Grange Park Opera 2018

His people are the people of Oklahoma Territory, people who did not ordinarily receive much attention; he let them present themselves in their own rich drawling language, smacking of the dusty plains.

What the sugary gloss of the musical invites us to forget is what many Americans try to disavow: the fact the foundation of the state of Oklahoma was only possible because the land had been stolen from the Indians.

George Washington regarded the individual American Indian as the equal of the white man – we hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal. Indian society, however, Washington held to be inferior. Washington and Jefferson tried to civilize Indian communities. They hoped the Indians would accept the idea of private land ownership, build homes and schools, abandon their sometimes nomadic way of life, and embrace Christianity. In this way they could be fully accepted into white American society. The early presidents believed that a yeoman population, each man with a stake in the land, would lay the foundations of a stable, loyal society.

Washington and Jefferson’s plan included impartial justice towards Indians and the appointment of agents to live among them, and encourage them, through example, to live like whites, adopting yeoman farming practices, including the use of black slaves. The plan was most successful with the people whom Americans, and sometimes American Indians, called the Five Civilized Tribes, “civilized” because they seemed to be assimilating Anglo-American norms: education and therefore literacy, and intermarriage with white Americans. Nevertheless, the five tribes, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole nations suffered sorely from the pressure of westward expansion of the white population. The 1830 Indian Removal Act forced them to relocate their homes, from East of the Mississippi to lands West of the river, subsequently known as Indian Territory, much of which was to become the state of Oklahoma.

These “Civilized Tribes” need to be contrasted with the Plains Indians, many of whom rejected white culture and the concept of private land ownership. They religiously believed the land to be a communally owned asset. The American bison was their primary resource, providing most of their everyday needs: food, clothing, drinking vessels, body ornaments. These tribes followed the seasonal grazing migrations of the buffalo. They adapted marvellously to the horses introduced into America by the Spanish conquistadores. From the time, around 1730, when they had enough horses for everyone, these tribes adopted a fully nomadic life, following the great herds of bison, living in tepees because they