Autonomy Through Allotment: Political Strategies of the Ottawa Tribe in Indian Territory, 1870–1892

Abstract

The late nineteenth-century policy of allotting tribal lands into individually owned tracts is appropriately interpreted as a destructive federal effort to expropriate Native land and eliminate tribal identities. The Ottawa Tribe in Indian Territory, however, had divergent objectives in supporting allotment. This article argues the Ottawa advocated for allotment and U.S. citizenship to escape intrusive federal control over their lands and resources. Although they embraced policies aimed at eliminating tribal existence, the Ottawa rejected the intentions behind those policies, and instead, they drew on long-established community attributes of mobility and interconnection with outsiders to resituate their nation within American society. By centering Ottawa perspectives, this article disrupts progressive narratives that denote the pursuit of U.S. citizenship as an effort to secure equal inclusion. It underscores U.S. citizenship and allotment as tools of settler colonial domination and demonstrates how the Ottawa subversively deployed U.S. citizenship and private property rights to combat colonial administration and maintain tribal sovereignty. Examining a policy often glossed over as invariably imposed on Native nations, this article underscores the necessity of analyzing Native community dynamics and political strategies to understand the implementation and impact of allotment.

In January 1883, Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, later to author the famous Dawes Act of 1887 that subdivided tribal lands across the United States into individual allotments, took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to endorse a plea from the Ottawa Indians of Indian Territory. Ninety-five of the then 122 Ottawa petitioned “that our lands may be surveyed and allotted and patented to the members of our tribe in severalty.” ¹ For Dawes, the Ottawa petition offered an opportunity to introduce allotment into Indian Territory and undercut the vehement opposition of the Five Civilized Tribes toward the policy. Dawes hoped “notwithstanding the objections of the Five Nations that the example by their side would work injury to their old established method [of holding lands in common].” ² Policymakers envisioned allotment as a means to expropriate Native lands and to solve the larger “Indian problem” by facilitating tribal erasure through homogenized or racialized inclusion of Indians in American society as individual U.S. citizens. ³ Daniel Heath Justice and Jean M. O’Brien aptly described allotment as “a fundamental mechanism of settler colonial domination and displacement … directed toward the erasure of Indigenous communities and claims and the legitimation of settler authority and resource access.” ⁴ Considering that the allotment of tribal lands generally precipitated devastating land losses and fractured tribal communities, Ottawa support appears puzzling.

If contemplating only federal intentions, the Ottawa appear as reckless accomplices to their own elimination; however, the Ottawa petition divulges a set of presumptions and expectations at odds with those of federal policymakers. The Ottawa petition noted, “we were made citizens of the United States by the treaty of July 28, 1862 and have ever remained loyal to the Government of the United States. Since our removal to our present home in the Indian Territory we have improved our lands and have built houses. But inasmuch as we have no funds or annuities, we are unable to pay the expenses of surveying and allotting our lands. We, therefore, humbly pray that this work may be done at the expense of the United States Government.” ⁵ Federal policymakers equated individual landholding, cultural change, and U.S. citizenship with the dissolution of tribal affiliation. ⁶ In contrast, the Ottawa conveyed how, for more than a decade, they had held individual homesteads, built houses, improved their lands, and shouldered the burden of U.S. citizenship—all while still regarding themselves as Ottawas. ⁷ After more than a decade of petitions, the Ottawa reservation was allotted in 1892.

This article argues that the Ottawa advocated for allotment and U.S. citizenship to escape intrusive federal control over their lands and resources. While embracing policies intending tribal elimination, the Ottawa refused the eliminatory implications of those policies and ensconced their nation within American society. On the Ottawa reservation in Indian Territory, Indian agents undermined Ottawa lifeways by evicting white renters and interfering in Ottawa land management. Authority over land was an essential aspect of U.S. citizenship. ⁸ By adopting allotment policy, the Ottawa sought to deploy that attribute of U.S. citizenship to assert their freedom from colonial dominance and regain control over their own affairs. Ottawa activism around allotment and U.S. citizenship drew strength from longstanding community attributes of mobility and interconnection with outsiders. Before allotment, the Ottawa had adapted to sustain their community amid deep-seated economic and social relations with white Americans and tribal displacement outside of reservation boundaries, and these circumstances enabled the Ottawa to use allotment and U.S. citizenship as tools to gain autonomy from colonial administration. ⁹

While not diminishing the ways allotment was forced upon many Native nations and wreaked catastrophic consequences for tribes across the United States, this article also outlines how Native people deployed allotment and U.S. citizenship in their struggle for power with the settler state. ¹⁰ Recent studies have demonstrated the varied ways Native people skillfully diverted or refused U.S. citizenship to achieve tribal ends. ¹¹

Scholars have similarly pointed to Native manipulation of allotment in the wake of federal imposition of the policy. ¹² Another wave of scholarship has outlined how Native people adapted existing institutions to sustain tribal nationhood after allotment. ¹³ These works convey how federal assumptions of nationhood as tied to the jurisdictional authority of a state-centered political organization failed to account for forms of Native nationhood centered on kinship and interrelationship. The Ottawa experience builds on these strands of scholarship by demonstrating how Ottawa community dynamics enabled the Ottawa to pursue private property ownership and U.S. citizenship to secure greater autonomy as a people. ¹⁴

