The Chronicles of Oklahoma 103 1 (Spring 2025)

The Oklahoma Historical Society

The Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS) is a private membership organization and state agency. The mission of the OHS is to collect, preserve, and share the history and culture of the state of Oklahoma and its people. Organized in 1893 by a group of territorial journalists, it has developed into one of the nation’s largest and most innovative historical agencies. Today the OHS operates museums and historic sites; publishes a historical journal, newsletter, electronic publications, books, and brochures; encourages and assists with historic preservation; and maintains several renowned research libraries.

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Copyright 2025, Oklahoma Historical Society

Chronicles Oklahoma The

Editor: Anna L. Davis, MA

Volume CIII Number 1 Spring 2025

Contents

“I Will Tell and Draw of Battle”: Brummett Echohawk, a Pawnee Warrior in World War II

BY DAVID D’ANDREA AND ERIC D. SINGLETON

Brummett Echohawk (Pawnee) served with the 45th Infantry during World War II. Echohawk was one of many Native Americans who served their country during the conflict. Through his art the idea of being a modern warrior is explored. D’Andrea and Singleton tell the story of Echohawk’s experiences in the Italian campaign of WWII through his artwork, drawn in raw and realistic detail of the soldiers that served with him and the experiences they shared. 4

“Ropes of Sand”: Preemptive Rights and the Creation of Indian Territory

BY SHELDON YEAKLEY

The period of history known as Indian Removal is one that is often studied. What is lesser known is how Indian Territory, the destination for many tribal nations, came to exist. Questions arose over who had autonomy in these new territories: the white squatters who claimed the land for themselves or the tribal nations that had been removed from their homelands. Yeakley explores the history of Indian Territory with new research, which traces its creation as it was carved out of Arkansas Territory and tribal lands through various treaties and federal negotiations. 28

Crossing Cultural Frontiers: Mexicans in the Wild West Shows

BY GARY MORENO

There were many ethnics groups that traveled with Wild West shows at the turn of the twentieth century. One of the least studied groups were the Mexican performers that brought bullfighting techniques and charro style to the arenas. Moreno presents a study on performers who formed the idea of the charro in popular culture, from their roots in rural Mexico to their rise to superstardom in the United States. The story comes to life by following the lives of Vicente Oropeza and José Barrera, along with their female counterparts. 53

Volume CIII Spring 2025

Notes and Documents

A Brief Moment in the Life of Darrell Pettie

BY PHILIP D. SMITH

Historians Hall of Fame

BY MATTHEW PEARCE

Clough, Joshua, Resisting Oklahoma’s Reign of Terror: The Society of Oklahoma Indians and the Fight for Native Rights, reviewed by John Truden

Hightower, Michael J., Justice for All: Dick T. Morgan, Frontier Lawyer and Common Man’s Congressman, reviewed by Trait Thompson

Jacobs, Margaret D., A Generation Removed: The Foster and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World, reviewed by Chelsea Ball

Lutenski, Emily, West of Harlem: African American Writers and the Borderlands, reviewed by Gregory Kosc

Nathanson, Mitchell, Under Jackie’s Shadow: Voices of Black Minor Leaguers Baseball Left Behind, reviewed by Doyle C. Gehring, 2LT

ON THE COVER Self Portrait, by Brummett Echohawk, oil on canvas, 1980 (Image courtesy of Joel Echohawk).

“I Will Tell and Draw of Battle”: Brummett Echohawk, a Pawnee Warrior in World War II

By David D’Andrea and Eric D. Singleton*

After enrolling in the Oklahoma National Guard in 1939, Brummett Echohawk picked up a 1940 issue of Life magazine and, using its cover as a template, sketched an image of a helmeted Nazi soldier (above image).¹ The Life caption was “Invader”; Echohawk’s caption read “the Man I am to Face in the Coming War.” The decision to join the National Guard and record his journey as a warrior was informed by Echohawk’s Pawnee heritage, with its oral traditions of scouts on the Great Plains, songs in honor of great

feats in battle, and paintings drawn by warriors on bison hides and tipis. Echohawk described how his upbringing informed his desire to be a warrior and artist: “Grown up now, I am in a position to record a Pawnee warrior’s story. Instead of eagle feathers, I wear a steel helmet. I carry an M1 rifle instead of bow and arrows. Instead of drawing on a buffalo hide or shield, I will draw on notebook paper. And, like the warrior-painter of old, I will tell and draw of battle.”² Echohawk’s Native heritage and military experiences were recently on display at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, where dozens of his original field sketches and post-war paintings were exhibited for the first time.³ Echohawk’s works bring to life soldiers who fought, were wounded, and died in combat. His art captures the diversity of the soldiers flung together in a global conflict and their common humanity.

Echohawk was born in Pawnee, Oklahoma, on March 3, 1922, and the Pawnee community fundamentally shaped his view of the past and his role in the future. He attended the Pawnee Agency Government School, where he showed an early interest in drawing. After living with his uncle’s family in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for six years, he returned to Oklahoma and attended Pawnee High School, where he was captain of the football team. In 1939, while still in high school, he joined the Oklahoma National Guard seeking economic opportunity and the chance to continue in the Native American warrior tradition.⁴ Echohawk’s warrior identity drew on centuries-old tradition and oral culture. Living in sedentary villages on the Northern Great Plains, the Pawnee defended their homes against Native American and European enemies. By the mid-1800s, as more and more Europeans were traveling through their lands and eastern tribes were settling onto the Plains, the Pawnee decided to ally with the US government and became warriors in blue as scouts for the US Cavalry. This alliance and warrior tradition continued in the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II.5 Today’s Pawnee flag, designed by Echohawk, bears witness to this history with each arrow point representing a different war fought on behalf of the United States.

There has always been a strong connection between Pawnee history and valor won in combat. Pawnee warriors traditionally recognized and commemorated other Pawnee warriors by giving them honorific names and singing songs to record their deeds. When the Pawnee

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began fighting as a fully integrated part of the US Army, however, many traditions changed. New names were no longer given because other Pawnee warriors were not present to witness their deeds in battle. For example, soldiers such as William Pollock (1870-1899), a Rough Rider who fought alongside Theodore Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War, no longer took a new name, but those men were still honored like the warriors before them with feasts and war dances when they returned home.6 This tradition had a profound effect on the young Brummett Echohawk, who recalled the war dances held on Armistice Day to honor Pawnee Scouts and veterans of the Spanish-American War and World War I. The Pawnee story “is a story of an Indian tribe that chose not to fight civilization, but to fight for it. It is a story of a people who love their country.”7

Echohawk’s opportunity to demonstrate his patriotism and prove himself as a Pawnee man came after he joined the Oklahoma National Guard, which had already proven itself in World War I when it fought with the Texas National Guard as part of the 36th Infantry Division. Following the First World War, the National Guard units of Colorado (the 157th Infantry Regiment), Arizona (the 158th Infantry Regiment), and Oklahoma (the 179th and 180th Infantry Regiments) organized into the 45th Infantry Division, which was headquartered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, beginning in 1923. In response to the outbreak of war in Europe, Congress called the National Guard to federal service in August 1940, and the 45th Infantry Division became part of the US Army.8 Echohawk and his fellow Thunderbirds, which included over 2,000 Native Americans from fifty tribes, began preparing for the man he was to face in battle.9

After three years of training and military exercises, the 45th Infantry Division entered combat in Sicily, coming ashore on July 10, 1943. The Allied invasion of Sicily, code named Operation Husky, was the first major Allied campaign to retake Europe from the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan). Echohawk and the men of the 45th were among the first soldiers to set foot on the island. Italian resistance to the combined US, Canadian, and British forces crumbled quickly, but German opposition remained strong. The Battle of Sicily lasted thirty-eight days and resulted in 24,850 Allied casualties.10 During the Sicilian campaign, Echohawk had his first experience in combat, which he sought to record in his first drawings. After fighting his way into a

building, he found pencils and drawing paper on the floor and used them to sketch whenever possible, keeping his drawings in a waterproof 60mm mortar carton. “I drew pictures of the British, of the German soldiers, of the British Empire troops, and I wrote on the back of a mess kit, using a mess kit for my easel, stand or whatnot. And I made accounts of what we did.”11

The Sicilian Campaign was an Allied success, but the victory did not lead to the collapse of Axis forces on the Italian mainland. The opposite occurred. German commanders decided to bleed and destroy Italian territory rather than fight on German soil. The Allies would painstakingly fight their way up the Italian peninsula. On September 3, 1943, British forces crossed from Messina, and the invasion of Italy began. Six days later, Allied troops landed in the Italian province of Salerno to secure the port of Naples and air bases in southern Italy to help the Allied bombing campaign in southern Germany. Although the Italian government signed an armistice and surrendered their armed forces to the Allies on September 8, 1943, German contingency plans were in place for a stout resistance that utilized the mountainous Italian landscape. Any thoughts of a rapid Allied drive up the peninsula quickly faded.12 The 45th Infantry Division’s war on Italian soil continued with two more amphibious landings at Salerno and Anzio and ten more months of fighting. By the time the Allies liberated Rome on June 4, 1944, more than two-thousand Thunderbirds were killed in action.

Fighting from Salerno to Anzio, Echohawk was unique as a combat artist. He was an infantry soldier first and an amateur artist second. His images, therefore, possess a power and immediacy that only a combat soldier could capture. When the Allies landed on the beaches of Salerno on September 9, they quickly found the fighting in Operation Avalanche, the code name for the landing, much more intense and contested than the landing in Sicily. With the Allied beachhead in jeopardy, the 45th was put in as the reserve on September 10. Echohawk and his 179th Regiment saw some of the most brutal fighting as part of the effort to hold back the onslaught of the German counterattack at Persano (image one). His sketch is a poignant account of the cost of war, documenting the road to Persano strewn with American dead and their equipment. The valiant efforts of the 45th and its commander, General Middleton, eventually forced the Germans to retreat to the mountains, a tactic they would execute brilliantly for the rest

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Image one: Persano, by Brummett Echohawk, pen on paper, 1943 (2021.02.01, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

of the war. As American soldiers moved inland, the fighting continued through Eboli to Oliveto Citra, where one of Echohawk’s comrades, Ernest Childers, took brave action and later became the first Native American recipient of the Medal of Honor. To record the bravery of the event, Echohawk drew two combat sketches to memorialize the attack (image two).

The 45th continued to move up the peninsula’s spine as part of the Allied objective to take Highway 6, the main road leading to Rome. However, the Allied forces had to crack the German Winter Line, a string of fortifications stretching across Italy. A strategic point of the line was Monte Cassino, which controlled the Liri Valley. The 45th Infantry Division spent months crossing the Volturno River, capturing

Image two: Childers Crawling, by Brummett Echohawk, pen on paper, 1943 (2021.02.27, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

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the critical town of Venafro, and fighting its way toward Cassino. A determined German resistance stopped the Allied advance and the 45th spent November and December of 1943 in the mud and mountains of Venafro. Two of Echohawk’s sketches capture these strategic gains: the treacherous crossing of the Volturno River and the difficult fighting in the hills above Venafro—the hills where his friend and fellow Pawnee, Philip Gover, would be severely wounded (images three and four).

To break the stalemate and flank the Winter Line, the Allies planned a surprise amphibious landing, code named Shingle, behind enemy lines at Anzio, about thirty miles from Rome. Echohawk and the 45th were pulled off the front lines and brought back to Naples to rest and train. In January 1944, the 45th landed at the Anzio beachhead. The

Image three: Crossing the Volturno, by Brummett Echohawk, pen on paper, 1943 (2021.02.04, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

Image four: Venafro, by Brummett Echohawk, pen on paper, 1943 (2021.02.23, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

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Germans, caught by surprise, quickly regrouped and stopped the Allies in their tracks. Four months of fighting followed that resembled the trench warfare of World War I. One of the keys to controlling the beachhead was the city of Aprilia, a location that Echohawk and the men of the 45th referred to as “The Factory.” In February 1944, the Germans tried to drive the Allies into the sea, and once again, the 45th Division, the “Rock of Anzio,” held the field, but at a heavy cost. During the back-and-forth battle, most of Echohawk’s platoon and his good friend Bill Lasley were killed. Two of his drawings capture the chaos, brutality, and painful human toll of war (images five and six).

Echohawk was proud of the Thunderbirds and their victories, but he also had respect for his enemies, professional soldiers fighting to

Image five: Hit By Snipers, Anzio, by Brummett Echohawk, pen on paper, 1944 (2021.02.06, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

Image six: Lasley, Anzio, by Brummett Echohawk, pen on paper, 1944 (2021.02.24, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

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Image seven: Supermen?, Anzio, by Brummett Echohawk, pen on paper, 1944 (2021.02.13, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

survive in war. The drawing entitled Supermen?, Anzio (1944) is a far cry from the machine-like killing machine he copied from the cover of Life several years before. The humanity of the sketches provides an intimate view of the fighting men, both Allied and Axis, who fought and suffered during the war (image seven).

In the charge on “The Factory” that killed his good friend, Bill Lasley, Echohawk was severely wounded and would never return to combat. While recovering from his wounds in the massive Allied hospital in Naples, Echohawk had time to draw. Encountering men from across the globe, he sketched their injuries, recorded their stories, and offered a glimpse of their shared combat experiences as allies or enemies. The world at war brought people from diverse backgrounds and traditions together, and Echohawk’s pencil and keen eye recorded the diversity and individuality of the common soldier. Hundreds of soldiers who passed through the hospital in the spring of 1944 were from Botswana, Germany, Nepal, England, Greece, America, Scotland, Morocco, Sri Lanka, Ireland, and India, all of whom shared the experience of war and wound. Echohawk brought his unique perspective to the ocean of cots and faces, and selected a few to record and tell their stories in the global conflict. He captured the cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity that was the real face of the Allied armies in World War II. He was acutely aware of a need to document what he saw, accurately and purposefully recording names, uniforms, ranks, and even the hometowns of his sitters. Many of the portraits are signed by the individuals he sketched. His attention to detail is evident in the uniforms, beards, and turbans of the French Moroccan and 4th Indian Division soldiers (images eight and nine). Echohawk’s appreciation of the man under the uniform can be felt in the wounded yet dignified portraits of British colonial soldiers from the African Auxiliary Pioneer and Gurkha Corps (images ten and eleven).

An example of the world at war and the complex nature of patriotism and identity is the sketch of Freddie Morohashi. In May 1944, in a hospital ward in Naples, Italy, a Pawnee warrior from Oklahoma, which had been Indian Territory until 1907, sat across from a Japanese-American soldier from Hawaii, an American territory for only a few decades. Morohashi was a member of the 100th Infantry Battalion, organized six months after Pearl Harbor and composed mainly of Nisei, second-generation Japanese. After arriving in Africa in

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September 1943, the battalion was attached to the 133rd Infantry Regiment, 34th Infantry Division.13 The battalion suffered terrible losses during the fight for Monte Cassino, and it was likely there that Morohashi received his wounds in January or February 1944. We can reconstruct Morohashi’s story because he signed the sketch and wrote his hometown. Dated May 20, 1944, the sketch appears to be the last drawing made by Echohawk in the Italian theater, and the appearance of Morohashi without the details of his uniform might reflect both Morohashi’s and Echohawk’s transition to civilian life (image twelve). A year after his last amateur sketch in Italy, Echohawk would enroll at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Image eight: Gouam, French Morrocan [sic], by Brummett Echohawk, pen on paper, 1944 (2021.02.31, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

Image nine: 4th Indian Division, British 8th Army, by Brummett Echohawk, pen on paper, 1944 (2021.02.28, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

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Image ten: Corporal Motsedsele, African Aux Pioneer Corps, British 8th Army, by Brummett Echohawk, pen on paper, 1944 (2021.02.39, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

Image eleven: Lachhiman, Gurkha Corps, 4th Indian Division, by Brummett Echohawk, pen on paper, 1944 (2021.02.25, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

In 1946, the Metropolitan Museum of Art recognized General Eisenhower for his efforts during the war to preserve art treasures for future generations. In his speech entitled “Art in Peace and War,” he celebrated the goal of cultural institutions to preserve and inspire artistic creations. He recognized the value of art not only as the genius of past cultures but also as a means for the common soldier to understand and cope with the war. He noted that soldiers often expressed their reactions to war as “vivid memories of filth and beauty, of hopes and

Image twelve: Morohashi, by Brummett Echohawk, pen on paper, 1944 (2021.02.21, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

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fears, of suffering and mercy, of life and death.” Eisenhower concluded that “they, who have dwelt with death, will be among the most ardent worshippers of life and beauty and of the peace in which these can thrive.”14 Echohawk and the men of the 45th formed part of a massive Allied force that unleashed devastating destruction on enemies of freedom, but men like Echohawk fought equally as hard to preserve and appreciate the cultural patrimony that embodied these ideals. Upon returning to civilian life, Echohawk pursued a career as a professional artist and spent the rest of his years depicting the beauty of life and the suffering and sacrifice of war.

In the fall 1945, Echohawk followed his dream of becoming a trained artist and enrolled in the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied art history, refined his skills, and became a professional painter and illustrator. To pay the bills, he drew comics for several Chicago newspapers. By 1948 he had graduated, and in 1952 returned home to Oklahoma, where he met his wife, Mary, and pursued a career as a cartoonist, fine art painter, and actor. As a freelance and commercial artist, Echohawk utilized many different media. He painted portraits, landscapes, and historical moments, such as the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Oil painting remained his favorite. Instead of a paintbrush, Echohawk often used a Bowie knife, the same one he used during WWII. He even painted a portrait of the original mascot of Oklahoma State University, Frank “Pistol Pete” Eaton, whom he knew personally.15 He had a lifelong passion and goal to record important cultural events for posterity. When his paintings were in danger of being lost he expressed in words why he fought to preserve them: “I would like to save the paintings as they pertain to Oklahoma history, Indian history and American heritage.”16

Throughout his life, Echohawk would be inspired by the Pawnee tradition to tell and draw of battle. He wrote articles for the Tulsa World in 1955 and 1967 to educate the next generation of the sacrifices and horrors of war. Echohawk’s humor and awareness of the power of images can be seen in his caption for the Lachhiman image in his 1955 article “Another Indian! But this one is a Gurkha from northeast India.”17 In the 1967 article he wrote how he held on to his childhood memories of Oklahoma to stay sane during the hellish German bombardment: “88s gut the earth. I think of anything to keep from cracking: high school football, the Pawnee pow-wow, stomp dances, Bob

Wills, anything.”18 Oklahoma, Pawnee, and American history grounded Brummett Echohawk.

