pacific Railroad. The only thing in its way, from Nebraska's point of view, was the state line. The now extraordinarily valuable land was in the Dakota Territory. To remedy this, Nebraska Senator Alvin Saunders sought to relocate that segment of his state's border northward to the Missouri River. Dakotans were not happy, but in 1882, lacking voting representation in Congress, they had to rely on others to speak on their behalf. None spoke, though some asked: Sen. Plumb: What is the feeling of the people of Dakota about it? We are taking away what is apparently valuable property from the Territory of Dakota, which is here seeking admission as a state. It seems to me we ought to have regard for the wishes of those people....

Sen. Saunders: This bill was before the Senate more than a year ago....

Sen. Hale: Is there any population there?

Sen. Saunders: There is no population....

Sen. Teller: I should like to inquire if the Indians are not affected by it? ...

Sen. Dawes: The Indians have all been removed to the Indian Territory.

Sen. Edmunds: At the point of the bayonet.

Sen. Dawes: They have been removed at the point of the bayonet, so that the bill does not affect them.

Relocation of Nebraska border Congress relocated the boundary.

Standing Bear lived out his remaining days on his ancestral land along the Niobrara River. Thomas Tibbles and Bright Eyes married each other in 1882 and continued to write on Indian issues. Other Poncas returned to what, by then, were their individually owned plots of lands. Most of the tribe, however, now settled and adjusting to the Indian Territory, opted to remain where they were. Standing Bear died in 1908 and was buried on his allotment of land in Nebraska. In the 1920s the property was sold to a white farmer who plowed the land, with the result that the location of Standing Bear's remains is now unknown.

HAWAII.

LILI'UOKALANI AND SANFORD DOLE

Bordering on Empire

They were followed by her Majesty the Queen, dressed in a light colored silk which tended to add somewhat to her dark complexion and negro-like features, and more plainly exhibiting in the facial outlines a look of savage determination.... Next came four homely ladies-in-waiting, dressed in the loud colors so much admired by all dark-colored races.... And then the dignified [white] justices of the supreme court, whose manly bearing and intellectual appearance gave a relief to what had preceded. One of them, Mr. Dole, afterwards became President of the Republic.

-LUCIEN YOUNG, THE REAL HAWAII, 1899 Of all the American boundaries, Hawaii's is, far and away, the most far and away. How and why did the United States extend its border to such an extreme?

In 1893 citizens in Hawaii overthrew Queen Lili'uokalani, replacing the island chain's monarchy with a democratic republic. Being a small, remote nation, the new Hawaiian government sought the protection of a powerful but like-minded democracy, the United States, in the form of annexation.

Or one could say: In 1893 a cabal of wealthy white people living in Hawaii overthrew Queen Lili'uokalani and established a government in which representation was gerrymandered to ensure that the white population would rule. The first president of this new government was Sanford Dole. Since Hawaii's white population-composed primarily of Americans or descendants of Americans-was a small minority in this remote chain of islands, Dole and his a.s.sociates sought increased protection and control through annexation to the United States.

Both of these versions of events are true. But there are buts in both. Numerous white people in Hawaii, including some wealthy owners of sugar plantations, opposed the overthrow of the monarchy; others opposed annexation to the United States. Multiple issues were involved. Each of those issues remains a major factor in American politics today: involvement in foreign affairs, cheap immigrant labor, racism, and an issue that was new at the time: the power of j.a.pan.

American annexation of Hawaii had first been proposed in the mid-nineteenth century by Hawaiians. King Kamehameha V feared that his realm was being eyed by Europe's colonial empires, particularly France. Since Hawaii had only scant experience with foreign governments, its king turned to the few whites living on his islands for advice. They urged numerous changes, including an elected legislature to advise the king and a cabinet to administer government functions, and suggested that the king ask the United States for protection since that nation shared Hawaii's value of self-rule. Kamehameha initially resisted this last idea, but in 1851, fearing that a French attack was imminent, he sent a formal request to the United States seeking cosovereignty in the event that France invaded.

