History
Northern origins
Kickapoo comes from their word "Kiwigapawa", which roughly translates into "he moves from here to there." The tribe is part of the central Algonquian group and has close ethnic and linguistic connections with the Sac and Fox. The Kickapoo were first recorded in history in about 1667-70 at the confluence of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. [5] Under pressure from the Menominee, the Kickapoo and their allies moved south and west into southern Michigan, northern Iowa, Ohio and Illinois. [6] A treaty dated 7 June 1803 between the U.S. Government and the Delaware, Shawnee, Potawatomi, Miami, Eel River, Wea, Kickapoo, Piankeshaw, and Kaskaskia tribes [7] occupying the country watered by the Ohio, Wabash and Miami Rivers [5] and a subsequent treaty dated 7 August 1803 [8] ceded lands previously granted in the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 by General Anthony Wayne, and Fort Wayne and Vincennes, Indiana. [7] [8] By these treaties and succeeding treaties in 1809, [9] 1815, [10] 1816, [11] 1819, [12] [13] and 1820 [14] the tribe ceded all their lands on the Wabash, White and Vermilion Rivers and moved into Missouri on the Osage River. [5]
Resettlement on the Plains
A mere decade later, in 1832, the tribe ceded their lands in Missouri and were granted a "permanent" home south of the Delaware Nation in Kansas near Fort Leavenworth. [5] Around the same time as the Kickapoo moved into Kansas, some of them went to Texas, invited to settle there by the Spanish colonial governor to serve as a buffer between Mexico and American expansionists. The Mexican War of Independence and the Texas Revolution proved that the tide of settlers would not be stopped by the few hundred Kickapoo. [15] At the conclusion of the Texas Revolution, these groups moved south into Mexico. [16] In 1854 the eastern portion of the Kansas lands was ceded to the United States leaving the Kickapoo the western 150,000 acres. [5] Two provisions of this treaty were to have long-lasting effects on the tribe. The treaty authorized a survey of the Kickapoo lands which could be used as the basis for fee simple allotment and it granted a railroad right-of-way across the reservation. [17]
Using these two clauses as a basis, the local agent, William Badger, convinced the Commissioner of Indian Affairs Charles E. Mix that the Kickapoo were desirous of having their lands allotted. Considering that the tribe had always held their lands in common, it is unlikely that the tribe truly wanted allotment. However, in light of Badger's persuasion, Mix directed that allotment proceed if 1) the Indians paid for the costs of surveying and allotting the land, 2) 80 acres was allotted to each head of household, and 3) any lands remaining after allotment of the Kansas Kickapoo be reserved for resettlement of the Mexican Kickapoo. Holding the lands not allotted for the Southern Kickapoo, was not in the interests of the railroad and Badger began pressuring tribal members for allotment. Though they complained, it was a political election, not the tribal issues with their agent, that removed Badger from office and replaced him with his brother-in-law Charles B. Keith in 1861. [18]
Keith was a political ally of Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy who was the president of the Atchison and Pike's Peak Railroad, [19] the central section of the Transcontinental railroad, which had been formed in 1859. The railroad wanted to gain the right-of-way across the Kickapoo Reservation and title to any surplus lands when the reservation was allotted. [18] Pomeroy and Keith both met with and wrote letters to Commissioner Mix urging allotment and by 1862, a treaty was again made with the Kickapoo. The 28 June 1862 agreement allowed for Chiefs to receive 320 acres, heads of households to receive 160 acres and all other tribe members to get 40 acres, with the bulk of the remaining 125,000 acres to be sold to the railroad. Those who chose not to accept allotment could continue to hold their lands in common until such time as an arrangement could be made to locate a new reserve in Oklahoma, i.e. Indian Territory, and any Southern Kickapoo had one year to return to Kansas and take up their allotment, or it would be forfeit. [20] When news of the treaty being approved broke, protest erupted.
