A CENTURY OF TRIBAL DISENROLLMENT

FIRST THE DAWES COMMISSION, NOW CASINO TRIBES, PROFIT BY ERASING INDIAN HERITAGE

- HENRY C. PARKE

"Squawman" and Wife

White men who married Native women were known derisively back in the day as a "Squawman" and as a result many of the descendants of these interracial couples have been kicked off the rolls for lack of quantum blood.

Starting in 1887, The Dawes Commission tried to shrink tribal membership down to zero.

It's happening again today, again it's all about money, only this time, Natives are doing it to each other.

Soky Sullinger Cooley, with 2nd husband, William Cooley Soky, full-blood Choctaw daughter of Tushkemash Tubbe and Hitimer, had about 50 descendants who hoped to receive allotments.

I am indebted to the University of Oklahoma for providing me with a 95-page file of original plaintiff and defense documents related to the Dawes Commission's handling of claim #116, Chas. D. Sullenger, et al.

It all began with President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830, ordering the forced relocation of most of America's Indian tribes to west of the Mississippi River. (Interestingly, in the documents, that event is referred to neither as Indian Removal Act nor Trail of Tears, but the innocuous Migration.) The Act created the Indian Territory, which would become Oklahoma, and it created the reservation system as we know it. Following the Indian Wars, which ended with Geronimo's surrender in 1886, in 1887, the United States Government embarked on a new policy to deal with the nation's Indian tribes. And by “deal with,” I mean the dismantling of the tribes.