But the United States declined. Secretary of State Daniel Webster told Kamehameha that while "the government of the United States was the first to acknowledge the national existence of the Hawaiian government ... acknowledging the independence of the Islands, and of the government established over them, it was not seeking to promote any peculiar object of its own ... or to exercise any sinister influence itself over the counsels of Hawaii."1 Even as Webster wrote those words, Americans 3,000 miles from his desk were developing a coastal region the nation had only recently acquired: California. Its highly populated port city of San Francisco const.i.tuted both a market for, and a direct connection with, Hawaii. While American missionaries had lived in Hawaii since 1820, a new motive sent a second wave of Americans and, to a lesser extent, Europeans. Hawaii's climate and soil were perfect for growing sugarcane. Big money could be made.

Queen Lili'uokalani (1838-1917) (photo credit 39.2) Sanford Dole (1844-1926) (photo credit 39.1) Because it benefited everyone, sugar production quickly grew to the point that, in 1855, a free-trade agreement was negotiated by President Franklin Pierce and Hawaii. But sugar producers in the United States successfully lobbied the Senate to reject the treaty. In 1867 California sugar refiners lobbied the Senate to ratify a more limited free-trade treaty. That same year the purchase of Alaska reflected the fact that the nation's att.i.tudes about boundaries were expanding beyond the continental United States. President Andrew Johnson expressed the new view in his statement to Congress on the proposed trade agreement with Hawaii: I am aware that upon the question of further extending our possessions it is apprehended by some that our political system cannot successfully be applied to an area more extended than our continent; but the conviction is rapidly gaining ground in the American mind that, with increased facilities for intercommunication between all portions of the earth, the principles of free government ... would prove of sufficient strength and breadth to comprehend within their sphere and influence the civilized nations of the world.

Though att.i.tudes were changing, they were not completely changed. The Senate again rejected the treaty.

An additional reason for the Senate's reluctance to ratify either treaty can be inferred from its third time at bat. In 1873 the Senate did ratify a trade agreement with Hawaii ... and Britain immediately protested. Quite likely, until this time, the Senate had not thought it wise to risk military conflict in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with the world's preeminent empire.

Once the United States and Hawaii had established this free-trade agreement, the islands' sugar industry expanded exponentially. Not everyone in Hawaii was thrilled, however. "Some foresaw that this treaty with the United States might become the entering wedge for the loss of our independence," Queen Lili'uokalani later reflected in her memoirs. "What would be the consequences should the Islands acquire too great a commercial attraction, too large a foreign population and interests?"

The fear of too large a foreign population soon took on an additional dimension. The sugar plantations could produce far more sugar than Hawaii had natives to provide the labor. Workers would have to be imported. The white plantation owners were as cognizant of the risk they were taking by importing foreign workers as Hawaii's king had been in entering into the free-trade treaty. Initially the plantation owners paid for immigrants from Portugal, which had a surplus labor supply. (China and j.a.pan, too, had a surplus of workers, but the planters considered the Portuguese, being Europeans, to be a more "desirable for permanent settlement.")2 Providing transportation from Portugal, however, proved to be so costly that planters began opting for Chinese and j.a.panese workers. As feared, these immigrants came to const.i.tute half the population over the next fifteen years. Native Hawaiians now made up roughly 45 percent of their nation, with the white population, which controlled nearly all the wealth, const.i.tuting the remaining 5 percent.3 While political power remained in the hands of the monarch, the rapid change-and lack of change-led to racial, religious, and political friction.

By the summer of 1887, white residents had acquired influence with a sufficient number of King Kalkaua's advisers that the king, not knowing whom among those closest to him he could trust, acceded to what became known as the "bayonet" const.i.tution. It provided for voting representation by the people, while preserving power for the n.o.bility in a creatively revolutionary way. To be or vote for a representative, a citizen had to be a Hawaiian or white male, thereby excluding the nation's 25,000 or so Chinese and j.a.panese residents. To be or vote for a n.o.ble, however, one had to be a Hawaiian or white male with an annual income of at least $600 or $3,000 in property. Few Hawaiians had that.