The Ottawa experience challenges dominant progressive narratives of U.S. citizenship as a revered, even sacred, status that reflects the virtues of American liberal values. To federal officials, Native support for “assimilation” policies legitimated efforts at tribal elimination and validated the supposedly universal appeal of American liberal-democratic institutions. In contrast, the Ottawa refused the eliminatory implications of the federal policies they pursued and sought U.S. citizenship rights that would enable them to escape the colonial control imposed by the United States. Nationalistic narratives denoting the pursuit of U.S. citizenship as reflective of the virtues of American liberal values obfuscate how Ottawa people subversively harnessed U.S. citizenship in their struggle for power with the federal government.

This article begins by outlining Ottawa experiences in Kansas. It briefly addresses how the Ottawa acquired formal U.S. citizenship and attempted to use their U.S. citizenship and private property ownership to thwart federal impositions while in Kansas. It also summarizes the circumstances under which the Ottawa retained their U.S. citizenship while acquiring a new reservation in Indian Territory. The article then demonstrates how the Ottawa adapted their political and social formations, practices, and movement patterns to survive after removal to Indian Territory. These adaptations resulted in a community characterized by broad social and economic interconnection with white Americans as well as Ottawa mobility beyond the reservation. Having outlined prior Ottawa use of U.S. citizenship in struggles with federal officials and how community life was not confined to or contingent on reservation confines, the article proceeds to demonstrate how the Ottawa sought U.S. citizenship and private property rights through allotment to thwart increasingly intrusive federal interference in the management of Ottawa lands in the 1870s and 1880s. The article closes by outlining how the Ottawa worked to deflect the eliminatory intent of allotment and proactively planned for a tribal future within American society.

Dual Citizens in Indian Territory

For the Ottawa in Indian Territory, seeking autonomy from colonial administration through allotment and U.S. citizenship had precedent. In the 1830s, three Ottawa bands begrudgingly accepted removal from their historic homelands along the Maumee River in Ohio to a new reservation west of the Mississippi River. Within a few years, half the Ottawa died of homesickness, illness, and exposure on the plains of Kansas. The Ottawa endured despite this deprivation and hardship. They adapted to agricultural life on the plains with fresh assurances from the federal government that they would be secure and protected in their new homeland. ¹⁵ Federal fidelity to those pledges, however, proved short-lived. In the early 1850s, policymakers again clamored for tribal lands to organize the Kansas Territory and attempted to impose another genocidal removal on the Ottawa. ¹⁶ As did some other tribal nations in Kansas, the Ottawa embraced allotment and U.S. citizenship as alternatives to removal. ¹⁷ In a June 1862 treaty between the United States and the Ottawa Indians of Blanchard’s Fork and Roche De Boeuf, the Ottawa agreed to accept allotment and that their “organization, and their relations with the United States as an Indian tribe shall be dissolved and terminated … and each and every one of them, shall be deemed and declared to be citizens of the United States, to all intents and purposes, and shall be entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of such citizens.” ¹⁸ Through the treaty, the Ottawa also planned for a tribal future within American society, and they harnessed private property rights to protect their land claims and mobilized around education and their church as tools to navigate American society on their own terms. ¹⁹ In this way, the Ottawa resituated their nation within settler society to avoid removal and subvert the eliminatory implications of federal policies.

Events did not transpire as the Ottawa intended, and a notorious Indian ring operating in Kansas defrauded and dispossessed the Ottawa. ²⁰ In this well-documented case of federal corruption and gross maladministration, the Indian agent for the Ottawa conspired with designing parties to seize Ottawa allotments and funds in federal trust. ²¹ As a result, the Ottawa negotiated a new treaty in 1867. ²² Due to a combination of federal error and strategic maneuvering by the Ottawa, the 1867 treaty extended U.S. citizenship to the Ottawa, merely postponing naturalization to 1869, and simultaneously sanctioned the Ottawa purchase of a 14,860-acre reservation in Indian Territory. In Kansas, the Ottawa attempted to redirect their U.S. citizenship to demand control over tribal resources still in the hands of corrupt federal officials. In the mid-nineteenth century, policymakers considered holding U.S. citizenship while retaining a reservation and tribal affiliation a contradiction in terms, and Ottawa assertions of U.S. citizenship inspired hostility. Thus, irrespective of their formal legal status as U.S. citizens, federal officials relegated the Ottawa to a second-class citizenship that entailed continued federal control over Ottawa lands and resources. Nevertheless, the Ottawa carried with them to Indian Territory a formal designation as U.S. citizens and a tradition of using U.S. citizenship and private property ownership as a tool against colonial impositions.