The Kickapoo indicated that they were unaware that the agreement had been reached and thought that they were still negotiating terms. The Kansas Attorney General, Warren William Guthrie, launched a grand jury hearing. The charges were considered serious enough that allotment was suspended and the new Commissioner of Indian Affairs, William P. Dole, appointed in 1863, traveled to Kansas to investigate. In the hearings that followed, allegations were made that Guthrie's real interest in the matter stemmed from his involvement with a rival railroad the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad Corporation. Dole returned to Washington and submitted his report to President Lincoln on 4 April 1864. [21] Some of the frustrated Kickapoo, decided to leave Kansas, and a group of about 700 headed for Mexico to join kinsmen there in September, 1864. [22] In 1865 pressure from Pomeroy finally gained the approval to continue with the Kickapoo allotment, though the tribe resisted. By 1869, only 93 Kansas Kickapoo had accepted fee simple allotment, the remainder preferring to continue holding their lands in common. [23] Though a small band, approximately 50 tribesmen returned from Mexico to the Kansas Reservation before the forfeit period lapsed, they settled on the common lands briefly, but then left before claiming their allotments. They later joined the Kickapoo in Indian Territory in 1874. [24] In 1875, a group of 114 of the Mexican Kickapoos were returned to the Kansas Reservation. [25]
Texas Settlement
The first Southern Kickapoo migration occurred around the time that the tribe was settled in Kansas. [15] They traveled across the southern plains, fighting the Seminole in Florida around 1837 and wandered into Texas in search of horses from the Comanche. [26] In 1850, they agreed to act as a buffer between Mexicans, invading Texas settlers and the Lipan, Comanche and other tribes in Northern Coahuila. As a reward for their service, the Spanish governor awarded them a land grant at Hacienda del Nacimiento near the settlement of Santa Rosa (now known as Melchor Múzquiz). [27] At the peak of their strength, the southern Kickapoo, numbered about 1500 and by 1860 were living in a swath from the Canadian and Washita Rivers in Indian Territory to the Sabine and Brazos Rivers in Texas to the Remolino River in northern Mexico. [28]
In 1864, about 700 Kickapoo, frustrated with the duplicitous actions of agents and their railroad colleagues in Kansas left to join their kinsmen in Mexico. Confederate scouts picked up their trail and reported their findings to Captain Henry Fossett and Captain S. S. Totten, leader of a group of Texas Militiamen. On 8 January 1865, the Texans charged the Kickapoo at Dove Creek, were engaged in battle for a brief half hour and then retreated. The Kickapoo had lost about 15 warriors and the Texans twice as many men. [22] In 1868, a report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs indicated that there were approximately 800 Kickapoo living in Mexico [29] and claimed that the Mexican Kickapoo were responsible for raids in the western part of Texas. [25] In an effort to pacify the Texas citizens and ward off difficulties with Mexico, the U.S. determined to retrieve the Kickapoo. [29]
Congress passed P.L. 16 Stat. 359 an Act of 15 July 1870 to appropriate funds for the Secretary of the Interior to collect Kickapoo in Texas and Mexico and establish them in the Indian Territory. A second Act, P.L. 16 Stat. 569, passed by Congress on 3 March 1871 appropriated funds for the resettlement and subsistence of the Kickapoo on reservations within the United States. Armed with these two Acts, Indian Agent John D. Miles, went with a delegation of Kansas Kickapoo to try to persuade the Indians at Santa Rosa to return to the United States. [29] Mexican authorities refused to allow Miles to speak with the Kickapoo as the residents of Santa Rosa saw them as their only defense from other marauding tribes. [30]
In 1873, after complaints were again received indicating that Mexican authorities were using the Kickapoo to hide the theft of Texas cattle by Mexicans, another attempt was made to bring the Kickapoo to Indian Territory. Special Agents H. M. Atkinson and Col. T. G. Williams went to Saltillo, to negotiate directly with Governor Victoriano Cepeda Camacho. Though citizens and the Legislature of Coahuila did not support the action, Cepeda appointed an officer to assist the agents and gave him a proclamation that they were to be assisted by the officials and citizenry. While the delegation was en route to Santa Rosa, a party of Americans under the command of General MacKenzie attacked the Kickapoo, thinking that they were a group of raiding Lipan, which did not make the Kickapoo receptive to relocating when the agents arrived. In the autumn of 1874, Atkinson and Williams were finally able to persuade a group of about 300 Mexican Kickapoo to resettle. [29]
Relocation to Oklahoma
The Mexican Kickapoos were to be removed to the Indian Territory, in the present State of Oklahoma to a location on the north fork of the Canadian River [25] and provided with farm equipment to begin cultivation. The adjustment was difficult and by 1883, they had still not been provided with a permanent title to the lands they were occupying. By an executive order issued 15 August 1883, the Kickapoo were granted the lands that they had been occupying near the southwest corner of the Sac and Fox Reservation which had been ceded in 1866 by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation for resettlement of freedmen and others. [29] Four years later with the passage of the Dawes Act pressure began mounting to secure fee simple title for the Oklahoma Kickapoo. On 21 June 1891 the tribe agreed to cede their reservation in exchange for 80 acre allotments for each tribesman. The Kickapoo were "bitterly opposed" to allotment and fought the process until 1894. [31] [32] 283 Kickapoo received eighty-acre plots leaving 184,133 surplus acres for non-Indian settlement. [33]
