Indian Territory Research Articles

The Sentimentalist Terrain of Ora V. Eddleman Reed’s Twin Territories Fiction

Abstract This article grapples with the messy legacy of Ora V. Eddleman Reed, editor of Twin Territories magazine in the Muscogee Nation, Indian Territory, at the turn of the twentieth century. Twin Territories vocally opposed US statehood in Indian Territory and furthered the literary careers of many Native writers. It was an important and influential venue of Native literary expression in the early twentieth century that deserves greater attention from Indigenous literary and print culture studies. However, the magazine’s ambitions and how we make sense of its legacy are complicated by Eddleman Reed’s racial politics, her own (non)citizenship, and the contents of her short sentimental fiction, all of which did as much to reinscribe racialized notions of Indigeneity as they did to challenge prevailing settler assumptions about Native people. Reed has been hailed as a recovered Cherokee writer, but her family’s rejected Cherokee Nation enrollment applications and recent genealogical research raise critical questions about framing her in this way.

ADAM SMITH ON THE “WRETCHED SPIRIT OF MONOPOLY” IN THE EAST INDIES TRADE

According to Adam Smith, the “wretched spirit of monopoly” dogged the East Indies trade. The regulations that governed the East Indies trade established legal barriers or restrictions to entry and sustained a mercantile community whose interests were “the opposite to that of the great body of the people” (WN IV, ch. iii, p. 494). The East Indies charter conferred a special privilege that shielded the English East India Company from all domestic competition in Asian trade. The East India Company was the complete incarnation of a mercantile system against which Smith had determined to launch “a very violent attack” in Wealth of Nations (Smith 1987, p. 251). Smith’s mistrust of trading bodies like the East India Company was compounded by its having assumed political powers commensurate with the sovereign while still in possession of its monopolistic franchise. Smith’s proposal was, first, to abolish the monopolistic franchise to rid society of “the unfortunate effects of all the regulations of the mercantile system” (WN IV, ch. vii, p. 606), and, second, to reform the East India Company’s administrative duties and functions in the Indian territories. The contention of this paper is that Smith’s call to abolish the East Indies monopoly was inseparable from his appeal for reform of the English East India Company.

Autonomy Through Allotment: Political Strategies of the Ottawa Tribe in Indian Territory, 1870–1892

Abstract The late nineteenth-century policy of allotting tribal lands into individually owned tracts is appropriately interpreted as a destructive federal effort to expropriate Native land and eliminate tribal identities. The Ottawa Tribe in Indian Territory, however, had divergent objectives in supporting allotment. This article argues the Ottawa advocated for allotment and U.S. citizenship to escape intrusive federal control over their lands and resources. Although they embraced policies aimed at eliminating tribal existence, the Ottawa rejected the intentions behind those policies, and instead, they drew on long-established community attributes of mobility and interconnection with outsiders to resituate their nation within American society. By centering Ottawa perspectives, this article disrupts progressive narratives that denote the pursuit of U.S. citizenship as an effort to secure equal inclusion. It underscores U.S. citizenship and allotment as tools of settler colonial domination and demonstrates how the Ottawa subversively deployed U.S. citizenship and private property rights to combat colonial administration and maintain tribal sovereignty. Examining a policy often glossed over as invariably imposed on Native nations, this article underscores the necessity of analyzing Native community dynamics and political strategies to understand the implementation and impact of allotment.

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION OF THE SULTANATE OF DELHI IN THE 13TH – 15TH CENTURIES (historical and legal review)

The article describes the system of public administration of the Sultanate of Delhi. Strong influence of Turkic tribal groups’ tradition on the political, legal and managerial culture of the Sultanate is noted. We consider the state of Delhi to be a theocratic monarchy, where the sultans’ power extended to all spheres of society. An important role in the administration was played by the Vizier and his department responsible for various aspects of state and political life. The article notes the important role of the departmental system among which, the central place was occupied by the departments of the army, Chancery, foreign relations and justice. The article highlights the place and role of the sultan’s court and the legislative body under the ruler in the official apparatus. It is indicated that the main element of administrative management included the iqta – lands transferred for service to certain persons. It is concluded that the public administration system organised by the Turkic peoples, despite a number of problems, had once been generally stable and helped integrate the northern Indian territories into the Muslim socio-cultural space.