Tribal Life in Indian Territory

In July 1869, per treaty stipulations, the Ottawa formally became naturalized U.S. citizens, but far from shedding their tribal affiliation upon gaining U.S. citizenship, at that very moment the Ottawa began the difficult struggle of establishing their tribal nation in Indian Territory. Starting in 1867, small family groupings of Ottawas sold their allotments in Kansas, crowded into wagons with all their household effects, and made the 150-mile journey south to their new home, a 14,860-acre reservation in the northeastern corner of Indian Territory under the federal jurisdiction of the Quapaw Indian Agency (See Figure 1). ²³ Guy Jennison (Che-she-beeg), whose mother survived the journey from Kansas, reflected on the difficult years after removal: “the majority of the Tribe landed here with practically nothing. A few had a little money left from the sale of their lands in Kansas. … The Ottawas scarcely raised anything. It got so dry that both rivers, Neosho and Spring River, stopped flowing. Shawnee Lake, east of (what is now) Miami, where all those water lilies used to be before Grand Lake was built, also went dry. For a vegetable, the Indians would go and dig down and get those tubers of the water lily. Something like a sweet potato and they cooked and ate them. The old Indians said that they would have starved had it not been for them.” ²⁴ In addition to malnourishment, diseases plagued the Ottawa, and a particularly cold winter in 1870–1871 made matters worse. ²⁵ Joseph Badger King (Ko-tah-wun), chief in the years immediately after removal, estimated around half of the Ottawa died within a few years of moving to Indian Territory. ²⁶ Among the dead was King’s wife Christiana and his newborn son Anthony, who both died in fall 1870. Federal records attest that from an estimated population of 229 in 1867, the Ottawa numbered a mere 150 by 1872. ²⁷

Figure 1. Indian reservations in the Quapaw Agency, 1891. Map by Gabriel Moss. Data sources: Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Domestic Sovereign Nations: Land Areas of Federally-Recognized Tribes, accessed September 30, 2021, https://bia-geospatial-internal.geoplatform.gov/indianlands/

In the face of these severe challenges, tribal members worked cooperatively to establish themselves in their new homeland. In Kansas, the Ottawa had been esteemed for their fine farms and relative affluence. After the fraudulent theft of their lands and monies in Kansas, however, the Ottawa entered Indian Territory impoverished. The Ottawa generally lacked the means to procure or hire teams to break untilled lands, to purchase seed, or to bring in materials to build new homes. Nevertheless, Guy Jennison noted, the first “spring they had through tribal cooperation constructed their homes, built rail fences to protect what small patches of crops they were able to put in.” ²⁸ A young man at the time, tribal member Dave Geboe (Che-kauk) remembered how the Ottawa “helped each other and went to the timber and cut and prepared the logs and when they had enough, then they were hauled to the place where the building was to be, and the men all came and had a log rolling. Our house and stable were both built this way so by the cold days we had a home for the winter.” ²⁹ Similarly, tribal member Lula Wyrick recalled the “tribe moved here in wagons and after their arrival they helped each other to build their first houses which were of logs.” ³⁰

Although they communally constructed their homes, tribal members maintained individual homesteads and land claims as they had in Kansas. However, as before, those individual claims did not stifle the kinship connections and reciprocity at the center of tribal ties. In Kansas, the Ottawa had adapted to agricultural life on the plains by establishing a written legal code that protected private property rights, and in the 1850s, the Ottawa surveyed and subdivided their own reservation before allotment to protect their land claims from white intruders and depredations. ³¹ In Indian Territory, the Ottawa continued these traditions. Tribal members purchased locations with improvements from other members, negotiated the exchange of locations, and could inherit locations from parents. ³² At the same time, the Ottawa regularly shared resources, assisted each other in improving their homes and farms, and cooperatively cared for the sick, destitute, and young. ³³ As Moses Pooler (Ma-e-zee), who would become the wealthiest Ottawa after removal, noted of his relationship to his fellow tribal members, “When adversity overtook them, I have always assisted them during the hard times.” ³⁴

Through tribal government, the Ottawa managed shared interests and concerns (Figure 2). As the Ottawa slowly streamed south in the late 1860s, Chief John Wilson (Pah-tee) appointed Joseph Badger King to lead the effort to erect buildings for educational, religious, cemetery, and tribal government purposes on a roughly forty-acre tract that tribal members agreed to set aside for those functions. ³⁵ Located on a bluff on the southeastern portion of the Ottawa reserve, near the Spring River, this tract became the center of social life on the new Ottawa reserve. Most Ottawas settled nearby, in the southern or eastern portion of the Ottawa reservation. Buildings constructed under the leadership of King included a church made of logs, a home for tribal leader and pastor James Wind (Shaw-bon-da,) and a schoolhouse. ³⁶ Tribal government also served as the venue for tribal members to arbitrate disputes and manage common lands. The tribal government sanctioned the land claims of individual members, authorized rental agreements, leased common lands for cattle grazing, and policed community membership by promulgating rules regarding tribal citizenship. ³⁷

Figure 2. Ottawa tribal council, seated, and other Ottawa men, c. 1875. Bottom row (left to right): James Wind (Shaw-bon-da), William Hurr (Naw-swa-ke-shick), Francis King, Henry Clay (Che-po-swa), David Barnett (Pe-as-so-we-shik). Top row: Christopher Wind, Charles Hutchinson, Henry Jones (Mos-koo), Joseph Wind (Kin-ne-wa-ha). “Members of Ottawa Council, near Shawnee, Oklahoma,” George W. Ingalls Photograph Collection, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Expanding Tribal Landscapes

To survive in Indian Territory after removal, the Ottawa developed new lifeways that reinforced tribal traditions of mobility and interconnection with outsiders. Most Ottawas never developed flourishing family farms like those they maintained in Kansas. Instead, the Ottawa increasingly used white renters to cultivate their lands and took advantage of economic opportunities beyond their reservation. As a result, they incorporated outsiders into community life and adapted the terms of tribal membership to accommodate the increasing number of tribal members residing away from the reservation. Ottawa orientation toward allotment reflected a community life not restricted to or contingent on reservation confines.