In the late 1980s, Echohawk painted three remarkable portraits of his fellow 45th Infantry Division soldiers, bringing together the warrior tradition, Oklahoma history, and Native history. The portrait of Philip Gover depicts his great friend and fellow Pawnee in traditional dress. It had particular importance for Echohawk because the painting “symbolized the Oklahoma Indian tribes that fought in the 45th.”19 Gover is depicted wearing a traditional bear claw necklace and a US peace medal in this painting. Both items are prestigious. Bear claw necklaces needed to be acquired via the killing of a bear to prove a warrior’s status and were often tied to dreams and personal protection.20 Peace medals, on the other hand, were only presented to high-ranking tribal community members by the United

Image thirteen: Philip Gover, by Brummett Echohawk, oil on canvas, 1986 (Oklahoma National Guard Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

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Image fourteen: Jack Montgomery, by Brummett Echohawk, oil on canvas, 1988 (Oklahoma National Guard Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

Image fifteen: Ernest Childers, by Brummett Echohawk, oil on canvas, 1990 (Oklahoma National Guard Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

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States government and, therefore, showed his status as a tribal representative.21 Two years later, he painted Jack Montgomery, one of two Medal of Honor recipients from the 45th and Oklahoma. Montgomery had attended the Chilocco Indian Agricultural School and the all-Indian Bacone Junior College. Montgomery’s company in the 180th Regiment was a Native American company. In February 1944, Montgomery’s actions at Anzio resulted in the capture of thirty-two prisoners and eleven enemy killed.22 In 1990, Echohawk completed this trio of war heroes with a portrait of Ernest Childers, Muscogee (Creek), who was the first Native American Medal of Honor recipient in World War II for his bravery at Oliveto Citra following the landing at Salerno (images thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen).

When it came to his memories of the war, Echohawk returned to the fateful charge in February 1944 when his platoon was decimated, and he was knocked out of the war. As Eisenhower noted, art was a way for soldiers to process their experiences of war. Echohawk placed the charge at Anzio as the central image in the 1967 Tulsa World

Image sixteen: Anzio, WWII, 1944, by Brummett Echohawk, oil on canvas, 1992 (courtesy of Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC).

article and again in the commissioned painting he did in 1992 for the USS Anzio (image sixteen).23

Brummett Echohawk was a Pawnee warrior and artist whose artwork reflected his humor, heritage, and humanity. He lived his life informed and inspired by the values and traditions of his Pawnee culture. “They don’t give a hoot whether you make a lot of money . . . It’s what have you done for the tribe and your country, that’s what it amounts to. You have to be a man first. The very first thing off and that’s usually the requirement of it is being a warrior. Then you have all the recognition and then the tribe makes a song for you which becomes history. This is where they keep their history, history of their men.”24

In September 2023, copies of Echohawk’s sketches and portraits were displayed at the Operation Avalanche Museum in Eboli, Italy.25 Attending the exhibit opening were local dignitaries, including the mayor of Eboli and museum director, and two of Echohawk’s nieces, Lucille and B. C. Echohawk, who flew from the United States for the ceremony. The nieces eloquently spoke about the contradiction between the Pawnee Nation’s struggle for survival during centuries of European immigration, their uncle’s pride at serving the United States, and his division’s sacrifice to liberate Europe in World War II. After their remarks, the nieces asked the audience to stand in silence as they played a recording of Echohawk’s warrior song, the highest recognition the tribe could bestow on him. Eighty years after Echohawk came ashore in Salerno, the Pawnee language again echoed in Italy. The 45th Infantry Division’s story of sacrifice lives on because a native son from Oklahoma told and drew of battle.

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Endnotes

* David D’Andrea is a professor of history at Oklahoma State University and teaches courses on the history of Western Civilization and early modern Italy. He is also a historical advisor to the Oklahoma National Guard Museum regarding the 45th Infantry Division in World War II.

Eric D. Singleton is the McCasland Chair of Cowboy Culture and curator of Native American Art and Ethnology at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. His research focuses on North American Great Plains and Southeastern two-dimensional and three-dimensional artwork and pre-Columbian and historical symbology, ritual, and belief. He has coauthored four books, won two Oklahoma Book of the Year awards, completed twenty-three exhibitions, and worked on four documentaries. He is on the boards of the Oscar B. Jacobson Foundation, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Museum Foundation, and the Caddo Archeology Journal.

The image on page four shows Brummett Echohawk’s painting The Man I am to Face in the Coming War (2021.02.11, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma).

¹ Life, May 27, 1940, cover image.

² Brummett Echohawk and Mark Ellenbarger, edited by Trent Riley, Drawing Fire: A Pawnee, Artist, and Thunderbird in World War II (University Press of Kansas, 2018), 2–3.

3 Nations at War! Field Sketches of a Pawnee Warrior, curated by David D’Andrea and Eric Singleton, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, September 2023 to April 2024.

4 For Echohawk’s life as a Pawnee and artist, see Kristin Youngbull, “Brummett Echohawk: Chaticks-si-chaticks,” (PhD diss., Arizona State, 2012) and Kristin Youngbull, Brummett Echohawk: Pawnee Thunderbird and Artist (University of Oklahoma Press, 2015).

5 Mark van de Logt, War Party in Blue: Pawnee Scouts in the U.S. Army (University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 43. Youngbull, Brummett Echohawk, 18–19, 29–30.

6 Youngbull, Brummett Echohawk, 20.

7 Youngbull, Brummett Echohawk, 151.

8 For the complete history of the 45th Infantry Division, see Flint Whitlock, The Rock of Anzio, From Sicily to Dachau: A History of the U.S. 45th Infantry Division (Westview Press, 1998). For the federalization of the Guard in World War II, see Kenny A. Franks, “‘Goodbye, Dear, I’ll Be Back In a Year’: The Mobilization of the Oklahoma National Guard for World War II,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 69, no. 4 (1991): 340–67.

9 On Native Americans in World War II, see Duane K. Hale, “Uncle Sam’s Warriors: American Indians in World War II,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 69, no. 4 (1991): 408–29; Thomas Morgan, “Native Americans in World War II,” Army History 35 (Fall 1995): 22–27. For Native Americans in the 45th Infantry Division, see Denise Neil, “Native Americans in the 45th Infantry Division,” The National WWII Museum, November 27, 2020: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/ war/articles/native-americans-45th-infantry-division.

10 For the Sicilian campaign, see James Holland, Sicily ’43: The First Assault on Fortress Europe (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020).

11 Youngbull, Brummett Echohawk, 52.

12 For the Italian campaign, see Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944 (Henry Holt and Company, 2007).

13 The Nisei became one of the most decorated groups of soldiers in World War II. For an overview of the battalion and the fighting at Cassino, see Remembrances: 100th Infantry

Battalion 50th Anniversary Celebration (Sons & Daughters of the 100th Infantry Battalion, 1997). We would like to thank Susan Morohashi (Fred Morohashi’s daughter), Susan Omura, and David Fukuda for sharing their family and battalion history and their generosity loaning objects for the exhibit.

14 Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Art in Peace and War,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 4, no. 9 (1946): 221–23.

15 Echohawk completed the portrait in 1958 and kept it in his personal collection until 1989, when he donated it to the Oklahoma State University Foundation, as recorded in Oklahoma State University Outreach Magazine (Summer 1989, 12). After extensive searching in the art collections of Oklahoma State University, the authors and other scholars have unfortunately been unable to locate the portrait.

16 Letter from Brummett Echohawk to Frederick Daugherty, December 9, 1986, Oklahoma National Guard Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

17 Tulsa Sunday World Magazine, February 6, 1955, 18.

18 “It Happened at Anzio”, Tulsa Sunday World, February 12, 1967, 12–13.

19 Youngbull, Echohawk, 128.

20 Stephanie Mayer Heydt, Mindy Besaw, and Emma Hansen, Art of the American Frontier: From the Buffalo Bill Center of the West (Yale University Press, 2013), 40–41.

21 Frank H. Goodyear III, “Keokuk’s Peace Medals: Mirrors onto a Fractured Era,” in Peace Medals: Negotiating Power in Early America, ed. Robert Pickering (Gilcrease Museum, 2011), 74.

22 Christopher B. Bean, “Jack C. Montgomery: A Little Big Man,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 82, no. 4 (2004): 476–95.

23 The USS Anzio was a guided missile cruiser decommissioned in 2022. We would like to thank Joshua Nelson and Denise Neil for help tracking down the painting Anzio, WWII, 1944, by Brummett Echohawk, 1992, Navy Art Collection, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC.

24 Brummett Echohawk, ca. 1977, National Guard Museum Archives, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

25 Popoli Nativi in Guerra: La Campagna d’Italia attraverso i disegni di un Guerriero Pawnee, Brummett Echohawk [Native Peoples in War: The Italian Campaign through the Sketches of a Pawnee Warrior, Brummett Echohawk] curated by David D’Andrea and Giuseppe Fresolone, Operation Avalanche Museum, Eboli, Italy (September to November 2023).

“Ropes of Sand”: Preemptive Rights and the Creation of Indian Territory

By Sheldon Yeakley*

Early United States history is a story of the creation and constriction of Indian Territories. After drawn-out legal battles, controversial treaties, and widespread warfare, the US orchestrated one of the largest expulsions of a group of people(s) in history. The destination for this exodus was a newly created territory—Indian Territory. Scholarship on Indian Removal has primarily focused on events east of the Mississippi River, especially in the southeast. It is from there that settlers and government officials demanded Indigenous people depart.¹ However, a critical half of the story remains understudied. The western lands that the United States government insisted these nations remove to were not an empty section of the

Map of the State of Missouri and the Territory of Arkansas, 1826 (asa_map0058, Arkansas State Archives, Little Rock, Arkansas).

Louisiana Purchase or an uncolonized home to sparse Indigenous populations. Instead, the region from which the US carved Indian Territory remained the home to several Native nations and had already, well before the 1830 Indian Removal Act, become a contested site of increasing Euro-American settlement. Before the young United States could enact Removal, it first had to secure a destination and to create the Indian Territory.

Critically, the United States cut Indian Territory out of another Territory. Formed from lands claimed in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Arkansas Territory separated from Missouri in 1819. At the time, its borders stretched from the Mississippi River westwards well into what is now eastern Oklahoma, the region that would eventually become the heart of Indian Territory.² Importantly, at its inception, eastern officials and settlers envisioned Arkansas Territory as a primary destination for those Indigenous nations they hoped to remove from east

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of the Mississippi River. Early treaties with many southeastern nations, including the Cherokee and Choctaw, placed their new reservations within the boundaries of Arkansas Territory.³ Yet, Arkansas, and the lands that would become the future Indian Territory, already held white settlers who claimed this land as their rightful home, as their “Native Ground.”⁴

During the late 1810s and much of the 1820s, Arkansas became a contested site that saw Western settlers and United States government officials offer competing visions for the future of the same land.5 Many settlers felt they were already “surcharged” with Native peoples while governing officials hoped to relocate even more Indigenous groups to these very same lands. Fearing that his plans for Indian Removal would be destroyed by settlers’ illegal presence on Arkansas reservations, Superintendent of Indian Affairs Thomas L. McKenney lamented that the promises of the United States would forever be seen as “ropes of sand.”6 By 1828, however, a solution emerged in which Arkansas Territory separated from a distinct, newly created Indian Territory, the exclusive destination for removing nations. The saga by which Indian Territory became a segregated location, independent from a broader Arkansas Territory, reveals the crucial role that settlers and Native peoples already in the West played in shaping Indian Removal.

Examining the interaction between Native peoples and the federal government is an important project already undertaken by scholars of Indian Removal. Still under examined, however, is the role that settlers already west of the Mississippi River played in shaping its destination and character. Historians like Kathleen DuVal argue that these settlers claimed this land as their “Native Ground” regardless of the amount of time spent in the region. Recent work by Alaina Roberts asserts that these newcomers relied on a sense of belonging validated within a settler colonial context.7 Yet, how they asserted this sense of belonging, their right to the land, determined this saga’s outcomes. The specific rhetoric of preemptive rights employed by Arkansas’s settlers cast them as the actual victims of Indian Removal. It was this legal claim that forced the federal government to renege on treaties with Native nations and prompted the United States to create an Indian Territory separate from Arkansas. It was these settler’s manifested claim to preemptive rights which turned the United States’ promises into “ropes of sand.”8

map of the Louisiana Purchase drawn in 1912 (F369.U58.1912, Library of Congress, Washington, DC).

The perceived legality of settlement remained an interest of agents like Superintendent McKenney and the federal government. From their perspective, settlement occurred through a series of land cessions authorized by treaties between the United States and Native nations. With this assumption, the United States entered into efforts to effect Indian Removal. Officials across the Trans-Mississippi West formulated early plans to enact Removal by suggesting specific eastern Native nations be relocated to lands recently acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. Lewis Cass, Isaac McCoy, John C. Calhoun, William Clark, and presidents beginning with Thomas Jefferson looked westward for lands to exchange with eastern Indigenous groups. Before they could start forcibly relocating Native nations at a large scale, they needed to secure the title to sections of western lands from those Indigenous nations already there. Specifically, the US needed cessions from the Osage, Quapaw, and Kaw, the Native nations whose homes extended across much of present-day Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Missouri Governor William Clark, famous for his exploratory journey with Meriwether Lewis, offered that “the principal objects I had in view in making the last purchase of the Osage” was to exchange land “with the Shawnee and Delawares of the Missouri Territory.”9 The

A

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US and the Osage agreed upon the first treaty ceding Arkansas lands on November 10, 1808.10 Combined with the Quapaw’s treaty of 1818, a large section of Arkansas had become part of the public domain of the United States by the time of Arkansas Territory’s formation in 1819.11 Yet, the Osage, Quapaw, and Caddo still retained reservations on their ancestral lands in Arkansas, and increasingly new reservations came to be set aside for incoming Native nations. In the wake of Clark’s treaties, between 1819 and 1829, settlers poured into the areas ceded by the Osage and Quapaw. Critically, they also squatted upon lands not yet authorized for legal expansion, upon the lands reserved for Native nations.

The federal government, balancing the interests of multiple sections in a growing country, envisioned Arkansas as a promising destination for the removal of Eastern Native nations. Only one year after the original Osage cessions of 1808, Thomas Jefferson encouraged segments of the Cherokee Nation, who wished to escape settler pressure in their eastern lands, to explore the territory between the White and Arkansas Rivers as a potential new home.12 This represents an early expression of the framework that would grow into the official Indian Removal policy. Concurrently, these early Removal efforts cast new divisions within affected Indigenous communities. Those Cherokee who migrated west to these promised lands became known as the Western Cherokee or Arkansas Cherokee, a group intimately tied to and sometimes at odds with the broader Cherokee Nation still present east of the Mississippi.13 By 1817, a treaty between the United States government and the Cherokee Nation legitimized this transfer of eastern for western lands, and a sizeable minority of newly designated Western Cherokee migrated to Arkansas, establishing new homes west of the Mississippi.14

As the Indian Removal project developed within the eastern US, federal officials still conceived of Arkansas Territory as the destination for these displaced peoples. Reflecting in 1818 on the recent purchase of Quapaw lands, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun wrote to Andrew Jackson that these sections were “not intended to be brought immediately into market, and which may hereafter become the means of exchange for lands on this side of the Mississippi.”15 Jackson took this message to heart. In his negotiations with the Choctaw at Doak’s Stand in 1820, he promised them lands of exchange between the Arkansas

Established on March 2, 1819, the population of Arkansas Territory increased more rapidly than federal officials anticipated. In 1811, white census respondents numbered 1,062. By 1820, they had reached a population of 14,273. By 1830, over 30,000 settlers lived in Arkansas Territory.17 Ostensibly, these settlers emigrated from other sections of the country on the promise of possessing cheap, arable land. Further, they had moved “under the supposition that the Land was the property of the United States,” acquired outright through the Louisiana Purchase.18 Regardless of which Native groups owned and occupied Arkansas’s lands since the United States claimed the region as its national territory, these settlers assumed they possessed a right to enter. These Euro-American emigrants can be grouped as settlers; many should be labeled squatters.

Critically, these emigrants espoused an expansive vision of popular sovereignty in which US citizens could claim any lands within the US domain regardless of Indigenous ownership. Historian Alan Taylor describes this period of expansion in the decades after the American Revolution as a time in which the “heightened aspirations among the common folk” demanded access and “possession of, freehold land.”19 Settlers often traversed and rooted their homesteads upon lands not legally opened for settlement. Regions purchased in transactions like the Louisiana Purchase joined the US’s domain but were unavailable. It could not be offered at public auction until the US had secured title from Native nations, surveyed, and platted the territory. Yet, many settlers in the Trans-Mississippi West distorted or ignored this regimented system in the early nineteenth century. Those settlers who illegally trespassed upon Indigenous lands were branded squatters. Recent scholarship on Indian Territory asserts that multiple groups, including removing Native nations and enslaved peoples, could act as “settlers.”20 However, the unique ability of white settlers and squatters to manifest and create a right to the lands under the Revolutionary tradition defined them as the true settlers within this settler-colonial system. Native nations had no other option than to rely on treaties and contracts signed with the United States, the same compacts that the US later violated in favor of white settlers’ manifested claim.

33 and Red Rivers within the southeastern portion of Arkansas Territory.16 Yet, the white settlers who rapidly emigrated to this territory held a starkly different vision for its future.

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Importantly, these emigrants came to Arkansas to profit from the South’s increasingly predominant cash crop: cotton.21 Early travelers through this portion of the country reflected that the soil lay advantaged “particularly to that of Cotton.”22 Speaking to an audience of new and would-be settlers, the visions of The Arkansas Gazette claimed that a large portion of recent land acquisitions lay “as well adapted to the cultivation of cotton” as “any on the face of the globe.”23 From its very beginning Arkansas Territory became a site of Antebellum enslavement.24 However, to preserve this site of exploitation and profit, the settlers of Arkansas needed to divert the designs of their federal government.

