Published in the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior, Senate Ex. Doc. No. 50, 48th Congress, 2nd Session (1885). Lithograph printed in six vivid colors. Issued folding. Shrink-wrapped.
$1,200.00
Out of stock
Prepared by the surveyor G. P. Strum for the U. S. General Land Office, this map appeared from 1883 to 1887 in yearly editions of the Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior, showing over successive years the evolution of reservation boundaries in Indian Territory. In these maps, tribal lands are named, colored-coded, and include legal references to the treaties that relocated the tribes to specific zones of Indian Territory.
The federal government’s policy of Indian relocation began as early as 1817, and over time many principal Eastern Indian tribes were removed to the region where the Five Civilized Tribes formed the nucleus of organized government. By 1885, representatives of about fifty Indian tribes had settled on lands once promised to the original five. The present map reflects these allocations. The Oklahoma panhandle—which at this time consisted of “Public Lands”—is not shown.
The first edition of the Strum map is notable for the prominent appearance of the Cherokee Outlet or Cherokee Strip (as it is most often called), a wide section of land south of the Oklahoma-Kansas border. Encompassing some 8 million acres, the Cherokee Outlet was created by the U.S. government in 1836 to give the Cherokees a perpetual outlet for hunting and grazing in the area west of their relocation lands. After the Civil War, the Cherokees were required to sell portions of the outlet to “friendly” Indian tribes that included the Osage, Pawnee, Kaw, Ponca, Otoe, Missouria, and Nez Perce. The settlement of these tribes in the eastern part of the outlet effectively cut off Cherokee access to the hunting and grazing lands. Soon, Texans began driving their cattle across the outlet to markets in Kansas, and newly arrived settlers used the land for grazing. In 1883, the cattlemen incorporated as the Cherokee Live Stock Association and negotiated a five-year agreement with the Cherokees to lease the entire outlet for $100,000 per year. Finally, in 1893 the Indians ceded complete title to the land, an act that led to the Cherokee Strip land run, the largest land run in United States history.
This is a striking early map of Indian Territory, with exquisite bright color and a wealth of details related to the history of Native American resettlement.
Ref.: John W. Morris et al., Historical Atlas of Oklahoma (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), no. 33.
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