Intimate and tightly knit Ottawa kinship relationships sustained community cohesion across expanding spatial divides and amid growing interconnection with outsiders. In a very tangible sense, the Ottawa represented one large extended family. The Ottawa had declined to fewer than 300 individuals since the years immediately following removal from Ohio to Kansas in the 1830s. ³⁸

By the 1870s and 1880s, the Ottawa generally numbered less than 150 members. As a result, all Ottawa held connections to each other through some combination of blood, intermarriage, or adoption. Tribal members could trace the relationships of the various families through more recent marriages in Kansas and Indian Territory, back to different villages along the Maumee River in Ohio, and for some, back to Pontiac and his wives and children. This thick web of family relationships was augmented by shared history and experiences. Survivors or descendants of survivors of two coerced removals, the Ottawa twice endured disastrous dispossession and dislocation. After both removals, tribal members worked cooperatively to rebuild their lives in a new homeland. Thus, the Ottawa did not need shared geography to recognize those entitled to community membership or sustain a deep sense of connection.

Kinship sustained community bonds as the realities of life in Indian Territory intensified and reshaped longstanding patterns of mobility and migration. In Ohio, the Ottawa strategically and seasonally moved to maximize available resources, and family groupings regularly dispersed and recongregated over the course of the year. Thus, people, not a fixed location, defined the community. Even after adopting permanent agricultural settlements in Kansas, individuals and families intermittently took up occupations beyond reservation confines or embarked on long hunting and fishing expeditions. In Indian Territory, many Ottawas, at least periodically, did not reside on the Ottawa reservation. In 1884, Moses Pooler reported that “the total number of our tribe is 135. Of this 135 100 are residents of the reservation, the balance residing some in Canada, Kansas, and the Sac and Fox reservation in the Indian Territory.” ³⁹ The majority of those absent lived among the Sac and Fox Tribe. The others resided at Walpole Island, Canada, or Franklin County, Kansas, where Ottawas maintained relationships with the land despite forced removal from those areas.

Economic necessity often drove Ottawa outmigration. As tribal member Walter King (Wa-sa-gee shick) recalled, “because there was no way in the Ottawa Reservation to earn any money and the Sac and Foxes had plenty of money in the early day … about one half of the Ottawas were at the Sac and Fox Agency part of the time after they were removed.” ⁴⁰ Fellow speakers of an Algonquian dialect, the Sac and Fox Tribe and the Ottawa had longstanding relationships. On the Sac and Fox reserve, Ottawas worked at a sawmill, as Indian agency employees, and as missionaries. Tribal member Lula Wyrick recalled the poverty that compelled her family to make the nearly 150-mile trip to the Sac and Fox reserve. Having consumed all their supplies at home before departure, the family’s only food consisted of a jug of molasses, and for the duration of the journey, the children would take a long, clean corn cob, stick it in the jug, and lick it for sustenance. They stayed at the Sac and Fox Agency for one year in the 1880s, her stepfather serving as a peace officer, before returning to the Ottawa reserve. ⁴¹

Reflecting earlier seasonal subsistence patterns, many Ottawas treated their land selections on the Ottawa reserve as a stopping place in a broader process of dispersing, recongregating, and migration. As tribal member Clarence King (Ocquanoxcey) noted, “when the land was held in common there was quite a bit of moving from place to place. It was, mostly a matter of fencing up little patches, what they had, tried to grow something, which wasn’t very much. And then it was mostly long excursions during the summer when they ought have been tending the crop. They would take off and maybe spend three or four weeks on some lake and fish when they should be tending their crops. They’d spend most of the summer dancing or out camping somewhere. Fishing and neglecting the land.” ⁴² As in earlier generations, fixed residence on the reservation did not define the contours of the community. As Clarence King observed, “After the allotment, there wasn’t much difference than when it was they was living on common. Most of them never did stay on their allotments. They continued to move around.” ⁴³

Deeply rooted kinship connections, trips home for community events, and correspondence allowed the Ottawa to maintain tribal bonds amid tribal mobility and geographic dispersal. These practices nourished tribal relationships while residing at a distance. The Sac and Fox reservation lay nearly 150 miles from the Ottawa reservation, but Ottawas regularly made the journey there and back. As a youth, Walter King made two or three round trips by wagon between the two reservations. ⁴⁴ Similarly, Lula Wyrick recalled fondly how “it was always a pleasure for my uncle Chris Wind who lived among the Indians at the Sac and Fox Agency to come to visit us as he would sing and talk in the Indian language and would tell Indian stories to us children.” ⁴⁵ Isaac McCoy, an Ottawa tribal member given his English name by the famous white preacher of the same name, became a Baptist minister and served as a missionary among the Sac and Fox Tribe, eventually marrying into that tribe. McCoy kept up regular correspondence regarding events on the Ottawa Reserve and journeyed back home to participate in tribal decisions and periodically preach at the Ottawa Indian Baptist Church on the Ottawa Reserve. ⁴⁶