In 1895, after the Kickapoo finally consented to allotment, the final Oklahoma Land Run occurred on 23 May 1895. The Land Run of 1895 was the smallest of Oklahoma's five land runs, with approximately 10,000 participants. Because of the large number of contested claims and the problems with Sooners the remaining two land openings in Oklahoma were lotteries. [33]
20th century
Indian Reorganization Act
In 1936, the tribe organized as the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act. [2] They adopted a Constitution and by-laws by a vote of 64 for and 26 against on 18 September 1937, which established the offices of Chairman, Vice Chairman, Secretary, Treasurer, and one councilman. [34]
Claims Commission
On 13 August 1946 the Indian Claims Commission Act of 1946, Pub. L. No. 79-726, ch. 959, passed. Its purpose was to settle for all time any outstanding grievances or claims the tribes might have against the U.S. for treaty breaches, unauthorized taking of land, dishonorable or unfair dealings, or inadequate compensation. Claims had to be filed within a five-year period, and most of the 370 complaints that were submitted [35] were filed at the approach of the 5-year deadline in August, 1951. [36]
At least 6 claims were filed by the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma with the Claims Commission — some on their own behalf, and some in conjunction with the Kickapoo Tribe of Kansas or other tribes in which they had made joint treaties with the U. S. Government. [37] The two biggest awards were for "unconscionable consideration" (the government severely underpaid for ceded lands) from the Treaty of 1854 [25] and the Treaty of 1866. [38] Though the distribution was approved via passage of Public Law 92-467 in 1972, appeals were pending into the late 1970s, as the government was offsetting award amounts due to the Oklahoma and Kansas Kickapoo for expenses incurred in capturing and relocating Mexican Kickapoo during the Texas Revolution. The US government had repatriated some of the Mexican Kickapoos to a reservation in Oklahoma and a later group to Kansas in the 1860s and 1870s. [25] The final distribution plan was not approved until 1980. [39]
Mexican Kickapoo subgroup established
In 1979 the Mexican Kickapoo who were dual residents requested clarification of their status as they had no clear legal status in either the United States or Mexico. [40] An Act was passed in 1983 [41] by Congress which recognized them as a distinct subgroup of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma and granted federal recognition to the Texas Kickapoo. A 1985 law gave the Texas band the option of selecting Mexican or U.S. citizenship. 145 of the tribemembers chose to become U.S. citizens and the remaining 500 or so chose to obtain Mexican citizenship. [40]
The interaction between the Mexican Kickapoo and Oklahoma tribe remains strong. Mexican Kickapoos use the health services of the tribal clinic in McLoud, Oklahoma and the Oklahoma Kickapoos travel for the ceremonial seasons in February and March to Mexico. [42]
The Kickapoo people are an Algonquian-speaking Native American and Indigenous Mexican tribe, originating in the region south of the Great Lakes. Today, three federally recognized Kickapoo tribes are in the United States: the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas. The Oklahoma and Texas bands are politically associated with each other. The Kickapoo in Kansas came from a relocation from southern Missouri in 1832 as a land exchange from their reserve there. Around 3,000 people are enrolled tribal members.
The Dawes Act of 1887 regulated land rights on tribal territories within the United States. Named after Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, 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 allowed tribes the option to sell the lands that remained after allotment to the federal government. 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."
Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States government for the relocation of Native Americans who held original Indian title to their land as a sovereign independent state. The concept of an Indian territory was an outcome of the U.S. federal government's 18th- and 19th-century policy of Indian removal. After the American Civil War (1861–1865), the policy of the U.S. government was one of assimilation.
The Sac and Fox Nation is the largest of three federally recognized tribes of Sauk and Meskwaki (Fox) Indian peoples. Originally from the Lake Huron and Lake Michigan area, they were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma in the 1870s and are predominantly Sauk. The Sac and Fox Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Area (OTSA) is the land base in Oklahoma governed by the tribe.
The Peoria are a Native American people. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma headquartered in Miami, Oklahoma.
An American Indian reservation is an area of land held and governed by a U.S. federal government-recognized Native American tribal nation, whose government is sovereign, subject to regulations passed by the United States Congress and administered by the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, and not to the U.S. state government in which it is located. Some of the country's 574 federally recognized tribes govern more than one of the 326 Indian reservations in the United States, while some share reservations, and others have no reservation at all. Historical piecemeal land allocations under the Dawes Act facilitated sales to non–Native Americans, resulting in some reservations becoming severely fragmented, with pieces of tribal and privately held land being treated as separate enclaves. This jumble of private and public real estate creates significant administrative, political, and legal difficulties.
