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Show Chapter XVII Use and Abuse of Settlement Laws 1880-1904 If one may judge from the silence of the public press, the periodicals, and indeed of Congressmen, little impact was made on public opinion by the Report of the Public Land Commission and the continued recommendations of the Land Commissioners for changes in the land laws to end fraudulent entries. The West was enjoying its greatest land boom-financed largely by a huge outpouring of funds from the East-and until the late eighties there were few who favored any action that might slow down the boom and the transfer of public lands to private ownership. In fact, the pressure for speeding up the surveys, opening new lands to settlement, and removing the Indians from their more desirable tracts was mounting, and, with respect to the Indians, came to a head in the eighties. Among the tribes which at that time were induced either to accept allotments or reduced reservations and to convey their surplus lands to the United States, were the Miami, Kickapoo, Sac, Fox, and Iowa of Kansas, the Omaha, Otoe and Winnebago of Nebraska, the Chippewa of Minnesota, the Creek, Seminole, Peoria and Miami of Indian Territory, the Crow, Flat-head, Gros Ventre, and Blackfeet of Montana Territory, the Sioux of Dakota Territory, the Shoshone and Bannack of Idaho Territory, the Ute of Utah and the Uma- 1 Charles J. Kappler, Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties (2 vols., Washington, 1904), I, 177-349. tilla of Oregon.1 The wide distribution of these tribes shows the extensive pressure that was being exerted for removal of the Indians and the opening of their better lands to settlement. Congress had long experimented with individual allotments of land as part of its efforts to break up Indian tribal organization and move the land into white ownership. In 1830, 1832, and 1834 it provided for allotments in Alabama and Mississippi for Choctaws, Creeks, and Chickasaws. These allotments, with few exceptions, swiftly fell into white hands. Meantime, Congress was including provisions for allotments to chiefs in treaties made with the Miami and Potawatomi tribes in Indiana in order to gain the support of influential traders into whose hands the allotments were certain to fall. It was impossible to wrest land cessions from the Indians without the approval of the Wabash traders to whom the chiefs were heavily in debt. The third major use of allotments in this early period was in Kansas where in 1853-60 officials of the Indian administration were attempting to induce the intruded Indians to move to the Indian Territory and either to surrender their Kansas lands or to accept allotments of 160 to 640 acres. Almost without exception the allotments proved of no advantage to the Indian beneficiaries who soon lost them and were compelled to move to other and less desirable 463 |