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The Choctaw and Chickasaw Citizenship Court was a short-lived United States federal court which existed between 1902 and 1903. [1]
Beginning with the Dawes Act of 1887, Congress passed several laws designed to divide and allocate land between members of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole tribes in the Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma). As part of this scheme, subsequent legislation authorized a “Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes,” commonly known as the Dawes Commission, to determine the citizenship of Native Americans claiming membership in these tribes. Unsuccessful applicants were entitled to appeal to the United States Court for the Indian Territory.
The Choctaw and Chickasaw nations objected to the admission on appeal of several individuals without notice to them. In response, Congress reached an agreement with the nations promulgated on July 1, 1902 (32 Stat. 641), whereby it created a new court known as the Choctaw and Chickasaw Citizenship Court. As part of this agreement, Congress authorized the tribes to initiate a suit, with ten named defendants standing for the class of individuals admitted as citizens without notice, and gave the court appellate jurisdiction over the United States Court in the Indian Territory for the purposes of these citizenship determinations.
The court was staffed by a Chief Judge and two associate judges, each of whom was appointed by the President of the United States by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. Because the court’s jurisdiction was limited to the issue of citizenship admission of individuals appealing from the Dawes Commission’s initial decision, the agreement stipulated that the court would terminate upon final determination of that question, but no later than December 31, 1903.
The court's Chief Judge was Spencer B. Adams of North Carolina, and its associate judges were Walter L. Weaver of Ohio and Henry S. Foote of California. [2]
The court reached a final judgment in the test case and certified its decision to the Dawes Commission on January 15, 1903. A later 1903 Supreme Court opinion denied an attempt to challenge the court’s authority via a writ of prohibition because the court itself had ceased to exist on termination of the case. The court is thus unusual in the history of the judiciary for deciding a single matter and for existing for less than seven months.
The Dawes Act of 1887 regulated land rights on tribal territories within the United States. It authorized the President of the United States to subdivide Native American tribal communal landholdings into allotments for Native American heads of families and individuals. This would convert traditional systems of land tenure into a government-imposed system of private property by forcing Native Americans to "assume a capitalist and proprietary relationship with property" that did not previously exist in their cultures. The act would declare remaining lands after allotment as "surplus" and available for sale, including to non-Natives. Before private property could be dispensed, the government had to determine "which Indians were eligible" for allotments, which propelled an "official search for a federal definition of Indian-ness."
Tribal sovereignty in the United States is the concept of the inherent authority of indigenous tribes to govern themselves within the borders of the United States. Originally, the U.S. federal government recognized American Indian tribes as independent nations, and came to policy agreements with them via treaties. As the U.S. accelerated its westward expansion, internal political pressure grew for "Indian removal", but the pace of treaty-making grew nevertheless. Then the Civil War forged the U.S. into a more centralized and nationalistic country, fueling a "full bore assault on tribal culture and institutions", and pressure for Native Americans to assimilate. In the Indian Appropriations Act of 1871, without any input from Native Americans, Congress prohibited any future treaties. This move was steadfastly opposed by Native Americans. Currently, the U.S. recognizes tribal nations as "domestic dependent nations" and uses its own legal system to define the relationship between the federal, state, and tribal governments.
The Dawes Rolls were created by the United States Dawes Commission. The commission was authorized by United States Congress in 1893 to execute the General Allotment Act of 1887.
Henry Laurens Dawes was an attorney and politician, a Republican United States Senator and United States Representative from Massachusetts. He is notable for the Dawes Act (1887), which was intended to stimulate the assimilation of Native Americans by ending the tribal government and control of communal lands. Especially directed at the tribes in Indian Territory, it provided for the allotment of tribal lands to individual households of tribal members, and for their being granted United States citizenship. This also made them subject to state and federal taxes. In addition, extinguishing tribal land claims in this territory later enabled the admission of Oklahoma as a state in 1907.
The Choctaw Nation is a federally recognized Native American nation, with a reservation territory covering about 6,952,960 acres, occupying portions of southeastern Oklahoma in the United States. The Choctaw Nation is the third-largest federally recognized tribe in the United States and the second-largest Indian reservation in area after the Navajo. As of 2011, the tribe has 223,279 enrolled members, of whom 84,670 live within the state of Oklahoma and 41,616 live within the Choctaw Nation's jurisdiction. A total of 233,126 people live within these boundaries, with its tribal jurisdictional area compromising 10.5 counties in the state.
William McKendree Springer was a United States Representative from Illinois.
The Curtis Act of 1898 was an amendment to the United States Dawes Act; it resulted in the break-up of tribal governments and communal lands in Indian Territory of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indian Territory: the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee (Creek), Cherokee, and Seminole. These tribes had been previously exempt from the 1887 General Allotment Act because of the terms of their treaties. In total, the tribes immediately lost control of about 90 million acres of their communal lands; they lost more in subsequent years.
The Cherokee Freedmen Controversy was a political and tribal dispute between the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and descendants of the Cherokee Freedmen regarding the issue of tribal membership. The controversy had resulted in several legal proceedings between the two parties from the late 20th century to August 2017.