The Ottawa adapted the terms of tribal citizenship to manage increased mobility. For those living at a distance, partaking in some of the benefits of tribal citizenship initially required a demonstration of ongoing commitments to the tribal community based on the reservation. Lizzie Wolfe (Nos-squat-ta) summarized a tribal rule created sometime after removal to Indian Territory: “When intermarrying other tribe if absent certain length of time and not comply a requirement of said Nation the name is cancel out in the payment roll.” ⁴⁷ The requirements alluded to went unstated, but this statement implied that some benefits of tribal citizenship depended on a demonstration of continued commitment to the Ottawa community for those who married into another tribe and were unable to participate in the events and mutual reciprocity of daily life on the Ottawa reservation. As outmigration increased, tribal members adapted this rule. The rule change probably occurred in the 1880s. As Lizzie Wolfe recalled, in the past, “if any of our member who fail to comply any of our requirements or absent themself after many years, they were rejected. Those principles were omitted at this generation.” ⁴⁸ Before allotment, the Ottawa considered those with kinship ties who were living or born outside of the Ottawa reservation to be full citizens of the tribal community. ⁴⁹

The Ottawa also adapted community life to manage increased economic and social interconnection with white Americans. In Indian Territory, the Ottawa developed a system of leasing their individual land claims to whites that became the focal point of economic activity on the reservation. As one Indian agent summarized, “as far back as 1870 the Indians of this agency inaugurated a system of renting or making labor contracts with white farmers.” ⁵⁰ Often lacking the teams or finances to break new ground, renting allowed the Ottawa to bring untilled land under cultivation. Unwanted intruders also posed a perennial concern. ⁵¹ Nevertheless, renters resided on the Ottawa reservation at the behest of individual Ottawas and with the permission of tribal government. ⁵² By 1879, Agent Thomas Moore claimed white renters planted 861 of the 914 acres in cultivation on the 14,860-acre Ottawa reservation. ⁵³ By the 1880s, as much as half of the population of the Ottawa reservation consisted of non-Ottawas. ⁵⁴

White renters enabled a diverse range of Ottawas to cull benefits from their otherwise vacant and unprofitable land claims. A statistical survey from 1881 listed male or female heads of household, the variety and type of crops grown, and whether whites or Indians had brought the land under cultivation. This survey demonstrated the reliance of some Ottawas on the rental system. Twenty of the thirty heads of household listed had some land under cultivation. Of those who cultivated, eight did so without white labor, four relied entirely on white labor, and eight augmented their own efforts with white labor. ⁵⁵ Among those who relied entirely on white labor were widows and single women. ⁵⁶ As Agent D. B. Dyer noted of the Indians of the Quapaw Agency, “many are destitute, but if allowed to rent their land the share of the crop so obtained enables them to live independent of any assistance from the government. Such are embraced under widows, orphans, cripples, and invalid persons who cannot labor.” ⁵⁷ Renting also served the interests of tribal members not residing on the Ottawa Reservation. An 1882 report, separately identifying all adult members, even if living in the same household or absent from the reservation, listed sixty Ottawa adults. Of those, seventeen were noted as absent from the reservation. Renting allowed several tribal members to profit from their lands despite their absence from the reservation. ⁵⁸

To meet the reality of the growing number of whites on the Ottawa reservation, the Ottawa adapted tribal rules to leverage intermarriage as a tool for perpetuating tribal identity and affiliation. ⁵⁹ The Ottawa gave intermarried whites a stake in the endurance of the Ottawa Tribe. In her summary of Ottawa rules, Lizzie Wolfe noted, “if either sex intermarry in the Ottawa Nation, if station a number of years, they are enroll in a payment roll.” ⁶⁰ Thus, intermarriage coupled with residence gave white partners a tangible, monetary interest in the perpetuation of the tribal community. At the same time, the boundaries in the rule protected tribal identity by not granting intermarried partners full tribal citizenship in the form of voting privileges or the right to claim land. ⁶¹ These rules played out on the ground. Anna King, the white wife of Joseph Badger King, did not receive an allotment, but she noted, “I always drew in the tribe’s payments.” ⁶² In line with this tradition, as late as 1910, the Ottawa decided “to adopt the Buck women” for payment. ⁶³

The Ottawa incorporated some intermarried whites into the social fabric of Ottawa community life. Perhaps no individual better emblematizes this process than Watt Jennison, the white husband of tribal member Catherine Wind Jennison, a daughter of Chief James Wind. Born in Muscatine, Iowa, in 1844, Walter “Watt” Jennison drifted into the Ottawa Nation with the cattle. Watt Jennison crossed into the Ottawa Reserve in February 1878, likely returning to Texas after driving cattle to Baxter Springs, Kansas. He boarded at the home of Henry and Matilda Jones, white renters who had two sons who married into the Ottawa Tribe. Watt was invited to a community dance hosted by Joseph Wind (Kin-ne-wa-ha), where he met Joseph’s sister, Catherine Wind Robitaille. ⁶⁴ Watt and Catherine, a twenty-three-year-old Ottawa Indian, widow, and mother of four, were married within a few weeks of the dance by Quaker missionary Asa Tuttle. Watt joined Catherine and her children in a small one-room log house built by her former husband. In the middle of winter and with no crops or provisions that year, the family had little to eat beyond “a hole of turnips.” ⁶⁵ To make it through the season, they relied on assistance from friends and family, both white and Native.