Kalkaua's heir to the throne was his sister Lili'uokalani, who opposed these changes, despite the fact that she was steeped in Western culture. Born in 1838, Lili'uokalani had been educated at elite Hawaiian boarding schools run by missionaries. She was well versed in history, literature, science, and math, and a gifted pianist and composer. Nevertheless, when she ascended the thrown in 1891, Lili'uokalani embarked on an effort to restore power to-depending on one's point of view-Hawaii's natives or herself: I inquired at the opening of the cabinet meeting what was the business of the day, to which reply was made that it was necessary that I should sign without any delay their commissions, that thus they might proceed to the discharge of their duties. "But gentlemen," said I, "I expect you to send in your resignations before I can act." My reasoning was that, if they were new cabinet ministers, why should they appeal to me to appoint them to the places that they already filled?

Lili'uokalani's position was legally sound, and she won the right to nominate new ministers. Since, under the "bayonet" const.i.tution, the monarch could not dismiss a cabinet member after the nominee had been approved by the legislature, Lili'uokalani chose carefully those who would, in effect, run the country. She and her advisers also began to draft a new const.i.tution that would extend greater voting rights to nonwhite citizens. That task was sidetracked, however, when the legislature rejected her cabinet nominees. A tug of war began, ostensibly over nominee negotiations but, as Lili'uokalani knew, really over something far more profound. Hawaii's wealth had enriched and empowered the white population, but, as Lili'uokalani wrote, "sooner or later [it will] ... also elevate the ma.s.ses of the Hawaiian people into a self-governing cla.s.s."

Indeed, Lili'uokalani's struggle roused the nation's nonwhite residents. In response, the white residents formed a Committee on Public Safety, which approached the U.S. commissioner to Hawaii for protection. He in turn instructed the commander of the USS Boston, at anchor in Pearl Harbor, to dispatch its Marines. Lili'uokalani later recalled: At about 2:30 PM, Tuesday [January 17, 1893], the establishment of the Provisional Government was proclaimed, and nearly fifteen minutes later Mr. J. S. Walker [president of the Legislative a.s.sembly] came and told me "that he had come on a painful duty; that the opposition party had requested that I should abdicate." ... Since the troops of the United States had been landed to support the revolutionists by the order of the American minister, it would be impossible for us to make any resistance.

Later that day, the chairman of the Committee on Public Safety declared to a ma.s.s gathering outside the government building that Lili'uokalani had abdicated and that a provisional government would rule until union with the United States was completed.4 Sanford Dole had been selected as president of the provisional government.

Dole, the son of missionary parents, had been born in Honolulu in 1844. Though he left Hawaii to attend Williams College in Ma.s.sachusetts and was, for a brief time, an attorney in Boston, he returned to practice law and was elected to the legislature in 1884. Three years later, he partic.i.p.ated in the delegation that had maneuvered King Kalkaua into signing the "bayonet" const.i.tution, transferring power to the white minority. Dole became a justice of the Hawaiian Supreme Court that same year.

Not all white people in Hawaii supported Dole and his colleagues in their quest for annexation, since the 1882 U.S. prohibition of Chinese immigration would be applied to Hawaii, thus ending a main supply of imported labor. On the other hand, the United States had not restricted j.a.panese immigration. And j.a.pan, as newspapers were beginning to report, was becoming a force to be reckoned with-and was already the nation Hawaii most feared. "The Hawaiian government is now endeavoring to check further j.a.panese immigration," the New York Times reported in September 1897, noting that Dole's government feared "j.a.panese influence and numbers may become too powerful and possibly overthrow the republic and bring about Hawaiian annexation to j.a.pan." Previously, the November 1896 issue of Harper's Monthly had included an article ent.i.tled "The New j.a.pan." It coincided with news reports regarding j.a.pan's formal protest of American efforts to annex Hawaii.

But j.a.pan declared it had no intention of annexing Hawaii. "I am instructed by the imperial Government to state most emphatically and unequivocally that j.a.pan has not now and never had any such design, or designs of any kind, against Hawaii," its foreign minister stated.5 (The United States, when Daniel Webster was secretary of state, had said the same thing.) Most likely, opinions in j.a.pan were mixed, as they certainly were in the United States. The New York Times expressed the views of those Americans who opposed the annexation of Hawaii, many of whom also deplored Hawaii's coup d'etat. Three editorials appeared in 1893 alone bearing headlines such as, "To Convey a Stolen Kingdom," "A Case of Government by the Few," and "A Shameful Conspiracy."