The West in Construction: Texas and Indian Territory at the Vanguard of American Imperial Expansion

Malgré leurs différences essentielles, qu’il s’agisse des raisons de leur création ou de leur peuplement, il apparaît que dans les années 1830 et 1840, la République du Texas et le Territoire Indien (à la suite du Removal Act) se développent selon des dynamiques similaires, faisant d’eux des avant-postes de l’expansion impériale des États-Unis. Alors que les deux populations de migrants s’approprient les territoires du « Grand Désert américain », qui ne sont pas encore organisés par les États-Unis, il semble que la latitude dont ces deux entités « entre-deux » jouissent, aux marges de la république américaine, leur permette de définir les termes de la construction de l’Ouest.

Claudio Saunt. Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory.

Claudio Saunt. <i>Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory</i>.

Taxa of Indian Acanthaceae, Verbenaceae and Labiatae Amending and/or Supplementing Calder's (1926) and Razi's (1959) Lists of Additions to Hooker's Flora of British India

Since the publication of the Flora of British India by Sir J. D. Hooker during the years 1872-1879, quite a number of additional species have been described from various parts of India by several botanists in different publications. The nomenclature of quite a number of species in Hooker's Flora has also changed with the result that several names therein have now come to be regarded as invalid. Calder et al (1926) and Razi (1959) published two lists as additions to species in Hooker's Flora of British India. The present account is an attempt at supplementing and/or amending the lists of Calder and Razi, with reference to the families Acanthaceae, Verbenaceae and Labiatae. In this account, altogether 232 taxa belonging to these three families alone are given under two separate lists. In the first list 54 taxa are included. They comprise of 53 taxa as additions to Hooker, Calder et al and Razi's account of the species under these three families, and one species of Hooker, earlier reported by him from outside India proper, since reported from Indian territory. In the second list, 178 taxa are included, wherein changes in nomenclature, including changes in status have been reported.

La Bayadère’s Nikiya vs. the Indian Hereditary Dancing Caste

Marius Petipa’s 1877 La Bayadère, inspired by F. Taglioni’s Le Dieu et La Bayadère as well as the opera Les Bayadères, presents the story of Indian temple dancer Nikiya and her navigation of a love triangle, ending in murder and tragedy. The character of Nikiya was inspired by Indian Bharatanatyam dancers, also known as temple dancers or Devadasis. Europe's primary exposure to this classical dance form occurred in 1838, when a troupe of “Devadasis” visited Paris on a tour of Europe, leading to several choreographers' Western adaptations in ballet. France, in particular, 's fascination with Indian culture can be correlated with France's loss of Indian territory to Great Britain in the previous century. However, most of Europe indulged in the exotic Indian "other." But Western recreations of Indian culture all too often misconstrued reality with a fantasized Oriental world. How does Nikiya's character contrast from the authentic Bharatnatyam dancers that inspired her creation?Nikiya's costuming, choreography, casting, and pieces of her plotline stray from the Indian culture and temple dancers she derives from. I use archival footage of the Bolshoi Ballet's 2013 performance of La Bayadère as well as footage of Bharatanatyam dance from Tanjore Balasaraswati's form, which upholds the traditions of the dance style. In addition, I use historical recounts covering Marius Petipa, the Devadasi European tour of 1938, Bharatanatyam dance, colonialism in India, and Indian-influenced ballets. I review Marius Petipa's diary entries as a primary source in my research. Ultimately, I argue that the only way for Western audiences to appreciate Indian temple dance was through the creation of the Westernized Nikiya.

