192
saddlebag dispatches
B
Y 1874, THE YEAR Arch Wolf was born, the best days of the Cherokee people were well behind them. The tribe had been moved by force from their ancestral home thirty-five years earlier. They’d been marched across the country and crowded into Indian Territory beside Choctaw, Chickasha, Muskogee, and Seminole. They were surrounded by land-hungry white settlers, and dominated by the U.S. Government, whose courts and soldiers were right across the Arkansas River in Fort Smith. The tribe still had its oral history, but those heroic stories of brave warriors, great hunters and rich farmers in the southeastern woodlands of the North American continent must have sounded like fairy tales to young Cherokee men in the second half of the nineteenth century. Things were bad for the tribes in Indian Territory and everyone could see they would be getting worse. The year Arch turned thirteen, Congress passed the General Allotment Act of 1887 (The Dawes Act). This law authorized taking away land controlled by the Indian Nations, and replacing it with allotments assigned to individual tribal members. The Dawes Commission put the new law in place gradually, on scattered reservations around the country. They held off enforcing it in Indian Territory until they were well acquainted with the reactions they might expect from the five tribes concentrated in that region. The government didn’t start by using force. They encouraged tribal members to sign up for the rolls
and receive title to eighty acres (for a single person) and one hundred sixty acres for a head of household. They underplayed the fact that allotments would be discontinued once the rolls were closed and unassigned tribal land would be available to non-Indians. Traditional Cherokee, the Keetoowah, figured out the downside pretty early. They refused to cooperate with the Dawes Commission. Traditional boys like Arch Wolf didn’t sign up for their allotments when they turned eighteen. They put their confidence in the tribe with its organized government and skilled statesmen who were accustomed to dealing with white politicians. The Cherokee Nation made its case in the courts and with lobbying efforts. They won a number of legal battles and managed to slow down the inevitable loss of their tribal sovereignty, but it did them no good in the end. In 1898, Congress passed The Curtis Act, a law that eliminated the authority of any tribe to enforce any laws they passed. This marked the end to any legitimate tribal government. As a member of a Keetoowah family, Arch Wolf remained steadfastly against the allotments as long as he was able. But he never had to worry about the Curtis Act. By the time Congress passed it, he was already in the custody of the U.S. justice system. THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WORST TIME. Arch Wolf’s family had close ties with well-known Keetoowah statesman, Ned Christie. Most traditionals
