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 an independent nation. 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.
Indian Territory later came to refer to an unorganized territory whose general borders were initially set by the Nonintercourse Act of 1834, and was the successor to the remainder of the Missouri Territory after Missouri received statehood. The borders of Indian Territory were reduced in size as various Organic Acts were passed by Congress to create organized territories of the United States. The 1906 Oklahoma Enabling Act created the single state of Oklahoma by combining Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory, ending the existence of an unorganized independent Indian Territory as such, and formally incorporating the tribes and residents into the United States.
Before Oklahoma statehood, Indian Territory from 1890 onward comprised the territorial holdings of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, and other displaced Eastern American tribes. Indian reservations remain within the boundaries of U.S. states, but are largely exempt from state jurisdiction. The term "Indian country" today is used to signify lands under the control of Native nations, including Indian reservations, trust lands on Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Area, or, more casually, to describe anywhere large numbers of Native Americans live.
Indian Territory, also known as the Indian Territories and the Indian Country, was land in the United States reserved for the forced resettlement of Native Americans. As such, it was not a traditional territory for the tribes settled upon it. The general borders were set by the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834. The territory was located in the Central United States.
While Congress passed several Organic Acts that provided a path for statehood for much of the original Indian Country, Congress never passed an Organic Act for the Indian Territory. Indian Territory was never an organized territory of the United States. In general, tribes could not sell land to non-Indians (Johnson v. McIntosh). Treaties with the tribes restricted entry of non-Indians into tribal areas; Indian tribes were largely self-governing, were suzerain nations, with established tribal governments and well established cultures. The region never had a formal government until after the American Civil War.
After the Civil War, the Southern Treaty Commission re-wrote treaties with tribes that sided with the Confederacy, reducing the territory of the Five Civilized Tribes and providing land to resettle Plains Indians and tribes of the Midwestern United States. These re-written treaties included provisions for a territorial legislature with proportional representation from various tribes.
In time, the Indian Territory was reduced to what is now Oklahoma. The Organic Act of 1890 reduced Indian Territory to the lands occupied by the Five Civilized Tribes and the Tribes of the Quapaw Indian Agency (at the borders of Kansas and Missouri). The remaining western portion of the former Indian Territory became the Oklahoma Territory.
The Oklahoma Organic Act applied the laws of Nebraska to the organized Oklahoma Territory, and the laws of Arkansas to the still unorganized Indian Territory, since for years the federal U.S. District Court on the eastern borderline in Ft. Smith, Arkansas had criminal and civil jurisdiction over the territory.
Indian Reserve and the Louisiana Purchase
The concept of an Indian territory is the successor to the British Indian Reserve, a British American territory established by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 that set aside land for use by the Native American tribes. The proclamation limited the settlement of Europeans to lands east of the Appalachian Mountains. The territory remained active until the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War, and the land was ceded to the United States. The Indian Reserve was slowly reduced in size via treaties with the American colonists, and after the British defeat in the Revolutionary War, the Reserve was ignored by European American settlers who slowly expanded westward.
At the time of the American Revolutionary War, many Native American tribes had long-standing relationships with the British, and were loyal to Great Britain, but they had a less-developed relationship with the American colonists. After the defeat of the British in the war, the Americans twice invaded the Ohio Country and were twice defeated. They finally defeated the Indian Western Confederacy at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, and imposed the Treaty of Greenville, which ceded most of what is now Ohio, part of present-day Indiana, and the lands that include present-day Chicago and Detroit, to the United States federal government.
The period after the American Revolutionary War was one of rapid western expansion. The areas occupied by Native Americans in the United States were called Indian country. They were distinguished from "unorganized territory" because the areas were established by treaty.
In 1803, the United States agreed to purchase France's claim to French Louisiana for a total of $15 million (less than 3 cents per acre).
President Thomas Jefferson doubted the legality of the purchase. Robert R. Livingston, the chief negotiator of the purchase, however, believed that the 3rd article of the treaty of the Louisiana Purchase would be acceptable to Congress. The 3rd article stated, in part:
the inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess.
This committed the U.S. government to "the ultimate, but not to the immediate, admission" of the territory as multiple states, and "postponed its incorporation into the Union to the pleasure of Congress".
After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson and his successors viewed much of the land west of the Mississippi River as a place to resettle the Native Americans, so that white settlers would be free to live in the lands east of the river. Indian removal became the official policy of the United States government with the passage of the 1830 Indian Removal Act, formulated by President Andrew Jackson.
When Louisiana became a state in 1812, the remaining territory was renamed Missouri Territory to avoid confusion. Arkansaw Territory, which included the present State of Arkansas plus much of the state of Oklahoma, was created out of the southern part of Missouri Territory in 1819. During negotiations with the Choctaw in 1820 for the Treaty of Doak's Stand, Andrew Jackson ceded more of Arkansas Territory to the Choctaw than he realized, from what is now Oklahoma into Arkansas, east of Ft. Smith, Arkansas. The General Survey Act of 1824 allowed a survey that established the western border of Arkansas Territory 45 miles west of Ft. Smith. But this was part of the negotiated lands of Lovely's Purchase where the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek and other tribes had been settling, and these Indian nations objected strongly. In 1828 a new survey redefined the western Arkansas border just west of Ft. Smith. After these redefinitions, the "Indian zone" would cover the present states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and part of Iowa.