Volume 10 , Issue 7

Opening of the Kickapoo Reservation

Opening of the Kickapoo Reservation, Vol. 2, pg. 723, A Standard History of Oklahoma, by Joseph B. Thoburn.

The reservation of the Kickapoo Indians was located in Lincoln, Oklahoma and Pattawatomie counties. As a tribe, the Kickapoos have always been numbered among the most conservative indians.

They did not want to adopt the ways of the white people and they were bitterly opposed to accepting individual allotments of land for personal fee simple ownership. The government commissioners seemingly could make no headway in the effort to induce them to accept allotments and sell their surplus lands. It is said that they were finally induced to sign a power of attorney to certain persons, ostensibly for the purpose of collecting some money alleged to have been due the Kickapoos, and that this power of attorney was used in signing an agreement on behalf of the Kickapoos to accept allotments and sell their surplus lands in order that the same might be thrown open to settlement under the homestead laws.

The lands were opened to settlement by the usual executive proclamation and race, may 25, 1895. The Kickapoos were never satisfied, most of them leaving and going to Mexico for a time. The migration to Mexico aided if not instigated by scheming white men conspired to buy Kickapoo allotments for a mere fraction of their value. This resulted in a scandal and a congressional investigation which is alleged to have covered up quite as much as it exposed.

The published report of the senate subcommittee, which conducted the investigation of the Kickapoo frauds, s contained in the Senate Document no. 215, Sixtieth congress, first session, comprising 2,3000 pages in three volumes.
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