Watt contributed to distinctively tribal activities. Catherine and Watt had their first child together in December 1880, and they would go on to average a child every two years for the next two decades. Watt’s education and varied background made him a useful addition to tribal life. Starting in the 1880s, Watt regularly served as secretary or clerk on the tribal council. ⁶⁶ In that capacity, he composed minutes and wrote down council decisions. After federal officials objected to his signature on tribal decisions, ⁶⁷ Watt continued in his role but under the qualifier “acting” secretary or clerk “pro tem.” ⁶⁸ His son, Guy Jennison, would later assume Watt’s position on tribal council. ⁶⁹ In addition to his time as clerk, Watt participated and helped facilitate tribal events, and he acted as the “General Manager” coordinating Ottawa picnics or powwows. ⁷⁰

While not serving in tribal leadership or administrative roles, intermarried female partners perpetuated community life by participation in tribal reciprocity and mutual assistance. Many Ottawas died following removal from Kansas, and Ottawas worked cooperatively to care for the large number of orphan children that resulted. ⁷¹ Anna King, a white woman, married tribal member Joseph Badger King in 1882, and after her marriage, she regularly participated in this support network. As she related, “there was seldom a time that some of the children of the tribe or someone was not in the home. Among them we raised Lew Dagenette and Daisy Bond. We had Jim and Hattie Winney for some years and sent them to the government schools. We had Joe BigKnife for five years. Philip Suboak now Philip George. We had another girl, Emma, for some years who had the scrofula so badly that it had eaten through and we could not let her come home among the other children and had to burn her clothing after she died. An old man, Grandpa Luther, made his home with us seven years.” ⁷² Other intermarried whites felt similarly connected to the tribal community. Sarah Hollingsworth had two brothers marry into the Ottawa tribe and resided continuously among the Ottawa beginning in the early 1880s. She related, “My brothers married Indian girls, and through them, we have lived among the Indians, and our interests have always been the same.” ⁷³ Federal officials deemed intermarriage a means to facilitate the elimination of tribal identity, but the Ottawa refashioned it to perpetuate tribal life.

After removal to Indian Territory, many changes federal officials intended to introduce to Native nations through allotment policy quickly came to characterize Ottawa tribal life—including individual farms and land claims, economic relations with outsiders, widespread intermarriage with whites, displacement outside of reservation boundaries, and U.S. citizenship. The Ottawa adapted longstanding traditions of mobility and interconnection with outsiders to sustain community life amid these changes. The Ottawa would draw on these community attributes in conjunction with U.S. citizenship and private property rights to resist increasing federal interference in managing tribal lands in the 1870s and 1880s.

Autonomy through Allotment

As early as the late 1870s, the Ottawa pursued U.S. citizenship and private property rights to escape unwanted federal interference in managing their lands and resources in Indian Territory. Federal officials impinged on a variety of Ottawa efforts. In the late 1870s, a group of Ottawas attempted to contract for the sale of marble from a quarry on the Ottawa Reserve, but federal officials deemed these contracts illegal. ⁷⁴ In other cases, reflecting that tribal members increasingly resided outside reservation confines, some Ottawas attempted to sell their land claims, but federal officials prevented them. ⁷⁵ As a result, as early as 1877, the Ottawa tribal council advocated for allotment. ⁷⁶

At an Indian Fair held at Muskogee in 1879, tribal member William Hurr (Naw-swa-ke-shick) directly appealed to Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz to facilitate Ottawa allotment. ⁷⁷ Thus, allotment had consistent support from some Ottawas, and support grew over time as new federal restrictions augmented initial rationales. ⁷⁸

The 1882 Ottawa allotment petition, the first formal tribal petition for allotment, took place against the backdrop of imposed changes to the system of white tenancy on the Ottawa reservation. In the summer of 1882, the Secretary of the Interior issued new regulations that called for ending all rental agreements and the removal of renters by the following March. To many policymakers, white tenancy on Indian land threatened the racial and gender hierarchy by putting Indians in positions of power. ⁷⁹ Federal officials also maligned renting as supposedly concentrating tribal wealth in the hands of a few “monopolizing” and acculturated Indians. ⁸⁰ Across Indian Territory, Native peoples debated and differed in assessments of the advantages and liabilities of white labor. ⁸¹ But among Indians of the Quapaw Agency, Agent D. B. Dyer noted how new restrictions were “agitating the Indians considerably.” ⁸²

The Ottawa drew on their U.S. citizenship to staunchly resist new federal regulations impeding their ability to lease their lands to white renters. In his August 1882 monthly report, an exasperated Agent Dyer noted, “The decision of the Honorable Secretary of the Interior in regard to renters is causing considerable talk and discussion, and I hear that many of the Indians are encouraging them [the renters] to stay and advising them not to make an agreement to leave. The Ottawas claim to be citizens, etc., as you well know they were at one time, and also that several of their men should be now. They will never submit to live as Indians unless they can enjoy the rights of a citizen and be protected by the government at the same time. In fact, they want to do as they please, and are always ready for trouble when they cannot.” ⁸³ Dyer’s characterization epitomized Ottawa desires for tribal self-determination, and in their efforts “to do as they please,” U.S. citizenship represented one tool in the tribal arsenal. In their resistance to capricious federal mandates that undermined their livelihoods, the Ottawa looked toward the right to control land associated with U.S. citizenship.