Much of the most desirable land for cotton cultivation and settlement lay along the waterways of Arkansas Territory, on the same sites that continued to be the promised lands of exchange for Indigenous peoples removing from east of the Mississippi River. From the outset of its existence, territorial officials protested this exchange. Tormented by Jackson’s negotiations with the Choctaw at Doak’s Stand, which designated a Choctaw reservation in Arkansas, Delegate to Congress from Arkansas Territory James Woodson Bates pleaded with the Secretary of War Calhoun to halt the agreement’s ratification. In his estimation, it would forfeit “an overwhelming portion of the best lands in the Arkansas Territory.”25 Bates’s protest included a surprising line of argument in which he claimed to be “decisively and irreconcilably hostile to the policy of pushing Indians to the frontier.”26 Yet, this opposition to Indian Removal did not originate from any sense of humanity or desire for Indigenous peoples to maintain their possession of ancestral lands. It is clear from earlier petitions to Congress by citizens of Arkansas that they had requested the removal, or land reduction, of Native nations from within their own Territory.27 Bates opposed Indian Removal because he felt as if “we are surcharged with Indians” already.28 The Arkansas Territorial Assembly wholeheartedly echoed this same rhetoric as they petitioned President James Monroe to “avert from our limits, the Indians, who are coming hither from other sections of the Union . . . we humbly hope that our Territory will not be the only receptacle for that unfortunate race of beings.”29 Both the early settlers of Arkansas and the federal government supported the plan to displace Native peoples. They differed only on where they should be placed. Much of the early efforts of Arkansas Territory’s

34

government concerned the implementation and defense of a competing vision for the future of their Territory. One that did not include Indigenous peoples.

In one of the first petitions to Congress lodged by the inhabitants of Arkansas, they requested that the federal government divert Native peoples from their midst.30 Arkansas’s citizens did not limit their arguments around Indian Removal to a boosterish vision of their Territory’s landscape or the pecuniary prospects of cotton production. Instead, from this very first memorial, Arkansas sought to create a segregated territory by preserving or manifesting the preemptive rights of its citizens. They requested laws to “extend the right of Preemption to the inhabitants of the whole county of Arkansas.”31 Through this strategy, they hoped to secure title to the lands they already occupied. Importantly, by asserting preemption rights, even when not legally granted, Arkansas’s settlers were able to cast themselves as the true victims of Indian Removal rhetorically.

Preemption, sometimes differentiated pre-emption or preemptive rights, remains a somewhat arcane and little-discussed aspect of US jurisprudence. Fittingly, the legal history of preemption consists of two related legal practices. To ensure the efficient working of federalism, the Constitution stipulates in Article VI that the laws of the United States “shall be the supreme law of the land” with any laws “of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”32 Simply, the doctrine of preemption, derived from this Supremacy Clause, dictates that federal law supersedes state law. The second version of pre-emption, or preemptive rights, offers a praxis for contracts, especially property transactions. Under this precept, an individual or entity can retain the right of purchase before public sale, otherwise known as the right of first refusal.33 In the wake of Johnson v. McIntosh (1823), the US maintained a national, a colonial, preemptive right over all lands held by Indigenous nations within the confines of its claimed borders.34 Within the nineteenth century, the right of preemption became most commonly associated with squatters and settlers on the frontier who wished to secure claim to lands, or homesteads, which they occupied by purchasing titles for the minimum price before public auction. In Arkansas Territory, the defense of squatters’ residence on both unsurveyed public and Indigenous lands contributed to the overt settler demand for territorial segregation. They requested the eviction of

36 Arkansas’s existing Indigenous groups and the diversion of any other Native nations removed from east of the Mississippi further westward from their Territory.

Critically, extensive scholarship on US legal traditions and land rights offers some insights into the claims of Arkansas’s settlers. These rights assertions followed what historian Donald Pisani, examining later developments in the settlement of California, has called “law-mindedness.”35 Arkansas’s squatters declared a right to the land not found in the text of legal codes or court rulings but based on their collective sense that as inheritors of the American Revolution, they were party to an unwritten natural law that authorized their actions.36 To these settlers, the Revolution had been fought “to secure land for the landless, and settlers had a right, if not an obligation to resist laws that ran counter to the Revolutionary sentiment.”37 With this post-Revolutionary context, scholars like Laura F. Edwards contend that settlers within the South existed within dual legal structures.38 The formal national codes often varied in principle from a localized sense of law. This local law prioritized the preservation of the peace through a defense of property rights within an increasingly laissez-faire frontier.39 That this expansion occurred during the wake of the American Revolution is key to understanding why the federal government repeatedly sided with squatters. Gordon S. Wood framed this tumultuous period as a radical one where “respectability and even dominance” came to be exercised by “ordinary people.”40 Crucially, the law-mindedness of Arkansas’s settlers in this Revolutionary moment applied to both applications of preemption’s definitions. Asserting the right of first purchase to unceded Indigenous land violated the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples. It superseded the federal government’s authority, casting these ordinary people, these settlers, as the supreme power within the American domain.41 This legal and colonial dilemma repeatedly emerged across the West as settlers moved into new areas. Unifying the scholarship on public lands with that of Indian Removal and the creation of Indian Territory is key to understanding the patterns of westward expansion. Therefore, as Arkansas Territory developed, it continued to assert ill-defined preemptive claims alongside demands for federal intercession concerning Native nations. Exemplative of these dual projects, the same 1818 petition to Congress in which Arkansas’s citizens asked for a general grant of preemptive rights also requested that the Quapaw Nation be removed from their midst.42 Congress had, previously,

granted limited preemptive rights within this very section of the country. In 1814, in part acknowledging the validity of French and Spanish claimants in Louisiana and Missouri Territory, Congress authorized the pre-emption rights of settlers for no more than a one-quarter section.43 This act, on paper, only applied to those occupants of Arkansas Territory whom the Spanish and French colonial governments had authorized, or to those white settlers who had arrived prior to 1814. Recognizing these preemptive rights did not authorize settlement on Indigenous lands whose titles remained unextinguished. These limitations were quickly ignored, and a system plagued by fraud, bureaucratic malaise, and opaque regulations governed the land offices of early Arkansas.44

That squatters had moved onto lands reserved for removing Native nations was a blatant reality. Governor Miller, again protesting the Doak’s Stand treaty with the Choctaw, claimed that “not less than one third of the whole White population of this territory live within the Choctaw cession.”45 Not only did these migrants occupy lands designated for Choctaw or Cherokee Removal, but they also regularly attempted to legitimize their squatting by asserting preemptive rights. While the exact number of fraudulent claimants cannot be easily ascertained, it was common.46 During the early 1820s, Josiah Meigs led the US General Land Office, the office tasked with surveying, platting, and selling public lands. Across his tenure, Meigs received numerous accounts from Arkansas Territory, such as one by John Trimble accusing Chilo A. Moultier of generating false witnesses in competing preemptive claims to a single property.47 One local official writing to the Attorney General offered that of the hundred petitioners for preemptive rights in his county, “many of them are fraudulent,” proven only by witnesses they had “brought here from Louisiana.”48 Only exacerbating the ability of the government to prevent fraudulent preemptive claims was the confusion surrounding the application of congressional acts. Local-land adjudicators Hartwell Boswell and John Trimble wrote to Commissioner Meigs asking for clarification on how to handle the existence of pre-emption claimants occupying lands set to be donated to veterans of the War of 1812.49 Meigs’s only communication to their office before his death in 1822 simply ordered that they were not to admit such claims “at this time.”50 Boswell and Trimble continued to press the issue, however, as their personal views enthusiastically favored the

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preemptors. Echoing the logic of the Arkansas Territorial Assembly, they protested that “preemption claimants are those on whom the future prosperity of this Territory depends, deprive them of their claims, and you take from the Territory its only permanent settlers.”51 The legality of each squatter’s preemptive claim was far from rigorously analyzed or questioned by the adjudicators in Arkansas. Their claims, fraudulent or not, were likely to be legitimized.

Despite the presence of squatters, for much of the 1820s, the federal government remained committed to preserving Arkansas as a destination of Indian Removal. Secretary of War Calhoun declared that those settling illegally upon Indigenous lands were “liable to prosecution, fine and imprisonment” and could be “removed by military force.”52 The Western Cherokee petitioned the Secretary of War for assistance in preventing these illegal settlements, stating, “we entreat you to consider that we are intruded on, and to order the whites who have settled on our land to be removed.”53 Calhoun sympathized with their message and remained committed to enforcing their 1817 treaty, stating that “orders were issued, some time since, for the removal of the whites from your lands.”54 Major William Bradford, in his communication with the Western Cherokee, stipulated that “the Western boundary of your lands not being known or marked out, and I have no authority to remove Citizens from lands of the United States, I therefore, cannot take any measures to do so.”55 Despite the presence of clear-cut orders, officers like Bradford managed to circumvent the uncomfortable prospect of removing white squatters. Even with consenting officers, the realities of nineteenth-century bureaucracy could pose a significant barrier. The commanding officer at Fort Smith, Matthew Arbuckle, responded in January of 1822 that he had only a few days prior found the notice from 1819 ordering the removal of illegal squatters.56 He then “informed the people that I should not use force to prevent their settling . . . but that I could not promise them that they would be permitted to remain there.”57 Despite the unenthusiastic response from these US Army officers, it is clear that during much of the 1820s, the federal government attempted a series of removals, evicting white squatters from Indigenous lands in Arkansas Territory. By 1824, public notice had been given to Arkansas squatters to vacate the lands promised to the Western Cherokee and the Choctaw. In that same year, the US, at Arkansas’s behest, negotiated a treaty with the Quapaw Nation, securing their removal from the lands they

had lived on for centuries. Departing Arkansas, they set out for the Red River Agency and a new home on the border between Louisiana and the Mexican state of Texas.58 Chief of the Quapaw, Heckaton, speaking out against the treaty, contended that removing from his “natal soil” would be akin to being thrown “like outcasts upon the world.”59 Heckaton’s protests went unanswered. The settlers of Arkansas quickly moved into the homes that the Quapaw vacated. Despite opening another large section of public lands for future settlement, this action failed to stem the flow of protests over the US’s expulsion of intruders from Western Cherokee and Choctaw reserves.

The foremost theme found within these protests was the perceived violation of these squatters’ preemptive rights. Residents like Reuben Easton chastised the Secretary of War satirically, asking, “can it bee possibel that congress will turn them of where they have preemption rights and give them none elce wheir [sic]?”60 In the same treatise by which Arkansas’s Delegate to Congress Bates decried Indian Removal, he asked if Arkansas’s citizens were “out of the protection of the government—that he held no property by a tenure too sacred for its grasp?”61 Importantly, the federal government acquiesced to the pleas of the settlers. Legitimizing the pre-emptors of the Western Cherokee’s lands, for both proven and untested claims, on May 26, 1824, Congress passed “An Act concerning pre-emption rights in the territory of Arkansas” granting sections of the preemptors choosing on public lands within Arkansas.62 Congress, therefore, preserved Arkansas’s status as the destination of Indian Removal by maintaining the integrity of the Western Cherokee’s boundaries and removing the illegal intruders. But Congress also extended a veil of legality over the squatters who had intruded on Indigenous lands by granting those same squatters a preemptive claim to plots elsewhere in Arkansas Territory, just as Reuben Easton requested. This pattern was repeated for both sections designated for Choctaw Removal in southeastern Arkansas and on the lands then known as Lovely’s Purchase.

Covering a section of what is now part of northeastern Oklahoma and northwestern Arkansas, the United States acquired Lovely’s Purchase from the Osage in 1816. Major William Lovely, then agent to the Western Cherokee, orchestrated the acquisition, hoping this territory would serve as a buffer between the then-warring nations of the Western Cherokee and Osage and as the treaty-designated outlet for the Western Cherokee.63 Despite its intended use and occupiers, white

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The official ledger for the Lovely donation, 1828 (image courtesy of the Arkansas Commissioner of State Lands, Little Rock, Arkansas).

settlers squatted on Lovely’s Purchase from the outset. After initial reluctance or inefficiency, by 1826, Matthew Arbuckle committed more vigorously to removing those intruders from Western Cherokee lands in Lovely’s Purchase. Arbuckle claimed that he had “been compelled frequently to remove people from this purchase . . . in consequence of a number of families having intruded of late.”64 Rumors circulated that soon President John Quincy Adams would authorize a survey of Lovely’s Purchase and a public sale to legitimize the squatters. Upon hearing this, the Western Cherokee lodged a formal protest, stating, “We think there must be some mistake about it. We cannot think that the present President would give such an order if he knew and were to think of what other Presidents have said to us.”65 Yet, the validity of the Western Cherokee’s claim did not deter continued intrusions.

1870 map of Arkansas and Indian Territory (MAP0085, Map Collection, Arkansas State Archives, Little Rock, Arkansas).

The actual number of squatters within Lovely’s Purchase is difficult to calculate definitively, but it is clear that squatters on this section remained staunchly committed to retaining their claims. One survey of Arkansas Territory’s population listed 435 residents of Lovely’s section of Crawford County.66 Delegate Ambrose Sevier, however, claimed that upwards of 3,000 white settlers had come to occupy this section.67 Sevier provided this potentially exaggerated number within one of his repeated petitions to the federal government asking to secure Lovely’s Purchase for Arkansas. In line with the general tone of these pleas is one notable entry in which Sevier stated, “if Lovely’s purchase should be given of and our citizens again compelled to abandon their home and firesides, I would be unwilling to guarantee the peaceable possession of that country to the Cherokee.”68 Frontier violence, open warfare, served as the subtext backing these squatters’ actions.

It was in this context that Thomas L. McKenney wrote an impassioned letter to the Secretary of War in 1828. McKenney, as Superintendent of Indian Affairs, had served as one of the leading proponents of a growing architecture for Indian Removal. Undermining the previous promises of the federal government threatened everything on

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which he had worked. He postulated that “the Cherokee on the East of the Mississippi will soon hear of this failure to maintain the Executive faith as pledged to their Western Brothers . . . and then I fear the effect will be fatal to our plan of Colonizing the whole.”69 The federal government confronted conflicting choices—to allow Lovely’s Purchase to be occupied by white squatters would violate both the sovereignty of the Western Cherokee and harm the future prospects of general Indian Removal. But, to preserve Lovely’s Purchase as the Western Cherokee’s outlet pitted Arkansas’s local populace against their federal government. Both supported their own versions of Indian Removal but disagreed about where these nations should go. Under the treaty negotiated between the Western Cherokee and the United States in 1828, the US attempted to navigate these difficult choices.

Secretary of War James Barbour offered a proposal which, on the surface, seemed to be a compromise but, at its core, acceded to the demands of the squatters. Within this act, the US segregated Arkansas Territory from what would become a new separate Indian Territory, drawing the present western boundary of Arkansas extending south from the western border of Missouri to the northwest corner of Louisiana.70 The squatters of Lovely’s Purchase would be required to remove east from Indian Territory into the official bounds of Arkansas. This left all but a small sliver of Lovely’s Purchase in the possession of the Western Cherokee. However, this treaty was not a victory for the Western Cherokee.71 Instead, under this new compact, they forfeited the entirety of their Arkansas lands, the heart of their reservation, taking Lovely’s Purchase as the central portion of their new reservation in what would become a new Indian Territory and, eventually, eastern Oklahoma. Barbour justified this seizure, claiming that it freed them “and their posterity, from an embarrassing connexion with the Territory of Arkansas,” guarding them from any “future degradation.”72 As the Choctaw had already ceded their territory within southeastern Arkansas in 1825, the 1828 treaty with the Western Cherokee left Arkansas Territory largely devoid of Indigenous claims. In effect, through the treaty of 1828, Arkansas secured a victory in its decade-long fight against the federal government. Arkansas was no longer the destination for Indian Removal.73

In exchange for their cession, Barbour and the US government promised the Western Cherokee that their new reservation west of

Arkansas would be “a permanent home” which “shall, under the solemn guarantee of the United States, be, and remain, theirs forever.”74 Importantly, it was the permanent reservation promised in 1817 that they then departed. Again, extending the veil of legality over Lovely’s Purchase’s squatters, the US honored their preemptive rights by promising title to equal or greater plots within the newly defined Arkansas Territory. Secured in their legitimized claims in the now segregated territory, the squatters of Lovely’s Purchase complied with Governor Izard’s proclamation of September 27, 1828, ordering all white residents to remove east of the newly established border.75 While the squatters of Lovely’s Purchase had not succeeded in securing the specific lands they occupied, they had effectively commandeered the intentions of the federal government, redirecting further westward those arriving in future Indian Removals and pushing out those Native peoples who had always called Arkansas home.

It was no coincidence that two years later, Andrew Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act on May 28, 1830, and Congress passed a general act granting preemption rights to settlers one day later, May 29, 1830.76 Meaningfully, the US created Indian Territory through the dual processes of Indian Removal and preemption. Both acts acceded to the demands of Western settlers and squatters occupying or attempting to occupy land held by Indigenous people. After expanded suffrage, these settlers represented a key demographic to the growing Democratic party under the pro-Removal leadership of President Jackson. Therefore, congressmen treated Removal and preemption in tandem. Economic historian Leonard Carlson has demonstrated the statistical correlation between individuals’ support for these two laws.77 Even beyond the administration of Jackson, Congress went on to extend preemptive rights over a broader frontier in 1841 and again legitimized preemptor’s rights in the Homestead Act of 1862.78 In its recognition of these rights, the US actively participated in a process of exclusion through migration; a process whose goal was nation-building.79 These settlers compelled the US to recognize these small-scale claims as they directly imitated the historic claims of preemption utilized by the country writ large.80 Colonial ideals, from the doctrine of discovery to the precedent of Johnson v. McIntosh (1823), supposed a justification, a legal right, for colonization itself. To challenge these repeated localized iterations would call into question the United States’

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A map showing the location of Native tribes west of Arkansas Territory, 1836 (G4051.E1 1836.U5 TIL, Library of Congress, Washington, DC).

claim to dominion over lands seized from Native nations at larger scales. Considering this acknowledged precedent, the declaration that settlers possessed a preemptive right to the United States’ public lands, regardless of Indigenous ownership, cannot be separated from the broader process of westward expansion. Indeed, the claim to preemptive rights served as the pretext necessary for the US to renege on the treaties negotiated with many Native nations, progressively creating and destroying newly segregated Indian Territories.

