Reconstruction in Indian Territory: A Story of Avarice, Discrimination, and Opportunism (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS185 is to be commended for re-publishing this massive travel account of the Reconstruction South. William C. Harris North Carolina State University Reconstruction in Indian Territory: A Story of Avarice, Discrimination, and Opportunism. By M[innie Elizabeth] Thomas Bailey. (Port Washington , New York: Kennikat Press, 1972. Pp. 225. $11.50.) While there have been numerous books written about the Five Civilized Nations, both singly and as a group, no one has attempted to provide a comprehensive study of Reconstruction in Indian Territory since Annie Abie's, The American Indian Under Reconstruction (1925). Professor Bailey's volume is an excellent contribution in that direction. Although it is amazingly overpriced for the number of pages and its lack of footnotes, there is a briefly annotated bibliography and the text is thoughtfully written producing a concise account of the era. Prior to the Civil War, as the author points out, United States policy toward the Indian was that of removal to selected areas west of the Mississippi River. By the mid-1840's this policy resulted in nearly all of the eastern tribes exchanging traditional homelands for "permanent" territory in present-day Kansas and Oklahoma. Then the issue of removal was lost in the sectional controversy that resulted in the Civil War. Union victory and Confederate sympathies among the Five Civilized Nations brought the problem into national prominence once again. According to Professor Bailey, Reconstruction was not a new concept for the tribes in Indian Territory in 1865. The Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole had already rebuilt their social, economic , and political systems as a result of removal. Now they were forced to cope with a new policy dictated by the victorious Union government. All of the trans-Mississippi Nations were to be removed from their ancestral homes to smaller areas of land either north of Nebraska or south of Kansas. It remained necessary to invalidate the legal claims of the Five Civilized Nations to all of Indian Territory to make room for the new tribal groups, but the pro-Confederate stand of the Five Nations provided a convenient excuse to achieve this goal. Professor Bailey traces an intricate and fascinating story in describing the anomalies of Reconstruction among the Indians. Each tribe agreed to cede a portion of its lands to the government or to allow the settlement of new tribes on their territory. This cleared all of Kansas for white exploitation and opened the western half of Indian Territory to whites and the Southern Plains Tribes. Ironically, because they were more united and better organized, the pro-Confederate Choctaw and Chickasaw suffered fewer land losses than the other tribes which had strong Union loyalties during and after the war. The Creek and Cherokee lost about half of their lands while the Seminole, who had suffered the most for the Union cause, lost their whole claim and were forced 186 CIVIL WAR HISTORY to live in former Creek territory. The Five Civilized Nations also agreed to allow railroad rights of way, and to establish a central council which could later evolve into an actual territorial government. Like all slaveholding areas, the Indian Territory had to readjust its relations with the newly freed Negroes. There was little difficulty in this among the Seminole people because of the close feeling already established between the two races in Florida before removal. The Creek Nation, however, agreed to grant the blacks equality only after a prolonged argument between the Union and Confederate factions. Although the Cherokee had freed their slaves in response to the Emancipation Proclamation during the war, they, the Choctaw, and the Chickasaw passed extensive Black Codes to regulate the Negroes' freedom . These three tribes had the same hostile feelings to the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as did white southerners, and many Indian slaveholders expected compensation for their emancipated bondsmen. There was also a "New Departure Democrat" phenomenon in the Indian Territory—a clash between traditionalists, who revered ancient tribal customs and ways, and those who wished to abandon the past for a new, modern way of life. One of the strong points of this book is the extensive use of maps to show tribal locations. It is...