The Indian Rights Association, the Allotment Policy, and the Five Civilized Tribes, 1923-1936

Abstract

D URING THE LAST two decades of the 19th century, Indian reform movements organized in response to a series of bloody Indian/white confrontations. The most influential was the Indian Rights Association (IRA), founded in Philadelphia on December 15, 1882, by 30 eastern philanthropists. Nearly all of these reformers were socialgospel Christian humanists who supported assimilation of Indians into white society. Indians would undergo acculturation, reformers argued, after destruction of native culture which rested not only on different religions and language, but on tribal organizations with indigenous systems of communal ownership. Thus, assimilation required dividing tribal estates into individual plots so that Indians would be transformed into -yeomen farmers.' Forty years after inception, the allotment policy failed to promote improved economic conditions and assimilation. Lack of credit, remoteness from markets, and insufficient technical assistance from the Indian Bureau contributed to its failure; more important, however, Bureau officials never provided incentives and institutions to enable Indians to benefit from, or function in, an industrial society. The allotment policy forced Indians to accept responsibilities of individual ownership and American citizenship, while it deprived them of a political system that had provided the basis of social stability in their communities. Because of the lack of institutions for allocation of resources and settlement of disputes, the federal government assumed guardianship over the tribes.2 Allotment was particularly destructive to the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma. After enactment of the Curtis Act of 1901-which divided communal property into 160 acre plots, disbanded tribal governments, and forbade native religion-Indian land was reduced from 15,000,000 to 1,500,000 acres. The Act of May 27, 1908, which transferred jurisdiction over the Five Tribes from the federal government to Oklahoma county courts, further dispossessed Oklahoma Indians.3 Those Christian reformers who advocated assimilation of Indians into white society have been considered responsible for loss of Indian land under this legislation.