Under the leadership of chief John Earley (Wash-kos), the Ottawa formally petitioned for allotment a few months after federal officials announced the new restrictions on white renters in 1882. Earley, William Hurr, and Joseph Wind, all who had white renters, took the lead in initiating the request for allotment. ⁸⁴

Others joined them and “strongly asked for and urged the allotment of their lands.” ⁸⁵ Although Ottawa proponents alleged “all the Ottawas desire it except perhaps three or four,” the first iteration of the petition received the endorsement of only eighty-one of the 122 Ottawas; however, support grew in the years that followed. ⁸⁶ In January 1883, Senator Henry L. Dawes introduced a bill to allot the Ottawa reservation in Indian Territory, and the same bill was introduced in the House of Representatives the next year. ⁸⁷ Likely due to the cost of surveying and allotting the land, these bills failed to become law. ⁸⁸

Ottawa advocacy for allotment reflected an Ottawa belief that they could better manage affairs outside of Indian Office control. The Ottawa intimately understood land ownership under U.S. law. After formally receiving their allotments in Kansas per the 1867 treaty, Ottawas sold their allotments before removal to Indian Territory, or in the years shortly thereafter, and some had success against whites in state courts when whites attempted to deprive them of their allotments in Kansas without proper payment. ⁸⁹ Thus, the Ottawa had already held land and conducted land sales as private citizens, and many anticipated greater success with the removal of federal interference that stymied their economic activities. White farmers and cattlemen who had rented Ottawa lands made a good living in the process. Through leasing, farming, or selling the land, the Ottawa saw opportunities in allotment. Reflecting on allotment a generation later, tribal leader Guy Jennison Jr. noted, “the Ottawas wanted it … some of them, kind of thought, ‘well he is getting rich off of it’ … and they decided they wanted allotment to see if they could do the same thing.” ⁹⁰

While federal proponents of allotment presented it as easing Native declension into inexorable extinction, the Ottawa looked to a future outside of federal supervision. Earley reflected in 1883: “We cultivate a considerable portion of our land and have much of it leased out to white men who work it on shares or pay certain annual rental in money … the amount realized from rents of land for agricultural purposes and the sales of farm products is the only source of income for my tribe, as we receive no annuities from the United States Government, as do many neighboring tribes. However, we are self-sustaining, and need no assistance from that quarter. Every year our condition improves, and the tribe grows more and more self-reliant.… The future of the Ottawas, is, in short, bright with the promise of usefulness and prosperity.” ⁹¹ As Earley’s account suggests, the Ottawa looked to sustain their community outside of federal administration and within American society.

A Future after Allotment

Although supportive of allotment in principle, the Ottawa endeavored to negotiate allotment legislation that would maximize their control over their lands and resources. In February 1887, the Dawes Act became law, and since the Ottawa were not exempted from the act as the Five Civilized Tribes were, they quickly initiated another round of tribal advocacy for allotment. According to local news reports, at a May 1887 tribal meeting, “the whole tribe was present or represented and all but two were for allotment.” ⁹² An 1887 newspaper report on the resulting Ottawa petition for allotment noted that the Ottawa claimed to “have been for several years, citizens of the United States” and that they desired “the right to sell any or all of their lands at any time without being governed by the restrictions of the bill fixing a term of years which they claim should apply only to Indians proper.” ⁹³ As these comments imply, the Ottawa viewed allotment as a means to secure full U.S. citizenship rights and freedom from federal control over their lands.

Chief Manford Pooler (Tick-wah-ka) petitioned for the passage of a separate allotment bill to address specific objectives of the Ottawa Tribe. ⁹⁴ The Ottawa authorized Miami Chief Thomas Richardville, a lawyer educated at Notre Dame as well as Manford Pooler’s father-in-law, to represent them in allotment negotiations in Washington, D.C. ⁹⁵ The Ottawa-supported bill differed from the Dawes Act. This bill maximized tribal control over the allotment process. In particular, the proposed legislation would have enabled Ottawa tribal government to adjudicate allotment locations and to exclude unauthorized individuals from receiving allotments. Unlike legislation for other tribal nations in the Quapaw Agency, the Ottawa bill also explicitly declared the Ottawas “citizens of the United States, and entitled to all the rights, privileges, and benefits as such” while also outlining that they “do not forfeit or lose any rights, privileges, or immunities which they now have or may be entitled to as members of the tribe or nation to which they belong.” ⁹⁶ Finally, reflecting the Ottawa desire to freely lease lands, which had propelled the initial Ottawa petition for allotment, the Ottawa-supported bill granted the allottee the unrestricted right to lease their lands. ⁹⁷