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation is a federally recognized Native American tribe based in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The nation descends from the historic Creek Confederacy, a large group of indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands. Official languages include Muscogee, Yuchi, Natchez, Alabama, and Koasati, with Muscogee retaining the largest number of speakers. They commonly refer to themselves as Este Mvskokvlke. Historically, they were often referred to by European Americans as one of the Five Civilized Tribes of the American Southeast.
Douglas Hancock Cooper Johnston, also known as "Douglas Henry Johnston", was a Chickasaw tribal leader who served as governor of the Chickasaw Nation from 1898 to 1902 and 1904 to 1939. In office, he was notable for ratifying the Atoka Agreement and defending the tribe against claims for more money. Prior to his election as governor, he was the superintendent of the Bloomfield Academy. From 1902 to 1904, he served in the Chickasaw Senate. President Theodore Roosevelt reappointed him as Governor of the Chickasaws after the Dawes Act terminated trial governments in Indian Territory.
The Treaty with Choctaws and Chickasaws was a treaty signed on July 12, 1861 between the Choctaw and Chickasaw and the Confederate States of America. At the beginning of the American Civil War, Albert Pike was appointed as Confederate envoy to Native Americans. In this capacity he negotiated several treaties, one of the most important being with Cherokee chief John Ross, which was concluded in 1861. The treaty was ratified and was proclaimed on December 20, 1861 by the Confederacy. The Choctaw and Chickasaw also duly ratified the treaty.
The Yowani are a band of the Choctaw tribe. Their original territory was along the Chickasawhay River in Mississippi, where they had a village known as Yowani. European traders set up a post nearby, which later developed in the 19th century as the town of Shubuta. The Yowani continued to expand their holdings, eventually venturing into Louisiana, where they established close ties with the Koasati and Caddo. They later adopted many of the Caddo customs.
The Oklahoma Water Resources Board (OWRB) is an agency in the government of Oklahoma under the Governor of Oklahoma. OWRB is responsible for managing and protection the water resources of Oklahoma as well as for planning for the state's long-range water needs. The Board is composed of nine members appointed by the Governor with the consent of the Oklahoma Senate. The Board, in turn, appoints an Executive Director to administer the agency.
The Atoka Agreement is a document signed by representatives of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Indian Nations and members of the United States Dawes Commission on April 23, 1897, at Atoka, Indian Territory. It provided for the allotment of communal tribal lands of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations in the Indian Territory to individual households of members of the tribes, who were certified as citizens of the tribes. Land in excess of the allotments could be sold to non-natives. Provisions of this agreement were later incorporated into the Curtis Act of 1898, which provided for widespread allotment of communal tribal lands.
Ex parte Joins, 191 U.S. 93 (1903), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a request for a writ of prohibition was moot, as the lower court case had already been completed prior to the petition being heard at the Supreme Court.
The Cherokee Commission, was a three-person bi-partisan body created by President Benjamin Harrison to operate under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, as empowered by Section 14 of the Indian Appropriations Act of March 2, 1889. Section 15 of the same Act empowered the President to open land for settlement. The Commission's purpose was to legally acquire land occupied by the Cherokee Nation and other tribes in the Oklahoma Territory for non-indigenous homestead acreage.
An Organic Act is a generic name for a statute used by the United States Congress to describe a territory, in anticipation of being admitted to the Union as a state. Because of Oklahoma's unique history an explanation of the Oklahoma Organic Act needs a historic perspective. In general, the Oklahoma Organic Act may be viewed as one of a series of legislative acts, from the time of Reconstruction, enacted by Congress in preparation for the creation of a unified State of Oklahoma. The Organic Act created Oklahoma Territory, and Indian Territory that were Organized incorporated territories of the United States out of the old "unorganized" Indian Territory. The Oklahoma Organic Act was one of several acts whose intent was the assimilation of the tribes in Oklahoma and Indian Territories through the elimination of tribes' communal ownership of property.
On the eve of the American Civil War in 1861, a significant number of Indigenous peoples of the Americas had been relocated from the Southeastern United States to Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi. The inhabitants of the eastern part of the Indian Territory, the Five Civilized Tribes, were suzerain nations with established tribal governments, well established cultures, and legal systems that allowed for slavery. Before European Contact these tribes were generally matriarchial societies, with agriculture being the primary economic pursuit. The bulk of the tribes lived in towns with planned streets, residential and public areas. The people were ruled by complex hereditary chiefdoms of varying size and complexity with high levels of military organization.
Oklahoma Tax Commission v. Sac & Fox Nation, 508 U.S. 114 (1993), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that absent explicit congressional direction to the contrary, it must be presumed that a State does not have jurisdiction to tax tribal members who live and work in Indian country, whether the particular territory consists of a formal or informal reservation, allotted lands, or dependent Indian communities.
Sharp v. Murphy, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a Supreme Court of the United States case of whether Congress disestablished the Muscogee (Creek) Nation reservation. After holding the case from the 2018 term, the case was decided on July 9, 2020, in a per curiam decision following McGirt v. Oklahoma that, for the purposes of the Major Crimes Act, the reservations were never disestablished and remain Native American country.