The land-acquisition process and legal rhetoric employed by the squatters of Lovely’s Purchase and the settlers of early Arkansas Territory was not an aberration. Before statehood in 1861, Kansas remained part of the broader Indian Territory. It likewise witnessed

settlers’ claims to a right of pre-emption. Subjected to an early effort at dividing reservation lands into individually held allotments, the US negotiated an 1855 treaty with the Wyandotte Nation, then located in present-day Kansas City, Kansas.81 This compact included various “floats” or grants of lands to individual Wyandotte citizens.82 Enterprising settlers exploited the chaos of pre–Civil War Kansas Territory to orchestrate preemptive claims on these floats. One such pair of preemptors discussed how they would “learn the government lines before they are run” and then “preempt the fraction next to the river which” they “must settle on before the float is laid.”83 Through such efforts, the settlers who poured into Kansas Territory during the 1850s asserted claims not only to public lands the US had already gained through treaties but to unceded Indigenous reservations and allotment sections as well. After the Civil War, Kansas’s settlers succeeded in segregating their territory from an increasingly smaller Indian Territory. Siding again with the preemptors, the United States negotiated

1879 map of Indian Territory (ITMAP.0241, Oklahoma Historical Society Map Collection, OHS).

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with many of Kansas’s Native nations to secure their dispossession in 1867.84

Indian Territory further constricted across the remainder of the nineteenth century. In 1889, captivated by the prospect of acquiring free title to another Cherokee outlet, settlers amassed on the southern Kansas border. Several would-be emigrants, since called “Sooners,” preemptively located themselves across the starting line during the infamous Land Run of 1889.85 By 1890, rival Oklahoma Territory, set up by the Organic Act, sectioned off the western part of the future state from Indian Territory.86 Proposals by the residents of Indian Territory to create an independent State of Sequoyah failed. By 1907, Oklahoma had gained statehood, preemptively asserting dominion over the remaining Indian Territory.87 Oklahoma’s claim of authority upon reservations, which Congress had never disestablished, has only recently come under legal scrutiny.88

Therefore, the settlers of early Arkansas Territory began what became a longstanding tradition within US history. Acknowledging the role these settlers already west of the Mississippi River played reveals a significant aspect of the origins of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and all the states within the Trans-Mississippi West. Repeatedly, as squatters illegally entered Indigenous lands regardless of treaty-designated boundaries, the federal government proved unwilling to meaningfully challenge the squatters’ assertion that they had a right to be there. Instead, the US consistently extended a veil of legality over their intrusions, subsequently continuing, extending, and redirecting Indian Removal. Therefore, settlers’ claims of violated preemptive rights of victimization birthed Indian Territory and laid the groundwork for its death, all of it suspended on ropes of sand.

Endnotes

* Sheldon Yeakley, presently of Edmond, Oklahoma, is a recent graduate of Oklahoma State University with a PhD in United States History. His research focuses on displacement, mobility, and sovereignty across the nineteenth century. His dissertation and current book project traces the numerous instances of Indian Removal experienced by the Native Nations of Northeast Oklahoma.

The image on page twenty-eight shows a Frederic Remington print depicting Native Americans being offered funds for their lands in Oklahoma Territory (21563.IN.FC1.OS12.1A, Oklahoma Historical Society Prints Collection, OHS).

1 For a recent account, see Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (W. W. Norton and Company, 2020). This focus on eastern interactions has been replicated since the first entries into the historiography of Indian Removal; see Grant Foreman, Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians (University of Oklahoma Press, 1953). Other notable accounts include: John P. Bowes, Land too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016); Michael D. Green, The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis (University of Nebraska Press, 1982); Jeffrey Ostler, Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States From the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas (Yale University Press, 2019); Theda Perdue, “The Legacy of Indian Removal,” The Journal of Southern History 78, no. 1 (2012): 3–36. For an overview of recent historiographic trends within Indian Removal scholarship, see Christina Snyder, “Many Removals: Re-evaluating the Arc of Indigenous Dispossession,” Journal of the Early Republic 41, no. 4 (2021): 1–29.

2 “Map of the State of Missouri and Territory of Arkansas,” Map 58, Map Collection, Arkansas State Archives, Little Rock, Arkansas.

3 The Cherokee and Choctaw were not the only Native nations targeted. Many Native nations north of the Ohio River likewise faced pressure to remove and settle within Arkansas. Some notable examples include the Shawnee, Lenape, Piankashaw, Peoria, and Seneca, who formed multi-national communities along the White River.

4 Kathleen DuVal, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). Kathleen DuVal’s work is one of the most notable exceptions to the lack of scholarly attention to this section of the continent before 1830.

5 “Delegate Bates to the Secretary of War, November 28, 1820,” in The Territorial Papers of the United States: Volume XIX, The Territory of Arkansas, ed. Clarence Edwin Carter (Government Printing Office, 1953), 238 (hereafter cited as Arkansas Territorial Papers).

6 “Thomas L. McKenney to the Secretary of War, April 12, 1828,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XX, 648-49.

7 DuVal, The Native Ground, 3; Alaina Roberts, I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). Roberts goes in-depth on settler colonialism and Indian Territory, detailing how successive waves of newcomers utilized this framework to buttress claims to the land and their right to be there. This article details an important deviation from Roberts’s vision of discrete migratory waves as white settlers were present well before Indian Removal.

8 “Thomas L. McKenney to the Secretary of War.”

9 “William Clark to John C. Calhoun, November 10, 1819,” Grant Foreman Papers, Box 11, Folder 11, Helmerich Center for American Research, Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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10 “Treaty with the Osage, 1808,” Indians Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2, ed. Charles Joseph Kappler (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 95.

11 “Treaty with the Quapaw, 1818,” Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2, ed. Charles Joseph Kappler (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 160.

12 “Treaty with the Cherokee, 1817,” Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2, ed. Charles Joseph Kappler (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 140-41.

13 “The Secretary of War to the Indian Commissioners, September 17, 1816,” Louisiana-Missouri Territorial Papers Vol. XV, 152. In this report, Governor of Missouri William Clark states that the Cherokee, reflecting on the western emigrants, should “be compelled to return and live with the nation.”

14 “Treaty with the Cherokee, 1817.”

15 “The Secretary of War to Andrew Jackson, December 15, 1818,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 27.

16 “Treaty with the Choctaw, 1820,” Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2, ed. Charles Joseph Kappler (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 191–92.

17 Key, “Outcasts Upon the World,” 272. US Census Bureau, “Population of Arkansas, Urban and Rural: 1810-1950,” Table One, accessed September 1, 2023, https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1950/population-volume-2/18310273v2p4ch1.pdf.

18 “Stephen H. Long to Thomas A. Smith, January 30, 1819,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 7.

19 Alan Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760–1820 (University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 5–6.

20 Roberts, I’ve Been Here All the While.

21 Charles S. Bolton, Territorial Ambition: Land and Society in Arkansas, 1800–1840 (University of Arkansas Press, 1993). This book includes a description of how Arkansas’s image as a hard-scrabble frontier is misleading and the early Territory, in fact, saw economic success.

22 “William Rector to Josiah Meigs, April 14, 1819,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 62; “Stephen H. Long to Thomas A. Smith, January 30, 1819,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 4. The Surveyor General, William Rector, described Arkansas as a destination “considered healthy and extremely well adapted to the produce of Cotton.”

23 “Treaty with the Quapaw,” The Arkansas Gazette, July 13, 1824.

24 US Census Bureau, “Compendium of the Sixth Census,” accessed September 1, 2023, www2 census.gov/library/publications/decennial/1840/1840v3/1840c-06.pdf. Further, connection between Indian Removal and the growth of Antebellum enslavement has been explored in recent scholarship. See Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (W. W. Norton, 2020); Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman eds., Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014).

25 “Delegate Bates to the Secretary of War, November 28, 1820,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 238.

26 “Delegate Bates to the Secretary of War.”

27 “Petition to Congress by Inhabitants of Arkansas County, November 2, 1818,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 11.

28 “Delegate Bates to the Secretary of War.”

29 “Petition to the President by the Territorial Assembly, February 11, 1820,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 144.

30 “Petition to Congress by Inhabitants of Arkansas County.”

31 “Petition to Congress by Inhabitants of Arkansas County.”

32 US Constitution, art. 6, cl. 2.

33 “Preemptive Right,” Cornell University Law, March 2022, accessed September 10, 2023, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/preemptive_right.

34 Joshua A. Althoff, “Managing Settlers, Managing Neighbors: Renarrating Johnson v. McIntosh Through the History of Piankashaw Community Building,” Journal of American History 110, no. 4 (2024): 625–42; Blake A. Watson, Buying America from the Indians: Johnson v. McIntosh and the History of Native Land Rights (University of Oklahoma Press, 2021).

35 Donald Pisani, “Squatter Law in California, 1850-1858,” Western Historical Quarterly 25, no. 3 (1994): 284.

36 Pisani, “Squatter Law in California,” 278. Pisani’s view of popular sovereignty and law mindedness is reflected in his assertion that squatters believed “’The people’ have a greater right to define and interpret the rules they live by than legal experts.” See also, Christian G. Fritz, “Popular Sovereignty, Vigilantism, and the Constitutional Right of Revolution,” The Pacific Historical Review 63, no. 1 (1994): 39–66.

37 Donald J. Pisani, “The Squatter and Natural Law in Nineteenth-Century America,” Agricultural History 81, no. 4 (2007), 444.

38 Laura F. Edwards, The People and Their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South (University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

39 John R. Atta, Securing the West: Politics, Public Lands, and the Fate of the Old Republic, 1785–1850 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). Atta points to a trend in which, across the early-nineteenth century, the US increasingly allowed for a “general opening of public lands to whoever wanted them, for whatever purpose, no matter the impact on native peoples.”

40 Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (A. A. Knopf, 1992), 8.

41 Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006), 392. Wolf offers a discussion of settler-colonialism and preemption. Wolfe discusses preemption and the doctrine of discovery in a related but subtly different manner than what is seen in early Arkansas. Wolfe describes a supposition of preemption which underpins theories of land ownership by which Indigenous peoples held only a right of occupancy and Euro-American powers held true sovereign title, or dominion. Likewise, Wolfe acknowledges a role of what he terms the “frontier rabble.” In Arkansas, settlers argued for a related but separate right of preemption which dealt with transactions between settlers and their federal government. Therefore, in Arkansas, it was the comingling of preemptive claims from both settler and federal government that underpinned colonization.

42 “Petition to Congress by Inhabitants of Arkansas County.”

43 An Act for the final adjustment of land titles in the State of Louisiana and Territory of Missouri, US Statutes at Large 121, 13th Cong., 2d sess. (April 12, 1814). This law references a grant of preemptive rights in the territory of Illinois, and this is the basis for the one-quarter section limit. An Act giving the right of pre-emption in the purchase of lands to certain settlers in the Illinois territory, US Statutes at Large, 12th Cong., 2d., sess. 2, 797 (February 5, 1813).

44 David A. Smith, “Preparing the Arkansas Wilderness for Settlement: Public Land Survey Administration, 1803-1836,” Arkansas Historical Quarterly 71, no. 4 (2012): 381–406. Smith offers a view of the chaotic nature of the Arkansas Territory Land Office.

45 “Governor Miller to the Secretary of War, December 11, 1820,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 245.

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46 See chapter four of Charles S. Bolton’s Territorial Ambition: Land and Society in Arkansas, 1800-1840 (University of Arkansas Press, 1998).

47 “John Trimble to Josiah Meigs, April 10, 1822,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 430; “Chilo A. Moultier to Josiah Meigs, April 10, 1822,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 420-24.

48 “Samuel C. Roane to the Attorney General, May 7, 1828,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XX, 674.

49 “Hartwell Boswell and John Trimble to Josiah Meigs, January 12, 1822,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 391.

50 “Josiah Meigs to Hartwell Boswell and John Trimble, August 8, 1822,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 454.

51 “Hartwell Boswell and John Trimble to Josiah Meigs, July 2, 1822,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 447.

52 “The Secretary of War to George Gray, November 27, 1820,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 263.

53 “Arkansas Cherokee to the Secretary of War, July 24, 1821,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 305.

54 “The Secretary of War to Arkansas Cherokee Chiefs, October 8, 1821,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 324.

55 “William Bradford to the Cherokee Chiefs, March 16, 1821,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 340.

56 “Matthew Arbuckle to the Secretary of War, January 12, 1822,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 480-81.

57 “Matthew Arbuckle to the Secretary of War.”

58 “Treaty with the Quapaw, 1824,” Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2, ed. Charles Joseph Kappler (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 210.

59 “Indian Speech,” The Arkansas Gazette, November 30, 1824.

60 “Reuben Easton to the Secretary of War, March 1819,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XIX, 61.

61 “Delegate Bates to the Secretary of War, November 28, 1820,” Arkansas Territorial Papers, 238–39.

62 An Act concerning pre-emption rights in the territory of Arkansas, US Statutes at Large 154, 18th Cong., 1st sess. (May 26, 1824).

63 Ina Gabler, “Lovely’s Purchase and Lovely County,” The Arkansas Historical Quarterly 19, no. 1 (1960): 31–9.

64 “Matthew Arbuckle to the Adjutant General, July 31, 1826,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XX, 278.

65 “Memorial from the Arkansas Cherokee to Edward W. Duvall, July 24, 1826,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XX, 331.

66 “Census, 1827,” The Arkansas Territorial Papers XX, 582. Of these 435 persons, forty are listed as enslaved.

67 “Delegate Sevier to the Secretary of War, February 18, 1825,” Arkansas Territorial Papers, 602–4.

68 “Delegate Sevier to the Secretary of War, February 18, 1828,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XX, 605, 651. This is a further illustration of the tone seen in his missive of April 1828, in which he is “protesting against that, or any other treaty, by which Lovely’s purchase was in the slightest degree to be affected, or our western boundary line, removed one inch further to the east.”

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69 “Thomas L. McKenney to the Secretary of War, April 12, 1828,” The Arkansas Territorial Papers XX, 647-50. In this same letter, McKenney predicts open conflict between settlers and the Western Cherokee. “I need not speak of the hate which is cherished towards them by those new Sett’lers—and who on being sustained in the plan of sett’ling Lovely’s Purchase will increase in consequence, as they will in power, when collisions will be produced, and I have no doubt, finally, a war.”

70 “Treaty with the Western Cherokee, 1828,” Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2, ed. Charles Joseph Kappler (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 288; Figure 2. “Map of Arkansas and Portion of Indian Territory,” Map 1315, Map Collection, Arkansas State Archives, Little Rock, Arkansas.

71 Brad Agnew, “The Cherokee Struggle for Lovely’s Purchase” American Indian Quarterly 2, no. 4 (1975): 347-61. This anachronistic view of the event is encapsulated by Agnew’s statement, “but when the struggle had been resolved, it was the Red Man who was awarded the land and the White Man who was evicted.” This view, however, ignores that the Western Cherokee were “evicted” from their homes east of the Arkansas border.

72 “Treaty with the Western Cherokee, 1828,” Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2, ed. Charles Joseph Kappler (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 288.

73 “Treaty with the Choctaw, 1825,” Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2, ed. Charles Joseph Kappler (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 211. One exception was a settlement of Lenape and Shawnee on the White River. Additionally, the Quapaw’s experiences on the Red River were so disastrous that they would reenter Arkansas Territory before being removed yet again in 1833.

74 “Treaty with the Western Cherokee, 1828,” Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2, ed. Charles Joseph Kappler (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 288.

75 “Proclamation of Governor Izard, September 27, 1828,” Arkansas Territorial Papers XX, 751–52. Notably, at least one white resident of Lovely’s Purchase petitioned the secretary of war directly to stay on their lands. Persis Lovely, wife of the late Major Lovely who had negotiated the original acquisition still resided on the lands and wished to remain. “Persis Lovely to the Secretary of War, July 25, 1828,” The Arkansas Territorial Papers XX, 714–15.

76 An Act to grant pre-emption rights to settlers on the public lands. US Statutes at Large 420, 21st Cong., 1st sess. (May 29, 1830); An Act to provide for an exchange of lands with the Indians residing in any of the states or territories, and for their removal west of the river Mississippi. US Statutes at Large 148, 21st Cong., 1st sess. (May 28, 1830).

77 Leonard A. Carlson and Mark A. Roberts, “Indian Lands, ‘Squatterism,’ and Slavery: Economic Interests and the Passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830,” Explorations in Economic History 43, no. 3 (2006): 486–504; Leonard A. Carlson, “Were there Alternatives to Disaster? The Removal of Indians from the Southeastern United States in the 1830s,” in Land Rights, Ethno-Nationality, and Sovereignty in History, eds. Standley Engerman and Jacob Metzer (Routledge, 2004); M. T. Kanazawa, “Possession is Nine Points of the Law: The Political Economy of Early Public Land Disposal” Explorations in Economic History 33, no. 2 (1996): 227–49.

78 An Act to appropriate the proceed of the sales of the public lands, and to grant pre-emption rights, US Statutes at Large 453, 27th Cong., 1st sess. (September 4, 1841); An Act to secure Homesteads to actual Settlers on the Public Domain, Public Laws 37–64, 37th Cong., 2nd Sess. (May 20, 1862); Historical discussions of pre-emption rights often place the 1830 act as the starting point, and truly focus on the period after the 1841 Pre-emption act and 1862 Homestead Act. Bolton, Territorial Ambition. 1993. Bolton does include an

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examination of squatters and Arkansas in specificity. This study focuses far more on the economic development of the Territory rather than its segregation from a broader Indian Territory or as a group subversively employing fictive legal rights.

79 Samantha Seeley, Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain: Migration and the Making of the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2021). Here, Seeley offers that Indian Removal was a part of a broader project to define who was a legitimate part of the nation. By recognizing preemptive rights and subsequently removing Native nations, the United States asserted a colonial and racial claim to who composed its body politic.

80 A similar concept is considered in Gregory Dowd, “Custom, Text, and Property: Indians, Squatters, and Political Authority in Jacksonian Michigan,” Early American Studies 18, no. 2 (2020): 195-228.

81 “Treaty with the Wyandot, 1855,” Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2, ed. Charles Joseph Kappler (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 677.

82 Homer E. Socolofsky, “Wyandot Floats,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 36, no. 3 (1970): 241304.

83 Andrew H. Reeder to John A. Halderman, 1857, John A. Halderman Collection, Collection #370, Box 1, Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas.

84 “Treaty with the With the Seneca, Mixed Seneca and Shawnee, Quapaw, ETC., 1867,” Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2, ed. Charles Joseph Kappler (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 963.