Many other Americans, however, supported annexation. Voicing their views that same year was the Chicago Tribune, arguing in a February editorial: The objections made nearly a century ago to the purchase of Louisiana were similar to those made now to the annexation of Hawaii. It was a.s.serted that that territory was a great ways off, that its [Louisiana's French-speaking] inhabitants were un-American ... that it would be impossible to defend in case of war with a foreign country. All those were as naught when weighed against the fact that it was necessary for the United States to own the mouth of the Mississippi. It is necessary now that the United States should have Hawaii for the safety of its oceanic commerce.

Even at the highest level of leadership, Americans were of two minds about this unprecedented extension of the country's borders. President Benjamin Harrison had supported it. But he had been defeated in 1892 for reelection by the man he himself had defeated for reelection, Grover Cleveland. President Cleveland opposed Hawaiian annexation. Moreover, he ordered an investigation into U.S. military involvement in the coup d'etat, raising the possibility that he might support the return to power of Lili'uokalani.

Given these uncertainties, Dole expected that the American debate would be long and drawn out. Consequently, he proceeded to turn the provisional government into an official republic, the first step of which was writing a const.i.tution. This entailed defining how Hawaiians would elect their leaders, and that entailed confronting Hawaii's underlying conflict: power versus race.

Dole sought guidance from an American const.i.tutional scholar at Columbia University, John W. Burgess, to whom he described the delicate issue: Under the monarchy there were two cla.s.ses of legislators who sat together and who were elected by voters having different qualifications. There are many natives and Portuguese, who had had the vote hitherto, who are comparatively ignorant of the principles of government, and whose vote from its numerical strength as well as from the ignorance referred to, will be a menace to good government.6 Burgess replied: "I understand your problem to be the construction of a const.i.tution which will place the government in the hands of the Teutons, and preserve it there, at least for the present." He recommended separating the legislature into a system similar to the American Senate and House of Representatives, but tailored to Dole's concerns. In addition to maintaining the current voting restrictions, Burgess suggested that the new Hawaiian republic "elect your president by a college of electors, ... that one half of those electors should be elected by the voters for the members of the lower house of the legislature, and the other half should be elected by the voters for the upper house of the legislature." By this method, white residents would garner yet another advantage in determining the nation's leadership. Burgess closed his letter with some added advice: "Appoint only Teutons to military office."

Meanwhile, President Cleveland adjudged that, despite legitimate grievances and policy disputes, the coup d'etat that had ousted Lili'uokalani was made possible through the use of American troops that had been deployed without presidential or congressional authorization. Consequently, he sent Kentucky Congressman Albert S. Willis to Hawaii to commence efforts to reinstate the queen, provided she grant amnesty to those who had partic.i.p.ated in her ouster. Lili'uokalani was less than enthusiastic about this proviso. "There are certain laws of my government by which I shall abide," she stated. "My decision would be, as the law directs, that such persons should be beheaded and their property confiscated to the government."

After a month of meetings with Willis and her advisers, the dethroned queen revised her view. "I must forgive and forget the past," she now officially declared. One day later, Willis sent a message to Dole demanding his resignation, along with that of all others in the provisional government. After conferring with his cabinet, Dole sent Willis an official response saying, in effect, come and get us. It was a shrewd move, since even President Cleveland was reluctant to invade Hawaii and oust an ostensible democracy headed by white people in order to restore a dark-skinned monarch. Cleveland opted to punt; he submitted the question to Congress.

Rather than drag on, however, the decision was made rather quickly, following the explosion of an American battleship at anchor in Havana. The sinking of the Maine in February 1898 triggered the Spanish-American War. Three months later, Admiral George Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet defending the Philippines, a Spanish colony, in the Battle of Manila Bay. Dewey's victory demonstrated the need for a permanent American military presence in the Pacific. Eight weeks later, on July 4, 1898, Congress enacted a resolution offering annexation to Hawaii. The islands' white-dominated government readily accepted.

In April 1899 President William McKinley appointed Dole to be Hawaii's first territorial governor. In November Dole's twenty-two-year-old cousin, James Dole, arrived in the islands and purchased sixty-four acres of government land on which he grew and canned pineapples. Sanford Dole left the governorship in 1903 to accept a presidential appointment as the territory's federal judge. When he retired in 1915, his cousin James had expanded his operations and was now exporting roughly $10 million of canned pineapples per year.7 Sanford Dole died in 1926, not long after his eighty-third birthday.