The Unassigned Lands in Oklahoma were in the center of the lands ceded to the United States by the Creek (Muskogee) and Seminole Indians following the Civil War and on which no other tribes had been settled. By 1883, it was bounded by the Cherokee Outlet on the north, several relocated Indian reservations on the east, the Chickasaw lands on the south, and the Cheyenne-Arapaho reserve on the west. The area amounted to 1,887,796.47 acres.
The Osage Nation is a Midwestern American tribe of the Great Plains. The tribe developed in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys around 700 B.C. along with other groups of its language family. They migrated west after the 17th century, settling near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, as a result of Iroquois expansion into the Ohio Country in the aftermath of the Beaver Wars.
The Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska is one of two federally recognized tribes of Iowa people. The other is the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma.
The Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, based in Eagle Pass, is a federally recognized tribe that uses revenue from its gaming and business operations to provide housing, education, and social services to its members. The tribe has been held as a model for other Native American tribes seeking to lift their members out of poverty, because they were living under the international bridge over the Rio Grande as recently as the 1980s.
Samuel Houston Mayes of Scots/English-Cherokee descent, was elected as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory, serving from 1895 to 1899. His maternal grandfather belonged to the Deer clan, and his father was allied with members of the Cherokee Treaty Party in the 1830s, such as the Adair men, Elias Boudinot, and Major Ridge. In the late nineteenth century, his older brother Joel B. Mayes was elected to two terms as Chief of the Cherokee.
Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, 187 U.S. 553 (1903), was a United States Supreme Court case brought against the U.S. government by the Kiowa chief Lone Wolf, who charged that Native American tribes under the Medicine Lodge Treaty had been defrauded of land by Congressional actions in violation of the treaty.
Indian removals in Indiana followed a series of the land cession treaties made between 1795 and 1846 that led to the removal of most of the native tribes from Indiana. Some of the removals occurred prior to 1830, but most took place between 1830 and 1846. The Lenape (Delaware), Piankashaw, Kickapoo, Wea, and Shawnee were removed in the 1820s and 1830s, but the Potawatomi and Miami removals in the 1830s and 1840s were more gradual and incomplete, and not all of Indiana's Native Americans voluntarily left the state. The most well-known resistance effort in Indiana was the forced removal of Chief Menominee and his Yellow River band of Potawatomi in what became known as the Potawatomi Trail of Death in 1838, in which 859 Potawatomi were removed to Kansas and at least forty died on the journey west. The Miami were the last to be removed from Indiana, but tribal leaders delayed the process until 1846. Many of the Miami were permitted to remain on land allotments guaranteed to them under the Treaty of St. Mary's (1818) and subsequent treaties.
The Iowa Reservation of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska straddles the borders of southeast Richardson County in southeastern Nebraska and Brown and Doniphan counties in northeastern Kansas. Tribal headquarters are west of White Cloud, Kansas. The reservation was defined in a treaty from March 1861. As of 2023, the tribe operates Casino White Cloud on the reservation.
The Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska is one of three federally recognized Native American tribes of Sac and Meskwaki (Fox) peoples. Their name for themselves is Nemahahaki and they are an Algonquian people and Eastern Woodland culture.
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 united 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.
The Miami Nation of Indiana is a group of individuals who identify as Miami and have organized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The group's headquarters are at Peru, Indiana.
The Mexican Kickapoo are a binational Indigenous people, some of whom live both in Mexico and in the United States. In Mexico, they were granted land at Hacienda del Nacimiento near the town of Múzquiz in the state of Coahuila in 1850. A few small groups of Kickapoo also live in the states of Sonora and Durango. The Mexican Kickapoo often work as migrants in Texas and move throughout the Midwest and the Western United States, returning in winter to Mexico. They are affiliated with the federally recognized tribes of the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, and Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas.
The Kickapoo Tribe of Indians of the Kickapoo Reservation in Kansas is one of three Federally recognized tribes of Kickapoo people. The other Kickapoo tribes in the United States are the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas and the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma. The Tribu Kikapú are a distinct subgroup of the Oklahoma Kickapoo and reside on a hacienda near Múzquiz Coahuila, Mexico; they also have a small band located in the Mexican states of Sonora and Durango.
United States (
Oklahoma)