85 Arrell Morgan Gibson, Oklahoma: A History of Five Centuries (University of Oklahoma Press, 1981), 173.

86 An Act to provide a temporary government for the Territory of Oklahoma, to enlarge the jurisdiction of the United States Court in the Indian Territory, and for other purposes, 51st Cong. 2nd Sess. 26 Stat. 81 (May 2, 1890).

87 Theodore Roosevelt, Proclamation 780, “Declaring the state of Oklahoma’s admission to the Union,” Federal Register 11, no. 780 (November 16, 1907). Oklahoma entered the Union via presidential proclamation.

88 McGirt v. Oklahoma, 18 US 9526 (2020); The principal behind the different levels of sovereignty granted within the US legal system and under whose purview Native Nations fell were established by a series of other Supreme Court decisions during the Indian Removal era. See Johnson and Graham Lessee v. McIntosh, 21 US 543 (1823), which stipulated that due to the preemptive rights derived from US dominion over all its claimed lands, Native nations were required to sell lands only to the US federal government and could not sell to private individuals or states. See Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 US 1 (1831), which states that while Native Nations were not foreign nations they were “domestic dependent nations,” recognized as a state. Therefore, a state could not interfere or assert dominion over them, only the federal government could. See Worcester v. Georgia, 31 US 515 (1832), which again asserted that the Cherokee Nation was not subjected to the laws of the state of Georgia.

Crossing Cultural Frontiers: Mexicans in the Wild West Shows

By Gary Moreno*

The charro has been associated with Mexican national identity. Each generation interprets Mexican men on horseback as dynamic figures, from Salamanca to Los Altos de Jalisco in Mexico, from chinacos to charros. 1 Historical and cultural literature often compare Mexican charros—horsemen distinguished by tapered trousers, wide-brimmed sombreros, and elaborately embroidered bolero jackets—with southern variants of American cowboys. While both figures are rooted in vaquero culture, the Mexican charro is not a cowboy. Besides variations in dress, class and social status separate them. While cowboys are working ranch hands, the charro is associated with wealthy hacendados (landed elites) or their caporal (boss man). Charros

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became celebrated figures from nineteenth-century art and literature who transitioned to cinema and television in the twentieth century. Although there are many iterations from its origins in the Old World to its present form, the charro is more than just a horseman from Salamanca. Exploring the untold account of Mexican performers in the United States between 1880 and 1940 shows they were among the earliest Mexican migrant laborers who crossed into the United States. Performers like Ponciano Díaz, Vicente Oropeza, and José Barrera permanently established the charro archetype in American popular culture.

While men on horseback have origins in the countryside, charros are more an urban construct than they ever were a rural reality. Writers and letrados (literate people) interpreted folksongs and corridos (ballads) as charro literature in cities, innovating the charro archetype. The writers and literary types who helped describe the character in the last half of the 1800s, such as Luis Inclán, Ignacio Altamirano, and Manuel Payno, expressed a nostalgia for fading folkloric forms that developed in urban centers. Across cities in the late nineteenth century, Mexican bullfighters dressed in charro clothing and popularized the figure among the urban poor. In their attempt to establish a Europeanstyle folk hero, elite equestrians disguised the class oppression and political marginalization of diverse ethnic groups.

In the late 1880s, a popular bullfighter named Ponciano Díaz became Mexico’s first modern celebrity. Various northern Mexico states attracted bullfighters after lifting bans on the sport in the 1880s. Such legislation transformed states like Chihuahua into worthwhile regions for bullfighters from the interior of Mexico. Unlike the Spanish bullfighters who toured Mexico during this period, Díaz was proudly Mexican and conveyed that nationalist sentiment to his audience, mainly the lower classes, through his equestrian feats and clothing. The charming young torero (bullfighter) appeared striking in a wide-brimmed sombrero, riding pants fringed with silver buttons, and an elaborately embroidered charro jacket. Díaz distinguished himself with charro regalia, ornate saddles, and a large mustache.2

Between the 1880s and 1920s, a series of bullfighting prohibitions in Mexico City pushed toreros to outlying areas as migrants increasingly settled along the Texas border where a variety of employment opportunities existed.3 When revolution erupted in the 1910s, people from

central Mexico migrated northward, a process hastened by religious conflicts in the 1920s and 30s. These political and economic refugees fled limited employment, traveling across the border at Laredo, Texas, and on to cities like San Antonio, Texas. Just like their cowboy cousins in the US, hired horsemen in northern Mexico lived precariously because of low wages and less than favorable living conditions, compelling them to seek employment wherever they could.

Mexican migrants eventually ventured into the Midwest, supplementing the cattle industry,4 and finding their way to small Mexican communities.5 Corridas (bullfights) organized in these communities and created additional incentives for equestrian performers to migrate to the United States. Unconstrained by humane laws, civic leaders held one of the earliest US bullfights in Dodge City, Kansas, in 1884.6 The event was a novelty that proved a success for Gregorio Gallardo and his team of toreros. 7

Capitalizing on the success, Mexican bullfighters and vaqueros gained employment during the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West traveling show. These entertainers contributed to the transfer of bullfighting acts and styles from Mexico, impacting American popular culture by enacting the archetype of the modern Mexican charro. Twirling ropes and riding bucking broncos, Mexicans in Wild West shows enacted personal representations that defied distortions. Eventually, the image of ropewielding charros spread across the United States and the world.8

Appearing like dashing bullfighters, male performers portrayed “good” Mexicans when they presented themselves in their flashy charro attire. Mexicans were enlisted to fight against Native adversaries in skits like the “Burning of Trapper Tom’s Cabin.” In Gordon “Pawnee Bill” Lillie’s show, the Wild West show with many positive representations of Mexicans, they explained how Mexican horsemen were, “gay caballeros, men who were toreadores or bull fighters, swashbuckling, sun-tanned Vaqueros, and individuals whose physiognomies and physiques denote their Indian ancestry.” Apparently, “vaqueros have no rival with the lasso. They live by it.”9

Of all the ethnic Mexicans who played a version of themselves in the Wild West shows, Vicente Oropeza stands out as an exceptional figure. He was the first professional performer to introduce trick roping, a secondary act of Mexican bullfighting, in the US. Charming but not proficient in the Spanish style, Oropeza fought bulls as preferred by Mexicans: sticking picks while mounted—Ponciano Díaz’s signature

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act. Oropeza was in league with the major toreros of his time, inaugurating the Coliseo arena in Mexico City after a twenty-year ban on bullfighting expired in 1886.10 Originally gaining a reputation in his native Puebla and later in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, he eventually traveled north and contracted with William “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West show.11 Oropeza radically altered the script of Mexican performers in the US. He packed up his charro suit to tour towns and cities across a vast world connected by iron and steam for sixteen seasons.

While Oropeza gained fame for his accuracy with the rope and the great distances he could throw while retaining control, some people expressed disbelief and claimed he hid a wire in his lasso.12 His implausible feats included an act in which he made a loop large enough for a horse to pass through. When a second ran past, the bullfighter closed the noose to catch it. Oropeza called this “The Salute.” “The Umbrella” consisted of him pitching a great spinning circle over his head and letting it fall around his body as he danced inside, while “Oropeza’s Dream” gave the illusion of an upright wheel rolling around the performer in mid-air.13 The man with the hypnotic lasso also competed in rodeo events such as the steer roping contest held in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1899.14 After he won first place at the “World Championship of Trick and Fancy Roping,” held in New York City in 1900, Oropeza gained top billing as “The Greatest Roper in the World” and “The Wonder of Mexico” when the show toured Europe.15

Wild West shows advertised the unbelievable feats of performers with illustrations so marvelous that the shows operated like a “powerful factory of images.”16 Promotional billboards, posters, and banners totaled a sizable portion of a show’s costs.17 Representations of Mexicans often included figures roping or riding.18 The earliest depictions demonstrate vaqueros with bell-bottoms engaged in catching bison. These figures have large mustaches and are often pictured smoking.19 Inspired by Oropeza’s tricks, one of the most repeated images portrays a Mexican roper gyrating inside the center of a twirling loop. Illustrations also portrayed riders who jump, race, and perform tricks on horseback.20 Representations of Mexicans with firearms are rare, and those that exist aim rifles at bison, bandits, or Native Americans.21 Thus, the promotional imagery of Wild West shows often conceptualizes Mexicans as allies in the Anglo-American struggle against Natives on the frontier. Frederic Remington modeled several works that prominently feature Mexican performers after he witnessed their act

in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. His ink drawing of Vicente Oropeza from 1897 titled, The Great Mexican “Top Roper of the World,” represents him striking a pose in his conical sombrero and pitching his reata toward the viewer.22

While promotional material featured Mexican performers, Buffalo Bill’s program chided the vaquero “half-breed” who appears “dandy in the style and get-up of his attire,” most distinctly through his “buckskin trousers, slit from the knee to the foot and ornamented with rows of brass or silver buttons.” When he rides into town, “the first thought of an Eastern man is that a circus has broken loose.” The program goes on to note that while ordinarily peaceful, vaqueros became dangerous when drinking. It was acknowledged that Mexicans were superb equestrians and skilled at catching animals because “at heart he is not bad.”23 Even the lasso carried a certain degree of cultural assumptions. Like the bow and arrow used by Native performers, audiences perceived Mexican roping as a primitive skill inferior to the technological superiority associated with Anglo-American firearms.24

Programs generally reinforced prevailing anti-Mexican sentiments of the era, but the actual script interwove narratives that

Vicente Oropeza, 1901 (P.69.1010, Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming).

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included references to historic battles with Natives, the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War.25 Less explored is the link to the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War. In Texas, episodes such as the Cortina Revolt of 1859, the cattle wars of the 1870s, the Catarino Garza movement of the 1890s, and the infamous Gregorio Cortez manhunt of 1901 helped reinforce the notion that Mexicans could not assimilate to white culture and were prone to violence.26 The worst fears of citizens of the US were realized when a revolution erupted in Mexico in 1911, leading to a notable rise in incidents of lynching along the south Texas border. Suddenly, insurrectionists and refugees came to terrorize the imagination of those living in the southwest.27 More broadly, politicians in the US infantilized Latin Americans as dark-skinned children who needed tutelage and stern discipline to bolster their assumed role as masters of the Americas.28

Mexican men negotiated the middle ground between positive and negative stereotypes. They played bandits in elaborate skits about the perils of frontier life, the plots of which often included kidnappings, robberies, and shoot-outs choreographed with horse races, gunfights, and rope tricks.29 At an extended engagement at the Wonderland theme park in New Jersey, the Pawnee Bill show featured Mexican road agents that assault a mule train.30 All Wild West shows enacted narratives with varying degrees of white supremacy interwoven in their scripts.31 The Miller Brothers’ 101 Ranch show featured a section titled “Barbarous Mexico.”32 Thus, the cross-cultural appreciation of the charro did not always proceed smoothly.

The idea of good Mexicans were represented with rich style, dressed in charro costumes with gold plaits emblazoned on sleeves, conjuring images of noble toreros, hacendados, and the flashy Guardia Rural.33 In the same manner that Native performers were identified by the headdress of the Plains tribes and Arabs with the keffiyeh of the Gulf region, so too Mexicans were identified by wide-brimmed sombreros in the popular piloncín (sugar loaf) style. The sombrero became a generic marker for all Latin Americans. These costumes referred to a romantic past, a vanishing ideal of “Old Mexico.” Thus, charro suits also allowed performers to assume the roles of dashing hacendados, figures associated with a white European identity. Performance is a medium of self-representation, and for the Mexicans who dressed like charros, personal meanings may have differed from those of the audience.34

58

Oropeza’s skilled performance subverted the text. While touring Brooklyn in 1894, The New York Times reported that he was one of the show’s main attractions, and crowds treated him exceptionally well when he traveled through San Antonio.35 A rodeo historian notes that locals in Texas, “long accustomed to watching expert ropers recognized that Oropeza was in a class by himself.”36

Especially notable is Oropeza’s influence on Will Rogers. After watching him perform with Buffalo Bill outside the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, Rogers made sure to stand next to Oropeza for a photograph at the St. Louis Annual Fair of 1899.37 Rogers’s first published work, “Various Style of Roping,” concerned Oropeza’s influence and credited the bullfighter with inspiring his routine. Twenty years after he first watched him perform, he recalled, “He was the first roper that any of the present fancy ropers ever saw, and up to this day I have never seen a man exhibit the same accuracy and style that he did.”38 Dane Coolidge remembered:

Oro Peso [sic] was more than a trick roper. When he was traveling with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show he was always posted at the gate while the cowboys and cowgirls rode their bronks [sic], and if any were thrown and dragged by their mounts it was Oro Peso who roped them. He never failed.39

Chester Byers wrote, “He was a whiz at catching horses. . . . When he wanted a hind leg or a saddle-horn he could hook that just as well.”40 Joseph Mayer, one of the original Rough Riders, declared, “The first roper we had with the show was Vincenzo Oripesa [sic], a Mexican who was a lot better than Will Rogers.”41 Like Native performers, Mexicans left few records of their time in the Wild West shows. Therefore, research relies on their description in the writings of others.

The greatest tribute came from Frank Dean, a Wild West roper and historian. In 1962, Dean traveled to Puebla to search for traces of Oropeza. After publishing a general inquiry in El Sol de Puebla, Dean received a response from Oropeza’s surviving children. Over the holidays, he exchanged letters and learned to pay respects to Oropeza’s legacy as one of the pioneers of charrería. Dean eventually received a photograph of Oropeza that he published in The Western Horseman magazine as part of an article titled “Magueys, Myths, and Men.”42 In

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this work, Dean corrects the common misspelling of Oropeza’s surname, including Oripesa, Orespo, and Oro Peso.43 Dean’s research eventually advanced Oropeza’s induction to the Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1975. The first Mexican honoree, Oropeza received praise for being the “father of trick and fancy roping in rodeo north of the border.” The Rodeo Hall of Fame honored “the Wild West show and the Mexican charro, both of whom, rodeo’s heritage owes much credit.”44

In 1908, Buffalo Bill’s creditors caught up with the old circus star, and Gordon “Pawnee Bill” Lillie stepped in to save his former employer. By 1909, the two combined their shows, recast as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Pawnee Bill’s Great Far East, which also served as a farewell tour for Buffalo Bill.45 During the merger, Mexican performers fragmented, and Oropeza lost his position as leader of the Mexicans to José “Mexican Joe” Barrera.46 Barrera was taller, younger, and a more imposing presence than the portly and aging Oropeza. The bullfighter put down his lasso, retiring from Wild West shows and returning to his native Puebla as revolution broke out. Whatever thoughts Oropeza expressed have been lost. Regardless of indifference, José Barrera, Oropeza’s replacement, recognized the important legacy of his predecessor when he stated, “nobody teach me, Oropeza and me, we learn ourselves.”47 After starting a craze for trick and fancy roping in the US and entertaining heads of state across Europe, Oropeza died quietly in 1923, surrounded by his children.48

The Two Bills show signaled a shift in the Wild West show business. The last of these great shows operated out of Oklahoma, recently granted statehood in 1907 after a prolonged territorial period. No other show featured more culture from south of the border than Pawnee Bill’s Historic Wild West and Mexican Hippodrome. Mexican knife-throwers, “riding señoritas,” a Mexican band of twelve pieces, bullfighters, and vaqueros entertained thousands.49 If bullfighters like Díaz and Oropeza represent the international popularization of the charro archetype, then José Barrera represented the permanent establishment of such figures in US popular culture. As a result, Oklahoma became a major crossroads in disseminating their image. Although turnover rates were high, many Mexicans in Wild West shows enjoyed seasonal work and steady employment.

In 1872, José Barrera was born to Casimira Sáenz and Narcisso Barrera in the town of Mier, Tamaulipas, along the Texas-Mexico border, baptizing him in the Church of the Immaculate Conception on

José Barrera, n.d. (1991.260.4412, Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum Collection, OHS).

Christmas Day.50 According to his family, when José was only a juvenile, he was involved in a shooting that resulted in the death of a soldier. Rather than fall prey to the long arm of Porfirian justice, he fled to the US. He occasionally returned to visit loved ones in Monterrey, Nuevo León, before contact ceased in the dawning years of the twentieth century. Later in life, Barrera claimed he was born on the northern side of the border, sometimes designating a cow camp or San Antonio, Texas, as the exact location.

In 1887, the young vaquero’s skill amazed Gordon Lillie when he delivered stock to the Pawnee Bill show in San Antonio. One version of this story alleges Barrera begged Lillie for a job after being repeatedly turned down, probably because he was a minor.51 Nonetheless, an adolescent José was well within the demographic of horsemen for hire and eventually became “Mexican Joe,” leader of the Mexican troupe in Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show. Throughout his half-century career, he was billed as Mexico Jo, Borraro, Borrero, Bararo, Barroa, and Baran. Wild West show organizers had difficulty recruiting and maintaining ethnic Mexican performers. They often abandoned the circus and

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Collection, OHS).

62 José Barrera in charro outfit, 1900 (1991.260.4381, Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum

broke their contracts if conditions proved unfavorable. In 1895, the Pawnee Bill show fired one Mexican “on account of mis-fit or non-fit [sic],” while “our Fat Mexican” quit in Ohio.52 A group of runaway performers prompted this sardonic note: “three Mexicans think they can make more money selling hot tamales than they get with the show, so they close with us here. D. Wallace left three days ago to get three Mexicans at El Paso.”53 If they were lucky, such recruiters might come across amateur bullfighters looking for work along the border.54 These migrant laborers were among the most traveled members of their communities, and their work as entertainers allowed them to see the world as itinerant wanderers.