Lili'uokalani remained in Hawaii. The former queen urged her people to accept their future as American citizens. Annexation to the United States brought one immediate improvement for native Hawaiians, in that the Fifteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution prohibited the denial of voting rights based on race or color. Periodically Lili'uokalani traveled to Washington, DC, unsuccessfully seeking government compensation for the loss of her family's property. She died in 1917 at the age of seventy-nine.

OKLAHOMA.

ALFALFA BILL MURRAY, EDWARD P. McCABE, AND CHIEF GREEN McCURTAIN

Oklahoma's Racial Boundaries

I have no doubt that today there are half a million people in the Indian Territory.... A small fraction are full-blooded Indians, another portion are mixed bloods, and a large share of them are white people who are members of the tribe simply by marriage or adoption.... Then, in connection with that, there are a number of negroes.

-SEN. KNUTE NELSON, OKLAHOMA STATEHOOD DEBATE, 1903 Oklahoma came close to being two states. The western half, whose residents were primarily white, would have been the state of Oklahoma. The eastern half, whose residents were primarily Indians, would have been the state of Sequoyah-named in memory of the Cherokee who had devised the first American Indian alphabet and, not, presumably, in memory of the fact that a pole had once been erected to display his head because of boundaries he had helped negotiate (see "Sequoyah" earlier in this book).

In addition, another effort was made to create a different racial boundary. When Indian lands were made available for settlement, a movement was initiated among African Americans to migrate to the new territory (named Oklahoma) in sufficient numbers to const.i.tute a majority of the population. Had the effort succeeded, Oklahoma would have become, in effect, an African American state. But the movement triggered a countereffort to embed white supremacy in the Oklahoma const.i.tution.

Proposed states of Oklahoma and Sequoyah Green McCurtain, "Alfalfa Bill" Murray, and Edward P. McCabe were three of the princ.i.p.al partic.i.p.ants in these different efforts to create, in effect, racial boundary lines. Of the three, only McCurtain, a Choctaw, was born and raised in present-day Oklahoma. At the time of his birth in 1848, Oklahoma was part of a region known as the Indian Territory. The Indian Territory was not composed of U.S. citizens with a governor appointed by the president but rather of American Indian reservations, each with its own tribal leadership. McCurtain was forty-four, married, and treasurer of the Choctaw government when his career was profoundly altered by events in Washington. Aspiring settlers seeking land in the West had been pressuring Congress to open up una.s.signed lands in the western half of the Indian Territory. Americans rich and poor, along with railroads and other corporations, recognized the opportunities available with this land. "Fully a hundred thousand people are intending to rush into Oklahoma, as soon as it is opened for settlement," the Atchison Daily Champion reported in February 1889. As arrangements with the tribes were completed, the gates opened, and settlers poured into the new Territory of Oklahoma.

Chief Green McCurtain (1848-1910) (photo credit 40.1) McCurtain first surfaced in outside news accounts as a result of his tribe's agreement with the federal government. The Choctaw Nation bore little resemblance to the tribe that had arrived from Mississippi some sixty years before, as could be gleaned from an 1891 Dallas Morning News article on the land transfer: "Some of the members [of the Choctaw Council] could not speak Choctaw and some could not speak English.... Appointed delegates to Washington to watch the interests of the Choctaws ... are Gov. W. N. Jones, Treasurer Green McCurtain, and Thomas D. Ainsworth."

The final paragraph of the same news item contained an omen regarding the state of Sequoyah: "It is frequently suggested that the Five Civilized Tribes [the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles] should form a federation for their mutual protection. This is not likely to be done for some time on account of local jealousies. When it is done it will be too late, and only precipitate the transfer of that country to the control of the whites."

As it happened, the Five Tribes set aside their jealousies less than two years later when Congress added a clause to its 1893 appropriation for the Office of Indian Affairs. Inserted into the bill in the last few hours before Congress adjourned, the amendment gave the consent of the United States for tribes to divide and deed their lands to individual members. In addition, those Indians who acquired ownership of their share of land would become citizens of the United States. The option was accepted with virtually no debate.