Indian Automobile Supply Chain Conceptual Framework in the Perspective of Technology Acceptance Model (Tam)

Innovation and introduction of technologies are recently found to have vast impact on the automotive industries. The technological interventions are also found essential for the internal management of the stakeholders. Thegiant automobile manufacturers and their suppliers need to adapt to the markets, and also to consumer’s demand accordingly. For these noticed changes is being required to become adjusted with the newly introduced trends in the markets, there arise some urgencies. These urgenciesare basically for the adoption of faster and more efficient technology and also for a generalized process management The paper is drafted to propose a conceptualsupply chain management framework leading for the Automobile Industry, especially in the passenger car manufacturing sector in Indian context. The framework and modelare being used toaccept the Technology Adoption Model (TAM) for this digital transformation of Automobile Supply Chain in Indian Territory.

Cultural Assimilation: A Post Colonial Perspective in Kim

Rudyard Kipling’s Kim is mostly considered as a novel of advocacy for making colonizers stronger to rule the natives. It deals the native with a stereotypical perception of the oriental, particularly, of Indian people. This paper has used Edward Said’s postcolonial perspective of orientalism to analyze Kim. Emphasis is given on identifying the situations and expressions that are directed to cultural assimilation, trying to indicate that Kipling advocates for the English cultural supremacy and colonial significance in Indian territory. This research is based on primary as well as secondary data analysis with qualitative research approach. Finding shows that Kipling, with a pretext of standing in- between the East and the West, visualizes varying ranges of stereotype of India and its peoples. Even if cultural assimilation seems to be liberally responded at different occasions this study tells that English community is in understanding and application of cultural supremacy as a determinate factor to establish their rule upon the native and inspire the latter to assimilate to former’s culture. Detailed analysis of assimilation through post-colonial cultural hegemony perceptive would be further relevant study on this novel.

New Distribution Record of Octolasion tyrtaeum (Savigny, 1826) and Octolasion cyaneum (Savigny, 1826) (Family: Lumbricidae) Earthworm Species from Leh-Ladakh Union Territory, India

There are five species of the genus Octolasion Örley, [1] in the family Lumbricidae in the world. In India, only two species Octolasion tyrtaeum [2] and Octolasion cyaneum [2], have been recorded. Leh-Ladakh, an Indian territory, has no previous earthworm records. This study reports two species Octolasion tyrtaeum [2] and Octolasion cyaneum [2], as new records from Leh-Ladakh, India.

Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory

Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory

Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory

Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory

From Blood Quantum to Liquid Gold: Black Creeks and Oklahoma’s First Resource Curse

Abstract: This article investigates one of the most litigated and controversial court cases over Dawes enrollments in Oklahoma history from the perspective of Sally Atkins (1855–1924). Atkins, born into slavery in Missouri, married into an estelvste (African Creek) family in Indian Territory after the Civil War. Atkins migrated to Canada following statehood but was drawn back to Oklahoma by 1917. She believed her son, Tommy, to be the rightful allottee of one quarter section of the Cushing-Drumright Oilfield, the richest oilfield in the nation at the time. This claim drew Atkins into conflict with some of the most powerful oilmen in the state, who believed that another woman—a “full-blood” Muscogee—was Tommy’s mother. Who was the real mother of Tommy? State and federal officials, along with newspaper reporters, adjudicated the case based on their preconceived notions of race and “blood” in Indian Country, leading to confounding conclusions about racial categories, mineral wealth, and kinship. Many of these notions were then codified into state laws in Oklahoma. In this article, I untangle the shifting notions of bloodlines and property rights to show how the bureaucratic imperialism of the Dawes Commission fixed white supremacist notions of race for people recognized as “Black” in Indian Territory.