To fill the gap left by Mexican performers, anyone who wore a sombrero with an elaborately embroidered jacket, regardless of their ethnicity, assumed a “Mexican” persona.55 The history of the charro suit is a narrative of cultural appropriation by non-Mexicans. This was the case when Will Rogers appeared in a red velvet suit as “The Mexican Rope Artist.”56 Cody and Lillie also enjoyed dressing in the elaborate costumes of vaqueros. Sombreros and silver buttons especially attracted Cody, who allegedly wore bell bottoms when he killed Yellow Hair, a Cheyenne leader.57 Bill Pickett, the famous bulldogger, reportedly wore toreador pants when he performed.58 Working ranch hands also coveted Mexican clothing. A first-rate “gold mounted Mexican sombraro [sic],” cost several month’s wages in 1886, while silver spurs, saddles, and rawhide ropes also sold for a fistful of dollars. Both Billy the Kid and Sitting Bull were particularly fond of their sombreros.59

According to historian Rodolfo Acuña, cowboy dress represents the “theft” of Mexican clothing and serves as an indicator of a colonized status.60

One of the oddest transformations occurred with Italians that comprised the Mexican Band of Twelve Pieces, sometimes called the Mexican Military Band. These performers are among the first to establish the practice of orchestral groups that perform in charro uniforms—forerunners of modern mariachis.61 Heck Quinn, “King of the Cowboys,” often dressed in a charro costume and presented himself as Hector Quinn.62 Quinn, an expert roper, occasionally performed riding feats with other Mexican cast members. Similarly, the Esquivel brothers held key positions as cowboys in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show for many years.63 On more than one occasion, Mexicans stood in for other

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Latinos, taking on the role of Argentine gauchos swinging a bolas, a traditional catching instrument.64

Mexican troupes were often a strange cast of characters. Mexican Rufus had a giant R sewn on the chest of his costume. Donzeanno likely hoped to invoke the great fame of Ponciano Díaz, while others chose noble titles like Señor Pedro or Señor Francisco. A few added place names to their monikers, such as Vera Cruz Valdez.65 Although the turnover rate was high, many like Rufus Cardoza, Victor Torres, Quentín Portillo, and Hilario Cerrilo returned yearly.66 Forging fraternal bonds with their fellow migrants made working in a foreign land a more enjoyable experience.67

In the late nineteenth century, most Anglo-Americans considered Mexicans as racial inferiors due to a history of miscegenation with Natives and Blacks.68 Working relationships existed inside and outside the arena, such as when José Barrera and Bill Pickett wrangled cattle at the 101 Ranch.69 At times, competition between different groups was fierce and resulted in racial tensions that ended in violence.70 While touring Pennsylvania in 1895, a Mexican and an unidentified worker “got in a rumpus with some colored folk,” each receiving a fine of $13.50.71 While touring Canada, Andrew Gorman and Cherokee Jim drank too much whiskey and quarreled over some unknown cause, keeping everybody awake with their argument. Overcome with anger, Gorman pistolwhipped Jim. This unleashed the fury of Natives and Mexicans until A. G. Shaw, the “Mexican” knife thrower and translator of Indigenous languages, intervened. In the end, Jim received a fine of ten dollars.72 Mexican performers in Wild West shows operated within the boundaries set by their employers. Codes of conduct tried to regulate behaviors backstage—mainly through the prohibition of alcohol. Nonetheless, mashes, sometimes called tangle-foot, were a problem. Employers enforcing temperance hoped to prevent violence and establish harmony between various, often contentious, groups. The great shows functioned like military camps, company towns, and corporations all at once. Dining tents with food services provided free lemonade and regular meals that consisted of sausages, pancakes, and coffee for breakfast.73 For lunch and supper, beef, beans, and chili often appeared on the menu. Employers hired butchers and outfitted refrigerated wagons to store whole sides of meat. Another cart supplied fresh water for necessities and electric generators illuminated the night.74 Lured by these conveniences, performers often returned to the same

show season after season. In many ways, show organizers developed a paternalistic relationship with their employees in a manner similar to that cultivated by hacendados in Mexico. So it was that Gordon Lillie became a constant presence in José Barrera’s life.

While many Mexican performers returned south during the offseason, others, such as Barrera, found permanent employment in the US. Barrera functioned as an intermediary between employers and employees. Perhaps he explained the terms of service and elaborated on the difference between chile and chili or barbacoa and barbecue. He likely told anecdotes about his tour through Europe. Regardless of his difficulty mastering English, Barrera decided to spend most of his time in the US. Whatever his reasons, he gradually settled into the extraordinary life of a Wild West performer.

José Barrera charmed the people he met. In the spring of 1905, Barrera decided to tie the knot, but it was not his first marriage. In 1901, Barrera wed an unidentified woman while touring Iowa. A disappointed friend noted, “The cool weather we are having at present is no doubt responsible for the fact that Mexican Joe today is seized with an insane idea to pay a woman’s board for life.”75 A few years later, while wintering stock in Beverly, Ohio, Barrera eloped with Effie Cole, the daughter of a local school custodian. Commonly referred to as rapto in Mexico, Effie’s family was not present at the wedding.76 Eventually, Effie’s parents accepted the arrangement before the newlyweds departed on tour with Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show.77

Effie Cole exemplified the female performers of the Wild West shows. Working on the show circuit allowed young ladies the opportunity to travel, escape parental authority, enter the wage labor workforce, engage in social interactions across ethnic lines, and fall in love.78 Female performers endured difficulty and tragedy but also experienced the success of balancing work and family life. Before raising a daughter together, Joe taught Effie to ride and purchased a costume for her to perform with the “Lady Riders.” She joined cowgirls like Edna May and Lulu Bell Parr, jumping hurdles, driving a chariot, and bringing people to the show by playing the calliope at parades.79

A poster from 1896 depicts “Beautiful Daring Western Girls and Mexican Señoritas in a Contest of Equine Skill,” with blonde and brunette riders wearing sombreros and performing equestrian acts commonly associated with Mexican bullfighting. A program notes, “particular

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May Lillie in charra costume, c. 1890 (1991.260.20097, Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum Collection, OHS).

Effie Cole Barrera, c. 1900 (1991.260.4428, Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum Collection, OHS).

attention is called to the costuming of these people and to the singular beauty of the senoritas and younger girls of the party.”80 Like Annie Sheaffer and Adele Von Ohl Parker in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, female performers busted broncos, jumped obstacles, and spun ropes.81 Women also presented the daring feat of picking-up, which required riders to lean over the side of a galloping horse and pluck a handkerchief from the ground. Similarly, Lucille Mulhall appeared with the Miller Brothers in their Wild West show and was renowned as a competitive roper. By the 1940s, when Wonder Woman appeared wielding a spellbinding lasso of truth, some adults recalled the female ropers of their childhood.82

Señorita Rosalia was a top-billed act in Gordon Lillie’s show promoted as “The only lady who dares to ride—wild mustang.”83 She was often depicted with almond-shaped eyes, cascading long hair, large hoop earrings, and a large bust. She carried a whip and rode sidesaddle. The 1895 program noted:

Senorita Rosalia is a splendid specimen of the Mexican beauty, and graceful as a princess should be. With flashing eyes, almost blue-black hair, attired in the fanciful costumes of her people. She can ride—all Mexican girls can ride well, that is, all of them from the region whence comes Senorita Rosalia.84

Other Mexican performers in the show, such as Ida Rodrigo, Señorita Mijares, and Texas Rose were all featured in a fandango described as “seductive and wild.”85 This dance combined Mexican zapateado stomp dancing and Spanish flamenco (Roma dance from Spain).86 In the US, fair-skinned señoritas embodied the more redeeming qualities of Hispanic culture. Anglo-American men often saw themselves as the saviors of such passive maidens who awaited seduction and needed rescue from the clutches of abusive fathers and husbands.87 As with many other features of their performance, they created their own style when they put on charro garments. While some women wore practical riding trousers, May Lillie, wife of Pawnee Bill, distinguished herself with a long skirt and green bolero jacket inspired by Mexican performers. A poster from the 1893 season features Lillie wearing the earliest graphic representations of the modern traje de charra. 88 While the pageantry of the bullfights traveled north from Mexico, a corresponding influence flowed south from the Wild West shows.

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Riding horses was particularly dangerous. Señor Antonio and Señor Francisco both suffered leg injuries in 1893 when their mounts threw them.93 In the coming years, several Mexicans were knocked unconscious while riding “buckers.”94 Dynamite the Bronc was particularly ornery; after trampling a band member, it threw Barrera into the reserve seats.95 Mexican Joe broke his leg on a separate occasion when a runaway yanked him to the ground. Undeterred, he was back in the saddle after a couple of days before a horse tossed him into the stands several weeks later.96 Tragically, Isador González died while performing with Buffalo Bill during his 1903 tour of England.97 Firearms also heightened the danger. Mexican Rufus narrowly escaped blowing off his head when he accidentally discharged a shotgun in the dressing tent.98 Spectators were not immune to such hazards. On one occasion, a man collapsed with a wound to his chest after Barrera inadvertently fired live rounds from a .45-caliber gun.99 Additionally, trained circus animals threatened the safety of audience members sitting in the front rows. Imagine the audience’s terror when Heck Quinn rode the horse Cyclone straight into the stands. The performer injured an elderly woman, initiating a thousand-dollar legal suit against Pawnee Bill.100

For those brave enough to tempt fate at the circus, José Barrera stood out among the performers. He wielded physical power and a special skill at catching animals. His signature act included roping six horses in one throw.101 He was renowned for his ability to catch steer, bison, and, occasionally, a hog. According to legend, he lassoed a runaway tiger and a rampaging elephant.102 While touring Ohio in 1898, an observer noted:

68 Besides May Lillie’s costume, the best example of this trend is the Mexican Contra Dance in Pawnee Bill’s show, often billed as the Virginia Reel on Horseback or Quadrille on Horseback in Buffalo Bill’s show.89 In this act, several pairs of riders paraded out into the arena midway through the program. Mexican performers like Ida Rodrigo, Hector Quinn, Señor Francisco, and Mexican Rufus had prominent roles.90 Four couples maneuvered their horses synchronized to an orchestral tune played by the “Mexican” band.91 Such routines bear a striking resemblance to the modern escaramuzas of charrería. 92 The similarities between wardrobes, equestrian riding styles, and techniques indicate a pattern of cultural exchange that flowed across the border in both directions.

Western Girls and Mexican Señoritas poster, 1898 (2002719103, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC).

Band of vaqueros from Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show. Mexican Joe is on the far left, c. 1900 (1991.260.135, Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum Collection, OHS).

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Mexican Joe figured prominently in a runaway this morning. Just before the parade started a horse and buggy started around the racetrack. The occupant jumped out. Joe started after the runaway on horseback, and caught him with his lasso, making a very pretty throw.103

Having the disposition of a true cowboy, Barrera enjoyed playing a hero on and off-stage. He stopped a group of troublemakers who attempted to rush the arena in Haverstraw, New York. The ruffians threw rocks and tried to enter without paying but retreated when they noticed a contingent of Natives, cowboys, and Mexicans blocking their path. On the same tour, students at Princeton University threw firecrackers and eggs at performers parading through campus. Barrera and other horsemen ran them down and fired blanks into their ranks. Many, more thrilled than upset, attended the show that evening.104

The Two Bills Show proved lucrative but strained the friendship of Cody and Lillie. In constant need of money, Cody took out a secret loan of twenty thousand dollars, offering Lillie’s show as collateral. Creditors caught up with them in the summer of 1913 and seized all their property during the middle of a show in Denver. Devastated, betrayed, and unemployed, Lillie packed his saddle and returned to his ranch in Oklahoma. The Miller Brothers from the 101 Ranch in nearby Marland, Oklahoma, acquired much of his remaining equipment, taking the lead as the last of the great Wild West shows and touring as far south as Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo.105

José Barrera decided to slow down from a constant life on the road after the birth of his daughter, Mary Louise, in the spring of 1915. Effie and José ended a tour with the Ringling Brothers Circus and secured employment with the Miller Brothers at the 101 Ranch, which allowed the Barreras to return to Oklahoma. They eventually moved forty miles south to work on Lillie’s buffalo ranch at Blue Hawk Peak in Pawnee, Oklahoma. There, Barrera’s skills proved useful when caring for the bison herd, becoming a key figure in the ranch’s day-to-day operations.106

However, Barrera remained a performer at heart. He appeared in his first film, Trail Dust, in 1920 while seasonally employed with the Miller Brothers.107 In 1929, Barrera attempted to break into the movie business again, but the aging performer was now in his fifties. He moved

his family to Texas to pursue a career, but con men swindled him out of money. The stock market crash worsened their fortunes along with a drop in attendance at the Wild West shows, leaving the family penniless.108 Effie maintained a household on handouts and credit. At the onset of the Great Depression, Barrera accepted Lillie’s offer of a permanent position as foreman on the ranch and moved his family onto the Lillie ranch.109

Lillie’s various business dealings included the construction of Old Town outside of Pawnee. In the days before modern theme parks, this tourist destination was an idealized version of the Old West. Main attractions included a Dodge City-style saloon and an Indian Trading Post where tourists could buy Mexican souvenirs such as sarapes, lassos, and Oaxaca Indian chief robes for eighty dollars.110 When Barrera gave C. G. Wilson one of his lassos, he used a certificate of authenticity printed with the logo of the Indian Trading Post.111 Lillie claimed he built Old Town as a “monument to the pioneers,” although it appeared more like kitschy consumerism.112 Most importantly, Lillie provided jobs for his former Wild West employees, with the Barreras, including an adolescent Mary Louise, regularly performing for crowds. Old Town mysteriously burned to the ground in 1944.113

In the 1920s, Mexican communities in the state totaled only a few hundred people, and nativist sentiments were on the rise.114 The Ku Klux Klan was gaining strength in Oklahoma, with membership peaking in the middle of the decade.115 Authorities in both Mexico and the United States were on alert when a Mexican shot a sheriff in Anadarko, Oklahoma. The incident roused the concern of President Porfirio Díaz, who protested the mistreatment of Mexicans in his communications with Washington.116 The Barreras had a cause to be nervous. José Barrera was undocumented. Under such conditions, Effie and José’s love was an act of courage.

Understandably, “Mexican” Joe felt compelled to deny his heritage. Friends tried to protect José and his family by denying his Mexican nationality. An early biographer noted, “He is a native-born American citizen; however, at one time when on a trip to Mexico, he had difficulty in getting back over the line. The officials were hard to convince that they were dealing with a born Americano.”117 So it was that José Barrera’s past was rewritten by repeated claims that he was a “true type Spanish American.”118 Mary Louise Barrera continued to believe

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that the term Mexican carried negative meanings into her twilight years. She created a fantasy heritage, compromising somewhat when she declared that the family descended from Canary Island colonists.119 It was common at the time for Mexicans in communities across the US to whiten themselves to deter discrimination by claiming a Spanish heritage.120

In 1936, Barrera was hired by a bullfighting impresario in Mexico City who wanted to organize a Wild West show to tour Cuba and Spain.121 The venture was a disaster, with low attendance due to a declining economy. The show ended when General Francisco Franco confiscated their horses.122 This would be Barrera’s last foreign tour. That same year, May Lillie, Pawnee Bill’s wife, died in a tragic car accident. Barrera provided the widower assistance and companionship. The two friends tended a garden, received guests, and regularly sat on the porch of the mansion at Blue Hawk Peak enjoying a cigar.123 Every so often, Barrera herded the bison near the barn so Lillie could catch a glimpse from his window. Gordon Lillie and C. G. Wilson paid him tribute in “The Roper”:

A builder of loops is Mexican Joe-

The lasso genius of Pawnee Bill’s show; Son of the plains from whence he cameGuided by Lillie to roping fame-, Spreading his loops in many lands

Equally accurate with foot or hands. Thousands have watched his errorless throwCatch one at a time or six in a row.

A pioneer roper who has paved the way For many roping acts which are seen today. As a Frontier memory he’ll linger on When the last sage brush has vanished and gone.124

When Gordon Lillie died in 1942, Barrera followed the casket with an escort of six riders.125 He led Lillie’s horse with the old showman’s boots backward in the stirrups. He was the second designee in Gordon Lillie’s will, although it caused resentment among Lillie’s siblings. Barrera received one thousand dollars while Mary Louise acquired a horse and five hundred dollars. The ranch was ultimately deeded to the Boy

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Gordon W. Lillie and José Barrera, 1938 (1991.260.4420, Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum Collection, OHS).

José Barrera, Mary Louise Barrera, and Effie Barrera, 1937 (1991.260.4387, Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum Collection, OHS).

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Scouts before being returned to Lillie’s sister, Effie Judy. Barrera continued tending the bison herd as he had always done.126

In 1945, the old vaquero moved into a new house at the eastern edge of the ranch, gifted to the Barreras by Lillie before he died. That same year, Effie died. Cared for by Mary Louise, the seventy-year-old performer put on his charro costume one last time on July 4, 1949. Spectators witnessed the old star at the Pawnee Bill Memorial Rodeo, where he roped four horses in one throw. That fall, Barrera developed a case of pneumonia. Rumor has it that the old vaquero negotiated with the doctor to delay treatment to catch a Western on television.127

Nate Salsbury: Now if you don’t want to be Mexicans I’m sure we can find some very good people who would like to.

Performer: Well, no sir, we still want to be part of the show.

Salsbury: You do?

Performer: Yes sir!

Salsbury: Do you want to be Mexicans?

Performer: No, we don’t want to be Mexicans, if we can.

Salsbury: Well, you know when I was traveling with The Troubadours there were times when I was asked to be a colored. Now, do I look like a colored?

Performer: Well, no, no sir!

Salsbury: Well, when I had to play a colored—I was a colored. I thought a colored, I drank a colored, I walked a colored. I was a colored! Alright, you can be Rodriguez and Ricardo. You can be Morales and, you know, you can be “Los Gatos Grandes,” “Los Latigueros de México”—that has to do with whips! Ok, that’s it, “Los Latigueros de México!” I’m gonna give you almost top spot!128

This exchange between Nate Salsbury (Joel Grey), William Cody’s Wild West show producer, and the performers (Alex Green and Gary MacKenzie) that went on to form “The Mexican Whip and Fast Draw Act” in Robert Altman’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson reminds us of the legacy of Mexican performers in the Wild West shows. Despite the poor imitation, Salsbury encourages this new act to take on their roles as Mexicans by recounting his own performance in blackface. It is evident from their unwillingness to take part that performers also experienced revulsion and attraction for Mexican acts.129

Although only a few hundred Mexicans worked in Wild West shows, they significantly impacted those who witnessed their daring feats. These emissaries of cultural exchange participated in introducing, creating, and distributing the charro archetype around the US, Europe, Latin America, Australia, and South Africa. They used the styles of bullfighting charros to define themselves and counter negative views of Mexicans across five continents. When Vicente Oropeza and José Barrera stepped into the arena, they commanded the stage by pitching and snapping their fantastic lassos. Barrera overcame discrimination and permanently established the charro archetype north of the border. Born a generation before cinema captured the popular imagination, he inherited the legacies of Oropeza and Ponciano Díaz.