The seemingly benign amendment regarding land deeds enabled a geographic shift of politically epic proportions. Transferring ownership of Indian land from a tribe to its members would shift the authority to sell the land. From the perspective of Indian leaders, such a shift would be nothing short of divide and conquer.1 In 1896 McCurtain, now the elected chief of the Choctaw Nation, called for a convention of the Five Tribes to plan their opposition. When they met in November of that year, the delegates ultimately agreed to relinquish their tribal form of government and to divide their lands among each tribe's individual members-on condition that the Indian Territory be admitted as a state.

It was not a decision easily reached. Very few, in fact, of the delegates who voted in favor of the resolution fully agreed with it-including the man who had initiated the summit, Green McCurtain. "It has come to the point where the Indian must take a decisive step forward or forever be swallowed up and lose his ident.i.ty," he agreed, but he opposed the demand for immediate statehood. "Today the Choctaw Indian-and what I say applies equally to the other tribes-is not prepared to have a state or territorial government.... It will result in the red man being outvoted by the white occupants of the territory."2 McCurtain preferred a gradual implementation of the land shift, to buy time for American Indians to learn how the levers of power worked in white America. Once acclimated, he hoped, Indians would be able to maintain their hold on those levers when the land transition was completed and statehood conferred.

Even that, he knew, was a huge hope, since those levers of power weren't always securely fastened. When a proposal for Oklahoma statehood first came before Congress in 1905, the Dallas Morning News showed how they could become unhinged.

A circ.u.mstance in this statehood controversy worthy of remark is the beautiful faith of the Indians that Congress will redeem the promises ... made as far back as 1839.... These agreements between the government and the Indians ... were not intended to express a fixed policy for all future time but were designed to meet the exigencies of the period in which they were made.

McCurtain put it differently: No Indian can get the better of a paleface.... Two Oklahoma palefaces once hunted in my camp. They spent the evening with me and over the fire.... Bill said, "Sam, let's trade horses-my bay for your roan."

"It's a go," Sam agreed. "Shake on it, partner."

They shook hands. Then Bill said with a loud laugh, "I've bested ye this time. My hoss is dead. Died yesterday."

"So's mine," Sam said, "Died this morn'n. And what's more, I've took his shoes off."3 Despite his misgivings, when the Sequoyah Convention for statehood was convened in August 1905, McCurtain joined in, serving as one of its vice presidents. A fellow vice president, representing the Chickasaw Nation, was William H. Murray, soon to be widely known as "Alfalfa Bill" for his urging Oklahomans to grow alfalfa. Murray, however, was not of Chickasaw descent. Born to a poor family in Toadsuck, Texas in 1869, he had arrived in the Indian Territory in 1897 as a young lawyer and became involved in the successful election campaign of Chickasaw governor Douglas Johnston. Not long after, he married Johnston's niece-a social event in Indian society which so emulated white high society that Oklahoma's Daily Ardmoreite headlined the wedding announcement as "Prominent Young Attorney Secures a Chickasaw Queen."

Though Murray was a fellow vice president at the Sequoyah Convention, he privately doubted the effort would succeed. He was not alone. "There is not the faintest chance to get the Indian Territory admitted separately," Idaho's Daily Statesman a.s.serted. "If it were necessary to create a state where Indians would exercise such great influence the experiment might be tried, but in this case it is not necessary and the country will never consent." Murray, for his part, was not aiming to create an Indian state. His goal was to organize future voters in the Indian Territory in order to strengthen that const.i.tuency in the future state Murray antic.i.p.ated-one that would combine the Oklahoma Territory and the Indian Territory.4 "Alfalfa Bill" Murray (1869-1956) (photo credit 40.2) The effort to create a state of Sequoyah was ultimately torpedoed by President Theodore Roosevelt. "I recommend that Indian Territory and Oklahoma be admitted as one state," he had told Congress in his 1905 State of the Union message. That the boundaries of the Indian Territory would thereby be obliterated did not concern him. "There is no obligation," he told Congress, "to treat territorial subdivisions, which are matters of convenience only."

