File:Muskogee and northeastern Oklahoma, including the counties of Muskogee, McIntosh, Wagoner, Cherokee, Sequoyah, Adair, Delaware, Mayes, Rogers, Washington, Nowata, Craig, and Ottawa (1922) (14593187997).jpg

Identifier: muskogeenortheas00bene (find matches)
Title: Muskogee and northeastern Oklahoma, including the counties of Muskogee, McIntosh, Wagoner, Cherokee, Sequoyah, Adair, Delaware, Mayes, Rogers, Washington, Nowata, Craig, and Ottawa
Year: 1922 (1920s)
Authors: Benedict, John Downing, 1854-
Subjects:
Publisher: Chicago : S.J. Clarke Pub. Co.
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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agents directly to the individual members of the tribe. The Curtis bill also included and approved the agreement,which the Dawes Commission had finally persuaded the Choctawsand Chickasaws to enter into, providing for the individual allot-ment of their lands. Although the agreement between the Dawes Commission andthe Creek Nation, providing for the allotment of Creek lands andthe winding up of all the tribal affairs of the Creeks, was not ap-proved until March 1, 1901, and the Cherokee agreement, July 1,1902, yet the passage of the Curtis act was a signal for everybodyto get busy. The Dawes Commission brought several hundred men to Mus-kogee, who were employed as surveyors, land appraisers, fieldagents, stenographers and clerks. The annual salaries and ex-penses of the commission were gradually increased from fortythousand to about four hundred thousand dollars. Owing to the illness, due to advanced age, of ex-United StatesSenator Dawes, who had been designated as chairman of the com-
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/ MUSKOGEE AND NORTHEASTERN OKLAHOMA 405 mission, he was unable to give the work much personal attention,and Hon. Tarns Bixby was appointed acting chairman, and the in-fluence of his indefatigable energy was soon manifested through-out all branches of the commissions work. Some idea of the mag-nitude of the task of the Dawes Commission may be gained bynoting that it included the equitable division of 29,523,966 acres ofland of almost every imaginable kind and quality, among 101,505legal claimants. In addition to examining and passing upon thelegal status of the 101,505 Indian citizens, who were found to belegally entitled to share in the tribal lands and funds, the commis-sion was compelled to investigate and decide upon the claims ofthousands of other applicants who were rejected. Carloads ofignorant, shiftless people were shipped into the territory from thesouthern states, by designing schemers, in the reckless endeavorto get them enrolled as possessing a greater or less degree ofIn

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