While some performers, like Will Rogers, transitioned to cinema, sound films led to the decline of Wild West shows as people increasingly sought entertainment at movie theaters. Eventually, celluloid heroes such as the Cisco Kid reinterpreted the vaqueros, bullfighters, and trick ropers first portrayed by Oropeza and Barrera. When the great shows finally folded their tents after World War I, Mexican charros and señoritas followed the film industry. Near to the waters of the Pacific and under the shine of the California sun, Mexican señoritas became movie stars and bandidos transformed into caballeros.

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Endnotes

* Gary Moreno was born and raised in east Los Angeles, California. He received his PhD from the University of Oklahoma in 2015. His research focuses on the Mexican charro. Moreno has served as director of the Latin American Cultural Center at Austin Community College since 2020.

The photograph on page fifty-three is Mexican Joe throwing a lariat, c. 1930s (1991.260.4382, Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum Collection, OHS).

1 Chinacos: Mexican horsemen distinguished by bell-bottom trousers, flat-crowned sombreros, short-midriff jackets, and usually armed with a lance or machete (1800–1865).

2 John Mraz, Looking for Mexico: Modern Visual Culture and National Identity (Duke University Press, 2009), 134.

3 Friedrich Katz, “Labor Conditions on Haciendas in Porfirian Mexico: Some Trends and Tendencies,” Hispanic American Historical Review 54, no. 1 (1974): 32–7.

4 David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986 (University of Texas Press, 1987), 54.

5 Gabriela F. Arredondo, Mexican Chicago: Race, Identity, and Nation, 1916–39 (University of Illinois Press, 2008), 16–24.

6 David Dary, True Tales of Old-Time Kansas (University Press of Kansas, 1984), 195.

7 Dary, True Tales of Old-Time Kansas, 195.

8 Sarah J. Blackstone, Buckskins, Bullets, and Business: A History of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (Greenwood Press, 1986).

9 Pawnee Bill route book, 1900, CWM Mss2, Route Book-Route Card Collection, 1842–2007, Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center, Circus World Museum, Baraboo, Wisconsin (hereafter referred to as CWM).

10 Lauro E. Rosell, Plazas de toros de México: historia de cada una de las que han existido en la capital desde 1521 hasta 1936 (Talleres Gráficas de Excelsior, 1946).

11 José Dalay Zamora Valdés, “Recuerdos del tiempo viejo: Los hermanos Oropeza,” Mexico Charro, January 15, 1945, 8–9.

12 Dane Coolidge, Old California Cowboys (E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., 1939), 144.

13 Papers of Will Rogers, Vol. One, eds. Arthur Frank Wertheim and Barbara Bair (University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 522.

14 “Cow Punchers in the Arena: An Exciting Exhibition of a Great Western Sport Astonishing Feats of Horsemanship and Thrilling Rough-Riding After Cattle—How The Steers Were Thrown and Tied,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 8, 1899; Papers of Will Rogers, Vol. One, 181–83.

15 Papers of Will Rogers, Vol. One, 154.

16 Louis Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show (Random House, 2005), 229, 349.

17 Charles Philip Fox and Tom Parkinson, Billers, Banners and Bombast: The Story of Circus Advertising (Pruett Publishing Company, 1985), 67, 79.

18 Jack Rennert, 100 Posters of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (Darien House, 1976), 62, 65, 66, 70, 85, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107.

19 Buffalo Bill programs, 1886, 1887, CWM Mss2, Route Book-Route Card Collection, 1842–2007, Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center, CWM.

20 “Wild Rivalries of Savages, Barbarous, and Civilized Races,” n.d., Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center, CWM.

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21 Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America, 244; Pawnee Bill program, 1895, Pawnee Bill program, n.d., Pawnee Bill handbill, c. 1890s, Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum, Pawnee, Oklahoma (hereafter referred to as PBR).

22 Peter H. Hassrick and Melissa J. Webster, Frederic Remington: A Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings, Volume I (University of Washington Press, 1996), 646.

23 “Vaqueros of the Southwest,” Buffalo Bill programs, 1886, 1887, 1893, 1895, 1899, 1903, CWM Mss3, Program Collection, 1820–2019, Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center, CWM.

24 Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America, 73.

25 Joy S. Kasson, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (Hill and Wang, 2000), 255–59.

26 Arnoldo De León, They Called Them Greasers: Anglo Attitudes Towards Mexicans in Texas, 1821–1900 (University of Texas Press, 1983).

27 Samuel Truett, Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the US-Mexico Borderlands (Yale University Press, 2006), 170–76; Nicholas Villanueva Jr., The Lynching of Mexicans in the Texas Borderlands (University of New Mexico Press, 2017).

28 Michael Hunt, Ideology and US Foreign Policy (Yale University Press, 1987), 60–2.

29 Glenn Shirley, Pawnee Bill: A Biography of Major Gordon W. Lillie (Western Publications, 1993), 168.

30 Pawnee Bill program, 1908.

31 Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America, 233, 254, 400, 424.

32 Remmert, 100 Posters of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, 107.

33 Paul Vanderwood, Disorder and Progress: Bandits, Police, and Mexican Development (University of Nebraska Press, 1981), 54.

34 Linda Scarangella McNenly, Native Performers in Wild West Shows: From Buffalo Bill to Euro Disney (University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), 70–96.

35 “Daring Feats by Horsemen: Some of the Remarkable Features of the Wild West Show,” The New York Times, May 10, 1894.

36 Mary Lou LeCompte, “The Hispanic Influence on the History of Rodeo, 1823–1922,” Journal of Sports History 12, no. 1 (1985), 32.

37 Papers of Will Rogers, Vol. One, 146.

38 Will Rogers, “Various Styles of Roping,” The Stampede, August 9–16, 1913, in Papers of Will Rogers, Vol. Three, 308.

39 Dane Coolidge, Old California Cowboys (E. P. Dutton and Co. Inc., 1939), 144.

40 Chester Byers, Cowboy Roping and Rope Tricks (Dover Publications, 1966), 74.

41 “Meet the Old Rough Riders” newspaper clipping, Oklahoma City, Nov. 20, 1932, Harold Keith Collection, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma (hereafter known as WHC).

42 Eva Oropeza de Sánchez to Frank Dean, December 10, 1962; Napoleon Oropeza to Frank Dean, December 11, 1962; Vicente Oropeza Reyes to Frank Dean, December 21, 1962; Eva Oropeza de Sánchez to Frank Dean, January 10, 1963, Don Bell Collection, Rodeo Anecdotes, Frank Dean, Box 1, Folder 8, National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (hereafter referred to as NCWHM).

43 Frank Dean, “Magueys, Myths, and Men,” The Western Horseman (March 1966).

44 Honoree Release, February 9, 1976, NCWHM.

45 Shirley, Pawnee Bill, 177–211.

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46 Besides the various boxers who also carried the moniker, a so–called Mexican Joe operated a Wild West show in Europe in the late 1880s. Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill program, 1909, CWM Mss2, Route Book-Route Card Collection, 1842–2007, Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center, CWM; Larry McMurtry, The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings for Superstardom in America (Simon and Schuster, 2010), 272.

47 Arabia’s Shrine Circus flyer, November 21-26, 1928, G. C. Wilson Collection, NCWHM.

48 Dean, “Magueys, Myths, and Men,” 3.

49 In the Wild West shows, “vaquero” describes Mexican horsemen who dressed like charros. Occasionally, allusions were made to the “Ruralies,” [sic]. This is an incorrect association unsupported by documentary evidence and repeated in much of the historical literature.

50 Mexican Parish Records, 1751–1880, Mier Baptisms 1767–1880, Spanish American Genealogical Association, Corpus Christi, Texas.

51 Jo O. Ferguson, “Untitled,” The Cleveland American, November 27, 1941; The Pawnee Chief, April 12, 1995, Mary Barrera Hestand Collection, PBR.

52 Pawnee Bill route book, 1895, 29, 63–4, CWM Mss2, Route Book-Route Card Collection, 1842–2007, Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center, CWM.

53 Throughout this period, El Paso operated as the main labor market for recruiters seeking workers for agricultural and industrial jobs. Pawnee Bill route book, 1895, 87; Gunther Peck, Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North American West, 1880–1930 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 41.

54 El diario del hogar, November 4, 1887, 2; El toreo, March 12, 1900, 2–3.

55 For more on the popularization of wide-brimmed sombreros see, Debbie Henderson, Cowboys and Hatters: Bond Street, Sagebrush, and the Silver Screen (Wild Goose Press, 1996), 22–9.

56 Papers of Will Rogers, Vol. One, 436.

57 Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America, 25–6, 118, 170.

58 Bailey C. Hanes, Bill Pickett, Bulldogger (University of Oklahoma Press, 1977), 59, 62.

59 Charles A. Siringo, A Texas Cowboy, or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony (Penguin Books, 2000), 119, 134, 186–7; McMurtry, The Colonel and Little Missie, 287.

60 Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: The Chicano’s Struggle Toward Liberation (Canfield Press, 1972), 34.

61 Pawnee Bill route books, 1893, 1894; Pawnee Bill program.

62 Pawnee Bill route book, 1900.

63 Buffalo Bill route books, 1899, 1900, 1902, CWM Mss2, Route Book-Route Card Collection, 1842–2007, Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center, CWM.

64 Pawnee Bill route book 1898, 40, 51, Gordon W. Lillie Collection, WHC. For more on gauchos see Richard W. Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier (University of Nebraska Press, 1983) and Richard W. Slatta, Cowboys of the Americas (Yale University Press, 1990).

65 Allen Farnum, Pawnee Bill’s Historic Wild West: A Photo Documentary of the 1900-1905 Show Tours (Schiffer Publishing, 1992), 40; 101 Ranch route book, 1911, CWM Mss2, Route Book-Route Card Collection, 1842–2007, Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center, CWM.

66 Pawnee Bill route books, 1893, 1899, 1900, 1901, CWM Mss2, Route Book-Route Card Collection, 1842–2007, Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center, Circus World Museum, CWM; Pawnee Bill route book, 1898, G. W. Lillie Collection, WHC.

67 Peck, Reinventing Free Labor, 124–35.

68 Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America, 443.

69 Hanes, Bill Pickett, 137.

CuLTuRAL FRONTIERS

70 Blackstone, Buckskins, Bullets, and Business, 78–81.

71 Pawnee Bill route book, 1895, 57.

72 Pawnee Bill route book, 1893, 44.

73 Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America, 452.

74 Farnum, Pawnee Bill’s Historic Wild West, 54–56, 82, 99.

75 Pawnee Bill route book, 1901, 62.

76 Kathryn A. Sloan, Runaway Daughters: Seduction, Elopement, and Honor in Nineteenth-Century Mexico (University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 1–4.

77 Russell May, Go West Young Girl, Go West! (self published, 1998), 31–8.

78 Alyce Vigil, “Same Traditions, New Reasons: Experiences of American Indian Women in Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Shows,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma 91, no. 2 (2013), 132–49.

79 “Pawnee Woman Has Fond Memories of Circus Life,” newspaper clipping, n.d., Mary Barrera Hestand Collection, PBR.

80 Pawnee Bill’s Historic Wild West program, 1889–1890, 8.

81 Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America, 254, 520-523.

82 Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman (Vintage Books, 2015).

83 Pawnee Bill program, n.d.

84 Pawnee Bill program, 1895, 13.

85 Pawnee Bill program, 1889–1890, 8.

86 Pawnee Bill program, 1907.

87 Hunt, Ideology and US Foreign Policy, 59–60.

88 “Miss May Lillie Premiere Equine Educator, Pawnee Bill’s Petite Protégé, Introducing Her Marvelous High School Menage Horse ‘Colombo’,” 1893–94, Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center, CWM.

89 Pawnee Bill route books, 1893, 1894–95, 1900, 1901; Pawnee Bill programs, 1905, 1908.

90 Pawnee Bill route book, 1898, 40.

91 Pawnee Bill route books, 1894-95, 1901.

92 Escaramuzas: skirmishes and name of team of lady riders, usually sixteen, who perform a combination of eleven different maneuvers in synchronized riding patterns. Cristina Palomar Verea, “Patria, Mujer, y Caballo,” Artes de Mexico 50 (2000), 41–9; Al Rendon, Julia Hambric, Brian Woolley, and Francis Edward Abernathy, Charreada: Mexican Rodeo in Texas (University of North Texas Press, 2002); José Valero Silva, El libro de la charrería (Gráficas Montealbán, 1987), 153–54.

93 Pawnee Bill route book, 1893, 15, 18.

94 Pawnee Bill route book, 1894–95, 29, 88.

95 Pawnee Bill route book, 1894–95, 88-89; Pawnee Bill route book, 1898, 93.

96 Shirley, Pawnee Bill, 145.

97 “Buffalo Bill Tours Britain,” Billboard, December 5, 1903, 25.

98 Pawnee Bill route book, 1898, 80.

99 “Shooting at Wild West Show Held to be an Accident,” newspaper clipping, n.d., Mary Barrera Hestand Collection, PBR.

100 Pawnee Bill route book, 1894–95.

101 Gordon W. Lillie and C. G. Wilson, “The Roper,” C. G. Wilson Collection, NCWHM.

102 Arabia’s Shrine Circus flyer, November 21-26, 1938; C. G. Wilson Collection, NCWHM.

103 Pawnee Bill route book, 1898, 107.

104 Pawnee Bill route book, 1899, 45–46, 72.

105 Hanes, Bill Pickett, 75–109; Byers, Cowboy Roping and Rope Tricks, 91–2.

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106 Shirley, Pawnee Bill, 176–215.

107 May, Go West Young Girl, 132–33.

108 Mazie Cox Redd, “Joe Barrera’s Story Told,” n.d.; Pat Webster, “She’s One of the Last from a Golden Age,” June 22, 1979, Mary Barrera Hestand Collection, PBR.

109 May, Go West Young Girl, 165.

110 Pawnee Bill’s Old Town and Indian Trading Post list, 1930s, Gordon Lillie File, Oklahoma Historical Society Research Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

111 Pawnee Bill’s Old Town Indian Trading Post certificate, October 16, 1938, C. G. Wilson Collection; NCWHM.

112 “A Message From Pawnee Bill to You,” c. 1930, Gordon Lillie File, Oklahoma Historical Society Research Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

113 Webster, “She’s One of the Last.”

114 Michael M. Smith, The Mexicans in Oklahoma (University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 26–9.

115 James S. Hirsch, Riot and Remembrance: America’s Worst Race Riot and Its Legacy (Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 162–67.

116 “Diaz Again Demands Action on Lynching,” The New York Times, November 14, 1910.

117 Jo O. Ferguson, “Untitled,” The Cleveland American Newspaper, November 27, 1941.

118 C. G. Wilson, “Jose Barrera–Mexican Joe,” 1938, C. G. Wilson Collection, NCWHM; Bill Hoge, “Oologah Oozing,” World’s Most Unusual Newspaper, January 8, 1950; “Colorful Character, Greatest Roper, Mexican Joe Heads For Last Round-Up,” n.d., Mary Barrera Hestand Collection, PBR.

119 Linda Wofford, “Woman’s Father was a Colorful Performer,” n.d.; Mrs. Clyde Bowen to Randy Ledford, May 18, 2000, Mary Barrera Hestand Collection, PBR.

120 Peck, Reinventing Free Labor, 166–88.

121 “Untitled,” The Cleveland American, November 27, 1941.

122 May, Go West Young Girl, 176-77.

123 Photographs, Mary Barrera Hestand Collection, PBR.

124 “The Roper,” NCWHM.

125 “Pawnee Bill Buried as Friends from Far and Near and Pets Mourn,” February 6, 1942, Mary Barrera Hestand Collection, PBR.

126 Glenn Shirley, “Mexican Joe: The Roper,” The Western Horseman, 1964, 1–3.

127 Mazie Cox Read, “Joe Barrera’s Story Told,” newspaper clipping, n.d., Mary Barrera Hestand Collection, PBR; Ferguson, The Cleveland American, November 27, 1941.

128 Robert Altman and Alan Rudolph, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (MGM Home Entertainment, 1976), DVD.

129 Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson.

Notes and Documents

A Brief Moment in the Life of Darrell Pettie

By Philip D. Smith*

In 1950, Lula Chandler’s family moved from Snake Creek, near Haskell, Oklahoma, to a small Black community in the southwestern area of Tulsa. Lula was in the ninth grade, and her new neighborhood was South Haven.1 The teenager quickly became friends with girls in the neighborhood. Some were a few years older, like Dorothy Williams, who would become a lifelong friend. Lula and her new friends loved living in the isolated community, walking up and down the streets, visiting friends, and attending the dance hall or the weekly Saturday afternoon baseball game.2

In the early 1950s, baseball was America’s favorite pastime. Most people, male and female, loved the game. This obsession encompassed all ethnicities, including those of African heritage. Sadly, this was the era of segregation, and despite Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947 when he trotted to his position at Ebbets Field to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, sections of the nation remained aloof or, as in the Deep South, incensed about integration. Residents of South Haven proved no different. They loved baseball. Despite segregation, they formed a community baseball team of young men. These players were not professionals; they worked full-time or attended school. They practiced together several evenings a week and played a full game on the weekend. One of those ballplayers was Otis Pettie. On most Saturday afternoons, fans could find the team playing at South Haven’s Ball Diamond, located in the center of the neighborhood.3 Most South Haven teenagers tromped to the Ball Diamond to

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enjoy a warm afternoon with friends. It was during her first game as a spectator that Lula Chandler spied the slender, muscular Pettie slapping the ball to all parts of the outfield. He sprinted around the bases as if he were Cool Papa Bell of the famous Negro League team, the Homestead Grays.4 And the young man noticed her, too. Shortly after the game, a grinning Pettie introduced himself. Soon, the teenagers were a couple. A few years later, they married, and in 1954, their first child arrived, a daughter they named Debra. The following year, they had a son whom they christened Darrell. The siblings, only a year apart in age, would become even closer in life.5

The Petties made their home in South Haven. Formed in 1920 as a planned community by Tulsa pioneer Oscar Schlegel, South Haven consisted of eighty acres southwest of Tulsa. The neighborhood butted up against the railroad tracks that connected Tulsa with Sapulpa. Today, it is also close to I-44 and the Turner Turnpike entrance heading to Oklahoma City. After platting the community, Schlegel sold several lots but never built any homes.6

Lots went up for sale, with Barry and Willa Baul being the first buyers. Around 1923, the Bauls built the first house in South Haven, and others

The South Haven Baseball Field, 2024 (image courtesy of Gary Patton Photography).

