Indian Territory was the region west of the Mississippi River that the United States government set aside for the residence of Indigenous (native) people from about 1825 to 1906. These people had been moved from their homes east of the Mississippi as part of a policy to move all Indigenous people in the East to new homes on the Great Plains, west of the 95th meridian (degree of longitude). The U.S. government moved the Indigenous people because of the pressure of white settlers who wanted to take over the lands on which they lived. At the time the Indian Territory was created, Indigenous people were commonly called Indians.
Originally, the Indian Territory stretched from the Red River north to the Missouri River and west from the borders of Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa to the 100th meridian. By the mid-1850’s, it had been reduced to roughly the size of the present-day state of Oklahoma. The government had moved what white settlers called the Five Civilized Tribes—the Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole—there from the Southeast in the 1830’s. Although the territory had no unified political organization, the Indigenous people were permitted to govern themselves as long as they kept the peace. However, because the area was not a true U.S.-governed territory, it became a haven for outlaws.
During the American Civil War (1861-1865), the Five Civilized Tribes were divided in their support for the Union and Confederacy and fought a terrible civil war of their own. In 1866, the U.S. government required these five groups to give up the western part of their territory to the United States for the use of other Indigenous peoples. The government took their land to punish them for helping the Confederacy, though many Indigenous people in the territory had fought for the Union. Areas known as Indian reservations in this western region were set aside at various times for the Osage, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Wichita, Caddo, Kiowa, and Comanche. In 1889, the government opened to white settlement some of the lands in this region not assigned as Indian reservations. So many white settlers arrived that the Territory of Oklahoma was organized in this western region the next year (see Oklahoma (History)).
Meanwhile, homes for other Indigenous groups whose land had been taken, such as the Ottawa, Peoria, Shawnee, Modoc, and Quapaw, had been in the eastern half of the original Indian Territory. Most of them were in the northeast corner of the Cherokee holdings. White settlers also came in an ever-increasing stream, and the tribal government of the Indigenous people became hopelessly inadequate.
The Dawes Act of 1887 broke up tribal landholdings. In 1893, the U.S. Congress created the Dawes Commission to help settle problems with the Five Civilized Tribes. Under the Curtis Act of 1898, Congress gradually dissolved tribal laws and courts, and brought the Indigenous people under the laws and courts of the United States. Provision was made for the incorporation and government of towns. An act in 1901 made all the Indigenous people of the Indian Territory citizens of the United States.
By 1900, the population of the Indian Territory had grown to nearly 400,000, with six times as many white people as Indigenous people. The demand for state government was strong. The people approved a constitution for a proposed state of Sequoyah in 1905. But Congress had other plans. In 1906, it passed an enabling act by which Oklahoma and Indian Territory could join to become a single state. Under the terms of this act, the state of Oklahoma was admitted to the Union on Nov. 16, 1907. The Indian Territory ceased to exist.
See also Indigenous peoples of the Americas; Indian wars.
