Sunday, September 07, 2008

saturday's super cool antique store find


Watson’s Atlas Map of Indian Territory (1886) which demarcates the land that became Oklahoma in 1907 and for a while was the adhoc home (by writ of the United States Government) for the following Indian tribes and nations (transcribed as they’re printed on the map):

Cheyennes
Cheyennes & Arrapahoes
Osages
Kansas
Cherokee
Creek
Pottawatomies
Chickasaw Nation
Creer
Kiowas
Comanches
Apaches
Chocktaw Nation
Pawnees
Poncas
Nez Perces
Quapaws
Wyandotte
Shawnee
Wichitas
Sac & Fox
Seminoles

Note too the “Negro Settlement” on the edge of Pottawatomie territory. If I had been able to scan the map (unfortunately it was too large for my flat bed) you'd also be able to see how the national railroad lines -- with one exception -- either snake around the territories or stop abruptly just shy of the borders.

By the way: Our man Lincoln? In 1862, twenty-four years prior to when this map was printed and while the Civil War was getting underway, Abe took time out to review the sentences of over a hundred men who had had been sentenced to death by hanging in Minnesota for their part in the Dakota War. Also known as the Sioux Uprising, the armed conflict resulted in a spectacular number of settlers' deaths as fall out from the broken promises of the U.S. Government and the open rage of the wronged Sioux. According to Wikipedia, “historian Don Heinrich Tolzmann says until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it was the highest civilian wartime toll in U.S. history.”

As president, Lincoln commuted the sentences of all but 38 men.

It was the largest one day mass execution in American history. The following year the Dakota were expelled from Minnesota to Nebraska and South Dakota, and their reservations were abolished by the United States Congress.

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