From "The Indian Country," The Century Magazine, August 1885, vol. 30, issue 4

     . . .For many years after their location here [Indian Territory], the five civilized tribes [Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw], though embarrassed by internal feuds, waxed powerful and prosperous. When the civil war began, in 1861, they were a notably wealthy people. They had large farms of corn and cotton, hemp and tobacco, with comfortable buildings, and their herds of cattle and horses were incredibly numerous and profitable. It was not uncommon for a single individual to own thousands of cattle; indeed, the man who owned less than five or six hundred cattle, or two or three hundred horses, was considered poor and shiftless. Their trade was principally with New Orleans and other Southern cities, and was eagerly sought after. They owned many slaves, and drove costly carriages, and wore rich clothing and a profusion of jewelry. But the war stripped them of everything movable, and left them only their naked fields and pastures. . . .

     The contrast between the five civilized tribes and the numerous wild and uncivilized tribes and fragments of tribes in the Territory is wide and striking. It requires an effort of the imagination to connect them as kindred. The former are the Indians of Cooper and Longfellow, of tradition and sentiment. The latter are the Indians of current frontier experience, of the blanket and the scalping-knife. These wild tribes still cling tenaciously to their savage customs and prejudices, and yield but doggedly to civilization. Their hostility to the white race is pronounced and deadly. The arts of peace and industry seem to them a surrender of all that makes life worth living. They are born nomads. Unlike the pastoral tribes, who are predisposed to homes and soil-tilling, they have always pursued the chase, and their country has been to them only a hunting-ground and a place to pitch the flitting tents of a day. Hence, their reclamation involves not simply a change of habits, but almost a reversal of nature. It is probably yet an open question whether a wild Indian of pure blood has ever been thoroughly and permanently civilized. Father Schoenmaker, of the Osage Mission, said it took him fifteen years to get the blanket off of Joseph Pawneopasshe, afterward chief of the Osage tribe, "and it took Joseph just fifteen minutes to get it on him again." The five principal wild tribes–the Arapahoes, the Cheyennes, the Comanches, the Kiowas, and the Osages–and several of the smaller tribes all preserve their old tribal organizations, costumes, and diversions; and their attitude toward their present surroundings is that of haughty and thinly concealed challenge. . . .

     They are not an attractive spectacle, these vanishing contingents of once famous and mighty peoples. It is hard to fit them into the history which they represent. And yet we know, and cannot be unmoved by the thought, that here are the tattered and poverty-stricken handfuls of what were, but a brief lifetime ago, the tribes that mustered their warriors by formidable thousands, and counted their possessions by months of travel beyond the great river. The proudest among them now are pensioners; the vast regions they once held and roamed over have slipped from their grasp like the rolling up of a scroll. Not all the tribes that occupied Missouri and Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska, could today put men enough in the field to stand against a regiment of our cavalry. The Senecas, the Delawares, the Miamis, the Sacs and Foxes, and others of heroic memory, of song and story, are now hardly sufficient in numbers to equal the euphonious names they have furnished us for our towns and streams. It is destiny, to be sure; and the nations of which these poor squads are the last lineal types and shadows have retreated before the influences of a better and fitter order of things. But, for all that, there is a certain nameless pathos in it–a sense of rout and ruin, of trampled banners and the peace that is a settled despair–which arrests attention and compels salutation and sympathy. . . .

     There is, in truth, no lack of room for homeseekers in the West outside of the Indian Territory. An abundance of land of good quality is still vacant in Kansas, Nebraska, and other states. The Oklahoma "boomers," on their way to the Kansas border, passed over desirable thousands of acres, convenient to markets and schools, which they might have had at low rates and on long credits. But the pioneers of the period have a special craving for Indian lands, and lands "kept out of market"; the simple denial of their privilege to enter this Territory is sufficient to make them think it the fairest portion of the universe; the tangled and doubtful state of things there only tends to inflame their zeal, and urge them forward in season to get first choice of "claims." This is the aggressive element that has peopled and developed so much of Mr. Jefferson's Louisiana purchase, and it will not stop or turn aside. It looks with impatience upon the whole business of treating with Indians as sovereign powers, and giving over to them large tracts of land which they leave to grass and weeds; it is not tolerant of the Indians as a people, unfortunately, and believes that they are dealt with too leniently and sentimentally. This element is what we call "the vanguard of civilization," and experience has taught that it encounters obstacles only to overcome them, and marches toward forbidden areas only to grasp and dominate them. It will take the Indian Territory sooner or later, in one way or another:  that is inevitable. . . .

     Unquestionably the first necessity of the situation is to strengthen, perfect, and make uniform the land-titles of the Territory. This can most safely and successfully be accomplished, it is believed, by allotting lands to the Indians in severalty–at the rate, say, of one hundred and sixty acres per head–and giving them personal titles thereto, inalienable for a stipulated number of years; and providing for the disposal, at Government prices, of the unallotted and remaining portions of their reservations, for their benefit, to white settlers. . . .Such allotment and issuance of individual patents would involve, of course, the dissolution of tribal relations–another desirable step in the adjustment of the general question; and the Indian would thus be put upon an even footing with the white man as to the opportunities and advantages of personal independence. At the same time, the laws common throughout the states for the punishment of crime and the enforcement of contracts should be extended over the Territory, and courts established to administer them. . . .

     The adoption of a policy like that here crudely outlined could not fail, if judiciously pursued, to satisfy all parties concerned. . . . The five civilized tribes are already sufficiently advanced to take care of themselves in every way; and they number nearly two-thirds of all the Indians in the Territory, and would probably be the predominant class there for many years to come. The wild tribes would be at some disadvantage, on obvious accounts; but their situation, at worst, would be an improvement over the existing one, and their civilization–granting that they are capable of such an outcome–would be accelerated rather than retarded. . . .

     This policy would be incomplete, however, unless supplemented by a rigid and vigorous system of education. . . It is uncertain, to say the most, whether the adult members of the wild tribes can ever be induced or constrained to raise themselves from their abject savagery to the level of any fixed idea of education. Some impression may be made upon them, doubtless, by patient years of experiment, and the experiment is worth pursuing; but it is manifestly idle to predict any very shining results. If they can be relegated to a pastoral form of life, and fitted to earn their daily bread by their own labor, it will be as much as we are justified in expecting for them. But the rising generation is plastic, and can be molded effectually, and to higher uses. The education of the children goes to the core of the problem. We must begin at the cradle if we would conquer barbarism and lift a race to a height beyond itself. It is a slow process, but the only sure one. . .

For the complete article at Cornell University, go to "The Indian Country"