Freedmen Settlements of Indian Territory and Three Freedmen Community Clusters

Abstract: A lot of attention has been focused on the all-Black towns in Oklahoma established two decades after the Civil War. However, missing from the story of Black life on the frontier are overlooked Freedmen communities established earlier. These were not incorporated towns but were thriving communities where enslaved people in Indian Territory lived for generations. These small yet significant settlements of Black families did not voluntarily migrate to the West from the Deep South but accompanied their Indian slaveholders during the Trail of Tears. Many lived as enslaved people until the end of the Civil War. Afterward, they lived on the edge of incorporated white or Indian towns where they formed their own Freedmen settlements, established churches, built schools, and lived vibrant lives. This essay will focus on a few of these settlements, where footprints of their presence can still be found today in old “neighborhoods” that have been absorbed into other communities.

India in 2022

India continued its recovery from COVID-19 in 2022. The Omicron strain was less lethal than previous waves and consequently had a smaller economic footprint. The economy began rebounding, with trade and foreign direct and portfolio investments recovering to pre-pandemic levels. India remained one of the fastest-growing economies in the world in 2022. However, it suffered very significant setbacks to its democracy, with increased attacks on civil and political liberties and human rights, and on its institutions, by BJP-led governments at the center and in the states. India effectively managed foreign policy challenges stemming from the Ukraine–Russia conflict, incursions into Indian territory by China, and the Islamophobic rhetoric of its own party leaders. Overall, 2022 was marked by a slew of BJP victories in six out of seven states and by the negative consequences of the BJP’s political strength for Indian democracy.

On the Politics of Viruses and Visibility

On the Politics of Viruses and Visibility

Humberto Garcia. England Re-Oriented: How Central and South Asian Travelers Imagined the West, 1750–1857.

Through a series of original and close readings that reverses the usual order of things, Humberto Garcia argues that (white) East India Company men were the original mimic men who adopted Persianate manners to ingratiate themselves to India’s provincial rulers and business elites. Persian-speaking travelers such as Joseph Emin, Mirza Shaikh I’tesamuddin, Mirza Abu Talib Khan, and Dean Mahomet, who had become acquainted with officials of the East India Company were welcomed to England. Their encounters with British society at various levels were shaped by ideas of hospitality that were widespread in the Persianate cultures of Central and South Asia. Using a “decolonial analytic” (37), Garcia treats the history of the late eighteenth-century British Empire in India as contingent. Rather than position this moment as a precursor to the nineteenth-century presumption that (white) colonizers had a superior culture, Garcia’s arguments offer a corrective to the idea that Central and South Asian travelers felt uncomfortable or inferior in eighteenth-century London. Instead, these engagements between cultivated interlocutors were based on hospitality and homosociality. Until the early nineteenth century, “an imperial homosocial arcadia” thrived, defined by “Persian politeness, bravery, generosity, and true manliness” (15). As British competition for Indian territories escalated, the Englishman became increasingly aligned with an empire that was gendered in ways distinct from Persianate ideals of male friendship. As argued by Mrinalini Sinha, one of the co-editors of this book’s series, by the late nineteenth century, colonial societies were marked by racialized colonial masculinities that differentiated between the putative “manly Englishman” and “effeminate Bengali.” Garcia’s book explains the process by which these distinctions emerged. As he notes, many of these texts are centered on “the friction between sentimental manliness and military aggressiveness” (146).

Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country by Fay A. Yarbrough

Reviewed by: Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country by Fay A. Yarbrough Nakia D. Parker (bio) Choctaw Confederates: The American Civil War in Indian Country. By Fay A. Yarbrough. ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. 280. Cloth, $32.95.) Scholars are increasingly examining the Civil War and Reconstruction eras in Indian Territory, and their studies often center the Cherokee. Historian Fay A. Yarbrough contributes to this expanding scholarship with the first book about the Choctaw Nation's involvement in the Civil War. In Choctaw Confederates, Yarbrough argues that there were two primary reasons for avid Choctaw support for the Confederacy: Choctaw leaders believed that the Confederacy offered the best chance of protecting Native sovereignty, and the nation's deep investment in the institution of chattel slavery, coupled with a desire to maintain the anti-Black racial hierarchy inherent in that institution, made siding with the Confederacy a logical choice. Choctaw planters had strong economic ties to white southerners even after expulsion to Indian Territory, and their nation was surrounded by southern states, such as Texas and Arkansas. "The Choctaw experience, then" Yarbrough asserts, "was a southern experience" (6). Chapter 1 provides an overview of the political and social structure of the Choctaws in their southeastern homelands, emphasizing how the threat and later implementation of expulsion by the federal government reshaped traditional practices of kinship, gender relations, and governance. For example, Choctaw leaders created a constitutional government based on that of the United States and reshaped property rights, such as inheritance and marital laws, to favor patriarchal instead of matriarchal family lines. Chapter 2 examines the growth of slavery in the Choctaw Nation in Indian Territory and the importance of the institution to economic recovery after removal and "as a part of the developing racial order" that shaped the decision of Choctaw leaders to side with the Confederacy (47). Yarbrough compares testimonies of the enslaved from [End Page 124] Indian Territory and the southern states to highlight the similarities in labor practices. She also provides an in-depth analysis of the laws created by Choctaw leaders soon after resettlement that circumscribed and surveilled almost every aspect of Black life in the nation. In some instances these laws were more restrictive or passed earlier than slave codes in southern states. At the same time, Yarbrough demonstrates that certain laws reflected the "legacy of traditional kinship affinities" and that "as the Choctaw adopted the practice of racialized slavery, they did so in a manner that preserved Choctaw identity" (65, 48). This is especially apparent in her discussion of a clause requiring people of African descent who had no kinship ties with the Choctaw and Chickasaw to leave or be enslaved for life. Chapter 3 discusses the decision of Choctaw leaders to side with the Confederacy by examining the alliance treaty and the debates between Choctaw leaders over joining the conflict. Unlike the Cherokee Nation, which tried to remain neutral and experienced its own internal civil war, the Choctaw swiftly and unambiguously sided with the seceding states. Chapters 4 and 5 chronicle the experiences and motivations of Choctaw men who enlisted to fight for the Confederate cause. Yarbrough skillfully analyzes the thousands of pages of enlistment records of the First Choctaw and Chickasaw Mounted Rifles to probe motivations for joining the Confederate army, circumstances of enlistment, and patterns of enrollment. To demonstrate early Choctaw enthusiasm for the war, Yarbrough points to the records of 950 men who signed up in June and July 1861, before the Choctaw Nation formally allied with the Confederacy. Serving as soldiers and light horsemen allowed Choctaw men, particularly youth, "a way to claim, or reclaim, their identities as warriors" (173). Thus, Yarbrough asserts, the Civil War reshaped and created alternative expressions of traditional notions of Indigenous masculinity. The concluding chapter details the tensions between the Choctaw government and freedpeople in the nation during Reconstruction. The federal government stipulated land and civil rights for the formerly enslaved in the surrender treaty, which angered Choctaw leaders, who viewed these requirements as usurping Native sovereignty. In addition, the anti-Black sentiment present before the war became even more rampant, as evidenced by Black codes, the banning...

Black Slaves and Indian Owners: The Continuous Rediscovery of Indian Territory

This essay provides an analysis of historiographical trends in the study of the Five Tribes (the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole Nations) and the Black women and men who were enslaved in, and part of, their nations in the Southeast and, after Indian Removal, in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma). The author divides the scholarship she covers into two broad time periods: the 1930s to the 1970s and the 1980s to today. From work in the early 1900s that examined these Native people without real engagement with their practices of slaveholding to research today that uses the lenses of race, gender, and tribal sovereignty to excavate Black stories, the author pinpoints a key shift in the 1970s and 1980s resulting from the Black and Native activism of the day.