With the president endorsing a state that combined the two territories, the action moved to the Oklahoma statehood convention in Guthrie in 1906. At this venue, the delegates elected "Alfalfa Bill" as the convention president. Murray's opening address praised Green McCurtain and the other chiefs as "great men," then went on to paint the colors, as it were, of the state he foresaw. "We must provide the means for the advancement of the negro race, and accept him as G.o.d gave him to us and use him for the good of society," he declared. "As a rule, they are failures as lawyers, doctors and in other professions. He must be taught in line with his own sphere as porters, bootblacks, and barbers.... It is an entirely false notion that the negro can rise to the equal state of a white man."

While many states had enacted Jim Crow laws, Murray sought to embed white supremacy in the Oklahoma const.i.tution. Other white delegates disagreed-not with Murray's racial views, but with the political wisdom of including them in a const.i.tution that would require approval by Congress and the signature of President Roosevelt. Ultimately, the delegates, including Murray, opted to avoid a confrontation. They contented themselves with a resolution stating "it is the sense of this body that separate coaches and waiting rooms be required for the negro race ... [but] consider this a legislative matter rather than a const.i.tutional question."

Oklahoma became a state on November 16, 1907. On the legislature's opening day, it enacted Senate Bill No. 1, mandating segregated railroad coaches and waiting rooms as its first order of business.

In thus privileging white people, Oklahoma faced the issue of its red people, whose political support was essential, given the state's demographics. Antic.i.p.ating this need, the Oklahoma const.i.tution included a section devoted to the definition of race. "Wherever in this Const.i.tution and laws of this state, the word or words, 'colored,' 'colored race,' 'negro,' or 'negro race' are used," Article 23 stated, "the same shall be construed to mean or apply to all persons of African descent. The term 'white race' shall include all other persons." Legally speaking, American Indians were now white people in Oklahoma.

Edward P. McCabe was one of several thousand African Americans who had migrated to Oklahoma since the 1890s. Most of these settlers were from the South, seeking economic opportunity and escape from persecution. Unfortunately for them, many poor Southern whites (such as Murray) had also migrated to Oklahoma for economic opportunity.

Compared to Murray, McCabe came from an economically advantaged background. Born in Troy, New York, in 1850, he had been raised in Newport, Rhode Island, and educated at a boarding school in Maine. As a young man, he became an attorney in Chicago and then moved to Kansas where, in 1882, he became the first African American elected to state office, serving as the Kansas auditor.

McCabe became involved in the Topeka-based Oklahoma Immigration a.s.sociation, part of the larger movement to encourage African American migration to Oklahoma. In 1890 he himself relocated there and, with landowner Charles Robbins, founded the town of Langston. He started a newspaper, the Langston City Herald, which trumpeted the town's existence as "a Negro city."5 Other newspapers sounded a bugle: "The blacks, it appears, are preparing themselves to try the experiment, not merely of the equality, but of the supremacy of their race," the New York Times alerted its readers in March of that year. It warned that a "secret society of negroes which has undertaken this work in Oklahoma has a candidate of its own for the Governorship of the Territory." Though there was no secret society, there was such a candidate, and he was Edward P. McCabe. With the imminent creation of the Oklahoma Territory, McCabe had gone to Washington at the behest of the Oklahoma Immigration a.s.sociation to seek support for his appointment as governor. "There is much bitterness over the candidacy of Edward P. McCabe, colored, for governor of [the Oklahoma] Territory," the Times reported, citing an unnamed Oklahoman who "declares emphatically that if President Harrison appoints McCabe governor, the latter will be a.s.sa.s.sinated."

Opposition to McCabe's appointment-and to an African American-majority state-was not, however, universal. "A partial solution of the Southern negro question ... is now at hand," Chicago Tribune columnist William H. Thomas wrote. "A governor is soon to be appointed to preside over [the Oklahoma Territory] and a reliable, capable colored man should be placed in that position. That would mean a home for the colored man in the South."