Despite Ottawa advocacy for the separate bill, federal officials allotted the Ottawa reservation under the Dawes Act in September 1892, and the failure of the Ottawa-supported bill had adverse results for the Ottawa. ⁹⁸ Without tribal government control over the allotment process, individuals with disputed membership received allotments and preferential land selection. As Lizzie Wolfe reflected, “when the allotment took place the intruders had the choicest land while I and my child took the poorest and my grandchildren stands today with empty hand.” ⁹⁹ Animosity and disputes over the inclusion of these individuals on the tribal roll lingered well into the mid-twentieth century. Similarly, with the Dawes Act’s ambiguity on the issue of leasing, the authority of Ottawa allottees to rent their allotments vacillated under successive Indian agents and administrations in the years after allotment. ¹⁰⁰

Just as they had in Kansas, the Ottawa in Indian Territory, by embracing allotment and U.S. citizenship, proactively planned for a future as a tribe within American society. In their 1892 proposed legislation, the Ottawa requested forty acres be set aside “for school, church, and cemetery purposes” that would “be held as common property of the tribe.” ¹⁰¹ Although that bill did not pass, the Ottawa used similar provisions in the Dawes Act to ensure tribal government retained forty acres for religious and cemetery use. In setting aside lands for these purposes, the Ottawa marked out enduring and shared priorities, and they indicated a continued role for tribal government in managing that land to pursue those priorities. In the decades that followed allotment, the Ottawa would continue to hold elections for tribal government offices, manage remaining tribal lands, police tribal citizenship, and assert the enduring validity of treaty agreements by pursuing claims against the federal government.

The 1887 Dawes Act conditionally extended U.S. citizenship to Native people. It coupled U.S. citizenship with policies federal officials considered incompatible with tribal affiliation. The act tied U.S. citizenship to allotment but also declared any Indian who “has voluntarily taken up within said limits [of the United States] his residence, separate and apart from any tribe of Indians therein, and has adopted the habits of civilized life, is hereby declared to be a citizen of the United States.” ¹⁰² To federal officials, tribal affiliation could not endure amid private property ownership, displacement outside reservation confines, and interconnection with broader American society. In adjusting to the realities of life in Indian Territory in the 1870s and 1880s, the Ottawa adapted to maintain their community amid those very conditions. In advocating for allotment, the Ottawa harnessed this community flexibility to escape the interference of the Office of Indian Affairs.

Conclusion

In the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma, the State of Oklahoma challenged the existence of the Ottawa reservation, and in 2023, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in Oklahoma v. Brester that the Ottawa reservation remains intact. The ruling observed that in allotting the Ottawa reservation, Congress had not explicitly outlined a “total surrender of all tribal interests” in the affected land and that no subsequent legislation had permanently disestablished the reservation. ¹⁰³ The decision recognized that allotment did not extinguish Ottawa treaty rights to a tribal homeland. That conclusion comports with the Ottawa’s circumscribed goals in their pursuit of allotment. The Ottawa did not seek allotment to terminate their tribe or their attachments to the land. Instead, they aimed to continue their relationship to the land and each other absent intrusive colonial administration.

Federal officials anticipated allotment would precipitate the gradual dissolution of tribal identity and affiliation, but to the dismay of policymakers, the Ottawa refused to disappear following allotment. This article has proceeded from the supposition that in pursuing allotment the Ottawa had motivations distinct from the tribal elimination coveted by policymakers. In the process, it has revealed how the Ottawa harnessed U.S. citizenship and private property rights in their struggle for power with the federal government and in conjunction with Ottawa political and social formations, practices, and patterns of movement. Ottawa advocacy for allotment and U.S. citizenship in Indian Territory represented part of a longer political tradition of tribally engineered engagement with federal policies intending tribal elimination. Only by examining Ottawa perspectives and practices do the failure of these policies to facilitate tribal elimination become intelligible, and this article underscores how Native political traditions shape policy outcomes.

Allotment was a devastating policy for Indigenous communities, and the Ottawa embrace of allotment does not represent a paradigm. For the Ottawa, allotment merely served as a defensive tactic to counter other colonial impositions. Ultimately, as was the experience of other tribal communities, allotment resulted in widespread land loss for the Ottawa and did precious little to free them from the domineering authority of the Indian Office. Ottawa ambitions to escape colonial administration converged with the goals of policymakers to facilitate tribal elimination in allotment and U.S. citizenship, and both the Ottawa and federal officials seized the potential to achieve their own objectives.

Taking an Ottawa perspective on U.S. citizenship and allotment helps rewrite dominant progressive narratives of U.S. citizenship that obfuscate the role of the United States as a colonial project. The Ottawa pursuit of U.S. citizenship reflected not the virtues of American values, but a desire to escape the colonial administration imposed by the United States. Rather than merely embracing American ideals in seeking U.S. citizenship, this article shows the Ottawa as historical actors who pursued their own sense of American belonging, and at the same time, redefined American belonging.