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Show 152 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [ ETH. ANN. 19 finally decided adversely three years later on appeal to the Supreme Court. 1 In 1889 the Cherokee female seminary was completed at Tahlequah at a cost of over $ 60,000, supplementing the work of the male seminary, built some years before at a cost of $ 90,000. The Cherokee Nation was now appropriating annually over $ 80,000 for school purposes, including the support of the two seminaries, an orphan asylum, and over one hundred primary schools, besides which there were a number of mission schools. 2 For a number of years the pressure for the opening of Indian territory to white settlement had been growing in strength. Thousands of intruders had settled themselves upon the lands of each of the five civilized tribes, where they remained upon various pretexts in spite of urgent and repeated appeals to the government by the Indians for their removal. Under treaties with the five civilized tribes, the right to decide citizenship or residence claims belonged to the tribes concerned, but the intruders had at last become so numerous and strong that they had formed an organization among themselves to pass upon their own claims, and others that might be submitted to them, with attorneys and ample funds to defend each claim in outside courts against the decision of the tribe. At the same time the Government policy was steadily toward the reduction or complete breaking up of Indian reservations and the allotment of lands to the Indians in severalty ^ with a view to their final citizenship, and the opening of the surplus lands to white settlement. As a part of the same policy the jurisdiction of the United States courts was gradually being extended over the Indian country, taking cognizance of many things hitherto considered by the Indian courts under former treaties with the United States. Against all this the Cherokee and other civilized tribes protested, but without avail. To add to the irritation, companies of armed " boomers" were organized for the express purpose of invading and seizing the Cherokee outlet and other unoccupied portions of the Indian territory- reserved by treaty for future Indian settlement- in defiance of the civil and military power of the Government. We come now to what seems the beginning of the end of Indian autonomy. In 1889 a commission, afterward known as the Cherokee Commission, was appointed, under act of Congress, to u negotiate with the Cherokee Indians, and with all other Indians owning or claiming lands lying west of the ninety- sixth degree of longitude in the Indian territory, for the cession to the United States of all their title, claim, or interest of every kind or character in and to said lands." In August of that year the commission made a proposition to 1 Commissioner J. D. C Atkins, Report of Indian Commissioner, p. xlv, 1886, and p. lxxvii, 1887. 2 Agent L. E. Bennett, in Report of Indian Commissioner, p. 93,1890. |