Edward P. McCabe (1850-1920) (photo credit 40.3) President Benjamin Harrison, concerned with the potential for violence, ultimately chose a man with military experience, former Indiana congressman George W. Steele, to be governor of the Oklahoma Territory. Even after this appointment, however, articles in the press continued to sound alarms about a conspiracy to make Oklahoma a black-majority state. "Few people here seem to realize the possibility of Oklahoma becoming a Negro State," a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune told its readers in 1891, "so quietly, yet so constantly, have the blacks been coming into the territory." (In point of fact, the African American population in the territory was less than 9 percent.)6 A New York Times editorial in 1892, ent.i.tled "Not Ready for Statehood," joined the chorus of concern. "Oklahoma contains more conflicting elements than does any other Territory in the Union," it began. "With allotment comes citizenship to the Indian, ill prepared for the privileges that go with that state.... Then comes the negro race, which is a considerable factor in Oklahoma, a factor determined to maintain its rights according to its own peculiar ideas."

The Chicago Tribune noted that Oklahoma's racial conflicts were not as simple as white people versus red and black. "Another cause for excitement," it commented in September 1891, "is the hatred of the Indians for the negro.... They know that they themselves cannot prevent the negroes from settling on the land, but they hint in unmistakable terms that they will make it very uncomfortable for the 'black man' if he settles among them."

The racial boundary between African Americans and American Indians was, in fact, even more complicated. Prior to the Civil War, some wealthy members of the Five Civilized Tribes had been slave owners-these slave owners typically being of mixed Indian-white descent. On the other hand, runaway slaves frequently took refuge among these same tribes, and (further blurring the boundary) intermarried, resulting in a growing population of African American Indians.7 Oklahoma's part-white Indians and part-black Indians had separate misgivings about the influx of African American settlers. Part-black Indians feared the influx might cause "pure" Indians to discriminate against their tribal claims, particularly claims of land allotments. Indeed, the Chickasaws did create a "colored committee" to determine the validity of tribal claims by part-black Chickasaws, with none other than "Alfalfa Bill" Murray among its panelists. At the other end of the spectrum, part-white Indians were concerned that the influx of African Americans might negatively impact their own tenuous status with the white ruling cla.s.s.

Oklahoma's statehood convention in 19067 marked the success of the combined opposition of whites and American Indians over African Americans. Soon after statehood became official, Edward McCabe returned to Chicago. There, however, he immediately set his sights on undermining Oklahoma Senate Bill No. 1 by suing the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway for not providing equal accommodations for black pa.s.sengers. He lost, but his appeal of the decision eventually made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. He lost there, too. During these defeats, McCabe's extraordinarily energetic career began running out of steam. By 1911 Oklahoma's Ada News reported that he had become a waiter in a Chicago area restaurant. He died quietly in 1920, so quietly that the event appears to have been noted only in the city where he was buried. "Mr. McCabe was a highly educated scholarly gentleman," the Topeka Plaindealer wrote. "He never bartered or catered to the white man the rights of the colored race and always stood up for his people. For this we reverence and honor his name.... It is to be regretted that he died in needy circ.u.mstance and a charge on the public."

Green McCurtain's career had sputtered to an end as well. In 1910 Congress investigated charges of bribery involving McCurtain. He testified that he had ultimately rejected the bribe, and no evidence to the contrary was found. He pa.s.sed away later that year. A wire-service obituary sent to newspapers nationwide began, "Green McCurtain, chief of the tribe of Choctaws Indians, who sprang a sensation before a congressional committee by swearing he had been offered one-fourth of the profits of a $10,000,000 deal after the sale of Indian lands, died yesterday. He was 62 years of age." Fourteen paragraphs followed, all dealing exclusively with the bribery accusation.8 "Alfalfa Bill" Murray's career did not sputter. He went on to become an Oklahoma congressman and governor. Upon his death in 1956, a wire-service obituary also appeared in newspapers nationwide. "William H. (Alfalfa Bill) Murray, one of the princ.i.p.al framers of Oklahoma's const.i.tution ... died today at the age of 86," it began, going on to recount his career as governor, his short-lived presidential bid in 1932, his feud with President Franklin Roosevelt over "const.i.tutional safeguards of liberty," and the election of his son, Johnston, as Oklahoma governor in 1950.9 These contrasting obituaries sum up the complex racial boundaries that came into conflict with the emergence of Oklahoma. The result of that conflict, however, was not complex. The whites won.

NEW JERSEY, NEW YORK.