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quickly followed their lead. The community sprang to life with families such as the Penns, Chandlers, Williams, Brewers, Prices, Radfords, Hendersons, Wises, Bramletts, and Burdens building small, practical homes.7 Thus, a thriving though poor area arose on the outskirts of the growing metropolis of Tulsa. However, unlike most new localities, all South Haven families were African American. South Haven became an oasis for Black people who, for assorted reasons, rejected living in the historical areas of north Tulsa. Early in South Haven’s history, some people referred to the area as “Safe Haven” as to being away from the burned-out area of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.8

The Ball Diamond was not the only gathering place for the residents of South Haven. On Friday and Saturday evenings, teens and young adults trooped to the local Dance Hall with their dates. The Dance Hall’s small floor allowed young couples to have fun and sashay with their partners to jazz music. Besides dancing, customers could purchase soft drinks and snacks like chips and candy bars. No alcohol was served at the Dance Hall, and the adults asked anyone to leave whom they found in possession of strong drinks or under the influence of alcohol. The Dance Hall was a popular destination for most South Haven young people. It served, along with the Ball Diamond, as a great venue for meeting those of the opposite sex and, often forming lasting relationships. Lula and Otis Pettie enjoyed dancing, and even when they became parents, they found occasional time to stretch their legs at the Dance Hall.9

Like many Americans during his period, South Haveners were profoundly spiritual and solidly Christian. Churches dotted the landscape of the community. The three largest were the Methodist, Baptist, and Pentecostal denominations. The Petties regularly attended the Methodist Church. Lula believed it imperative for her children to have a spiritual background because life was too full of struggles to make it alone.10 The original building still stands on West 55th Street and South 40th West Avenue. However, today, the Methodist church non-denominational.11

Darrell, the youngest Pettie, described his early years as a “Leave it to Beaver childhood.”12 Both of his parents worked hard. His father was at the Pepsi-Cola bottling factory in Tulsa, then later as a much-in-demand handyman. He could fix anything, and his wellknown ability took him all over the Tulsa area, doing odd jobs for anyone

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willing to pay. However, Otis Pettie’s local fame revolved around his ability to play pool and cards. Pettie was an outstanding poker player, but his reputation as a “pool shark” was such that he had trouble finding opponents unless he went to pool halls where he was unknown.13 Darrell’s mom, Lula, worked for many years at Nelson Electric Company as a personal assistant to Mrs. Nelson, the owner’s wife. Later, she became a certified medical assistant and worked in the health industry until she retired. Like many working-class parents, the Petties worked extremely hard their entire lives. Nevertheless, they always found time for their two children. Besides church activities, Otis taught his son the finer points of baseball, basketball, and football. Football would be what Darrell fell in love with and the sport where he would excel.14

The Petties bought a small frame home in the western part of South Haven at 4122 West 56th Street. Although small, Darrell remembered the good times in the house and the neighborhood. One of his most vivid memories was the home’s unfinished porch. There was no porch, just an area of deep sand outside the front door. Like any kid, Darrell used the area as his sandbox. Many an hour was spent by Darrell and his friends playing in the sand. It became a battleground for toy soldiers to slug it out, a giant obstacle of dunes for Matchbox cars to navigate over, and a soft mat where he and his friends could practice their championship wrestling moves. One of Darrell’s most vivid childhood memories was of coming home from school one day and finding a man putting the finishing touches on his mother’s brand new cement porch. With a huge smile, his mother stood in the open doorway and cautioned her son not to step on the soft concrete. Darrell immediately stopped. He, too, gazed at the industrious worker and the nearly finished addition. However, Darrell wore no smile. He was devastated. His play area was now an actual entryway.15

South Haven was one of those outlying insulated communities where everyone knew who you were and who you belonged to. If a child misbehaved or got into a scuffle with another youth, chances were good that by the time they got home, their mother already knew what had happened and even most of the details of the incident. Although many kids chafed at the busybodies seemingly on every street, this friendly surveillance made for a safe environment for children and adults.16

Darrell and his older sister attended South Haven School, an AllBlack elementary school on West 54th Street near South 40th West

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Avenue, in the heart of the neighborhood. The school was a long, rectangular building with an entry wing that faced 54th Street. It was not part of Tulsa Public Schools and received little money from the state coffers. Due to this lack of funding, teachers were paid poor salaries. In addition, two grades were lumped together into one classroom, with a single instructor tasked with teaching the different age groups. Darrell would attend South Haven School until the middle of his fifth-grade year, December 1966.17

In 1966, the City of Tulsa annexed South Haven. Tulsa’s School Board realized they had to decide what to do with the dozens of Black students living in the newly acquired addition. Sending them miles away across the Arkansas River to Black elementary schools, Carver Junior High School and Booker T. Washington High School, seemed out of the question. Although before 1966, most South Haven students attended Carver and Washington after sixth grade, not all African American students crossed the Arkansas River to the All-Black schools. In the 1950s, Tulsa’s westside junior and senior high schools, Clinton Junior High School and Webster High School, began allowing Black students to attend.18 In 1956, Lillie Williams became the first African American graduate of Webster High School. The following year, seven Black students

The South Haven Elementary School, 2024 (image courtesy of Gary Patton Photography).

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earned their diplomas from Webster. Since then, students of African ancestry, although always in the minority, have been included in Webster’s graduating class.19 Once South Haven was annexed, Tulsa’s education leaders had to decide on what to do with the crumbling, inadequate South Haven Elementary School.20

The Tulsa Public Schools Board decided to close the Black school and build a brand new primary school less than two miles from South Haven. The new school, named Remington Elementary School after the famous sculptor, would be in a white neighborhood called Mountain Manor.21 White students in the newly drawn district would leave Alice Robertson Elementary School and join South Haven students in the new facility. Integration had arrived in Tulsa.22 Darrell changed schools midway through his fifth-grade year and began attending the new Remington School. Darrell’s classmates at South Haven and his new fellow students would attend school together until graduation from Webster High School in 1974.23

Darrell quickly adjusted to his new surroundings. The following fall, he and his best friend from South Haven, Frank Jeffries, joined the Remington flag football team, where they both excelled. The two

The sixth grade portrait from Remington Elementary School in 1967. Darrell Pettie is seen in the back row, far right (image courtesy of Jeff Taylor).

friends played on the offensive and defensive line for the squad. Jeff Taylor, a teammate, remembered that Darrell and Frank were outstanding players. Darrell Pettie said, “I had no idea what I was doing” on the football field.24

Throughout his school years, Darrell had several friends with whom he regularly spent time, such as John Polite, David Price, Nathaniel Burden, Hervey Howard, and Charles Henderson. Nevertheless, his closest buddy was Frank Jeffries. Jeffries, who Darrell called “Big Frank,” was his constant companion. Darrell said, “If Big Frank was there, I was usually there, too. And vice versa.” The two were close their entire childhood and remain in touch.25

Darrell Pettie tried out for the Blue T tackle football team at the beginning of his seventh-grade year at Clinton. He made the first string, playing various positions, mainly on the defensive side of the ball. Clinton Junior High School did not have school-sponsored sports. Instead, past parents had formed a sports club headquarters called Blue T in the local public community center, Reed Park. To play for Blue T, your parents had to join the club. Once a member, everything was free, including uniforms. Otis and Lula Pettie scrimped enough money so their son could play sports at a highly competitive level. Darrell and Jeffries would play football and basketball for the Blue T Panthers until they entered Webster High School for their sophomore year.26

Darrell loved Webster High School’s beautiful campus of rolling, wooded hillocks, complete with a stream between the academic building and football stadium. Unlike some larger Tulsa high schools, there was little student friction. This peace was perhaps the result of Clinton being the only junior high school providing students to Webster, while most other Tulsa high schools had two or more junior high schools contributing to their numbers. Thus, by the time sophomores arrived at Webster High School, they had already spent three years with their classmates at Clinton. In addition, the solitary Tulsa high school west of the Arkansas River promoted a small-town sentiment. To add to this outsider feeling, the Westside population consisted almost entirely of working-class families. However, few who lived on the West side felt inferior to the middle-class schools across the river. Instead, their isolation and socioeconomic status encouraged a strong competitiveness within the community. Westsiders wanted badly to outdo the

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“cake-eaters” and “bourgeoisie” attending the larger schools east and south of them.27

Darrell played various positions n the Webster football team, primarily on defense. He and Jeffries also made the Webster basketball team, playing for legendary coach Bill Allen. Despite putting maximum effort on the hard court, football remained Darrell’s passion. Two coaches noticed the young player’s work effort and love for the game. Coach Gene Hart and Coach Howard Black, both offensive assistants for Head Coach Mark Gibson, decided to change Darrell’s primary position. They began working the young man at quarterback. Years later, Darrell Pettie remarked, “I would like to know how Coach Black and Coach Hart knew I could play quarterback, because I didn’t.”28

Darrell took to the new position as if he had been playing it his whole life. His senior year at Webster, Darrell Pettie became the starting quarterback for a talented football squad. He led Webster High School to the 1973 state playoffs, including a huge win over rival Sapulpa and the district championship game against Broken Arrow. Due to his leadership and passing abilities against the Broken Arrow Tigers, Darrell was the Tulsa media “Player of the Week.”29 Although Darrell did not play a starring role on the basketball squad during his senior year, he did play. His contribution to the team’s success brought the Warriors to the Oklahoma State Tournament. Darrell believed that the hard work Coach Bill Allen demanded contributed to his success as an all-around athlete.30

On the football field, Darrell Pettie was confident without arrogance and competent without boisterousness. Off the field, he was just one of the guys. He did not showboat or talk about his success as Webster’s successful football team leader. Around girls, Darrell came across as shy. Around the other boys, he was well-liked. He always seemed to be smiling. David Mcalear, a white cross-country runner who barely knew Darrell Pettie, related a story about Darrell that perfectly displays why so many students held their quarterback in such high esteem. “I had just finished a cross-country workout. I walked into the gym and Darrell and his pal, Frank Jeffries, were sitting on the bleachers resting. They asked me about my workout. Here he [Darrell] is the football quarterback and starter on the varsity basketball team and he seemed impressed with me as an athlete and the workout I had just completed. . . . Darrell was a class act. Not flashy.”31 Terry Landrum,

DARRELL PETTIE

Darrell Pettie, 1974 (image courtesy of Gary Patton Photography).

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a gifted scholar and one of the stars of Webster’s state tournament basketball squad, remembered Darrell as having “a very pleasant, laid-back personality. He was well liked. Always had a smile on his face. I enjoyed playing basketball with him.”32 Football and basketball teammate Jeff Maynard also noted the constant smile enveloping Darrell’s face, and his quarterback “displayed leadership on the field and took us to State.” The early 1970s was hardly a time when teams featured black quarterbacks, true at any level, from high school and college to the National Football League.33

The 1974 senior class of Daniel Webster High School numbered 282. Of these 282 students, only thirteen were African American. The highest honor for students was Miss Daniel Webster for girls and the Warrior Chief for boys. The senior class voted on both awards. In October 1973, Darrell Pettie became the twenty-ninth Warrior Chief at an allschool assembly. An overwhelmingly white school elected their Black classmate to receive their most prestigious accolade. This student body, mainly youths from working-class backgrounds, bestowed this great tribute on their unassuming friend. The color of his skin mattered not to them.34

The new Warrior Chief was shocked. He almost stumbled getting to the stage. He had no idea of his nomination. He could not fathom being voted by his peers the highest honor possible. Today, fifty years later, Darrell Pettie recounts, “this is still one of the big mysteries of my life. Who even nominated me is still unknown to me. All I know is that it was a big surprise to me that my fellow classmates viewed me in such high regards.”35 With a backdrop of cheering classmates, Miss Daniel Webster, Debbie Ashlock, bestowed the traditional Native American headdress on the still-unbelieving Warrior Chief.

Darrell Pettie graduated in May 1974. He fell in love and fathered his first child, a little girl named Gloria. Unfortunately, things did not work out with the mother as Darrell went away to Kansas for college. His parents helped raise their granddaughter, but Darrell has remained in contact with her.36

Before getting his degree, Darrell moved to Los Angeles for a business opportunity. As with football, the venture would prove highly successful. He and a friend, Steve Prefontaine, started a business in the aerospace industry in the 1980s. For the next thirty years, they created technical manuals for aircraft, both military and commercial.

DARRELL PETTIE

Darrell did all the illustrations, while Prefontaine did most of the writing. At the height of their business, their company employed nearly thirty people. Part of the business included explaining the highly technical manuals to their customers. Because of this, Darrell has traveled extensively throughout the world, including places like South Korea, Hong Kong, Macao, Brazil, western Europe, and the United States.37

Early in his California years, while getting on a public bus, Pettie spied a pretty girl sitting in the front seat. Behind her but too shy to say anything, he rose to exit the bus at his stop. As luck would have it, the young lady also stood to leave. They were both going to the same destination: a trade school where Darrell was learning engineering drawing. Getting up his nerve, he introduced himself and discovered her name was Alkanee Smith, formerly of Detroit, Michigan. Later, he discovered that Alkanee’s mother had sung with Aretha Franklin and regularly hosted Motown singers like the Temptations and the Spinners at her home. Darrell and Alkanee married and had two children. After forty years, they remain in love.38

Today, Darrell Pettie and his family live in Las Vegas, Nevada. He calls himself semi-retired. He has four grandchildren and keeps in contact

Darrell Pettie is crowned Warrior Chief, 1974 (image courtesy of Gary Patton Photography).

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with his best friend, Frank Jeffries, who now lives in Broken Arrow. Jeffries lives near the school that the 1973 Webster football team defeated 14–0 for the District Championship. Like most, Darrell Pettie has experienced loss, such as when his sister, Debra, died in 2014 of cancer and when his father, Otis, passed three years later. Lula Pettie, his mother, now almost ninety, still lives in the family home in South Haven, and he visits her often. If you visit her, you will find a mother proud of both her children and still a very dedicated Christian.39

Martin Luther King Jr., in his most famous speech, envisioned a nation where people would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. This great ideal still has not been completely fulfilled. However, it did come true for a moment in time and in an unexpected, place. Webster High School’s 1974 senior class did not notice the pigment of Darrell Pettie’s skin. They only looked at who he was on the inside.

DARRELL PETTIE

Endnotes

* Philip D. Smith is an associate professor of history at Tulsa Community College. Born and raised in Oklahoma, he graduated from Northeastern State University, the University of Tulsa, and Oklahoma State University. In addition, Dr. Smith attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, studying the Czech language. Dr. Smith has previously published two articles in The Chronicles of Oklahoma, “Frank Vlasak” (Volume 89, no. 4) and “The Disappearance of Garden City” (Volume 98, no. 4). His monograph on the impact of Czech immigrants in Oklahoma, From Praha to Prague: Czech Immigrants in an Oklahoma Farm Town, was published by the University of Oklahoma Press. He has a published novel, Then Sings My Soul, with a setting in West Tulsa and Red Fork in the early 1950s. Smith served four years in the United States Army as a Special Operations Interrogator and propaganda writer during the Cold War.

1 Lula Pettie, interview by author, June 11, 2023.

2 Dorothy Bramlett, interview by author, June 9, 2023; Lula Pettie interview.

3 South Haven residents referred to the local baseball field as the Ball Diamond.

4 Lula Pettie interview. James “Cool Papa” Bell was a superstar center fielder in the Negro Leagues. He is considered one of the fastest players ever to play baseball. Satchel Paige once remarked that Cool Papa Bell was so fast, he could turn out the lights in his bedroom and be under the covers before it got dark. Although never allowed to play in the major leagues due to his color, Bell was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.

5 Darrell Pettie, interview by author, April 25, 2023.

6 “South Haven”, Southwest Tulsa Historical Society, accessed April 10, 2023, http:// www.southwesttulsa.org/images/History/SWTulsaHistoryBook2004.pdf.

7 “South Haven.”

8 Dorothy Bramlett interview; Lula Pettie interview.

9 Dorothy Bramlett interview. The Dance Hall was located on the corner of West 53rd Place and South 37th West Avenue. Today, it is a vacant lot.

10 Lula Pettie interview.

11 Author’s visit to South Haven, June 18, 2023.

12 Darrell Pettie interview.

13 Darrell Pettie interview.

14 Darrell Pettie interview.

15 Darrell Pettie interview.

16 Dorothy Bramlett interview; Darrell Pettie interview.

17 Author’s visit to South Haven School, June 18 2023; Dorothy Bramlett interview.

18 Historically, the west side of Tulsa was defined as the area south and west of the Arkansas River. The modern-day media includes the area west of downtown Tulsa and north of the Arkansas River. This area was not considered part of the west side before the 1980s. It was known as the Sand Springs Line due to the trolly that ran down Charles Page Boulevard in the early years of Tulsa.

19 Although in the early years of Webster their numbers were small, African Americans have been graduating from Tulsa Webster High School since 1956. The 1957 African Americans graduating from Webster included Alice Chandler, Evelyn Mack, Mary Hunnigan, Carolyn Jackson, Tommye Simpson, and Dorothy Williams.

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20 South Haven School was shut down in December 1966. The building still stands today but is no longer a school. It is privately owned.

21 The entrance to Mountain Manor is located on South 33rd West Avenue and West 53rd Street. The Remington Elementary School building still stands but is no longer a public school.

22 Alice Robertson Elementary School was the largest elementary school in southwest Tulsa.

23 At Webster High School’s class of 1974 fortieth reunion, attendees were grouped according to their elementary school for photos. Remington was the only school integrated. Jeff Taylor, interview by author, May 20, 2023.

24 Frank Jeffries, interview by author, May 20, 2023; Jeff Taylor interview; Darrell Pettie interview.

25 Darrell Pettie interview.

26 Frank Jeffries interview; Darrell Pettie interview. The Blue T Club fielded teams in football, basketball, and wrestling for boys and cheerleading for girls. Blue T’s wrestling program was renowned for training some of the best wrestlers in the state. The membership fees for the Blue T Club in the late 1960s and early 1970s ranged around $50 per year.

27 Daniel Webster High School is the smallest Tulsa high school.

28 Darrell Pettie interview.

29 Both the Tulsa Daily World and Tulsa Tribune applauded the gridiron exploits of Quarterback Darrell Pettie. See, “Webster Jars Mason Behind Pettie, 34-7”, Tulsa Daily World, October 19, 1973; “Twin-Barrelled Blast Carries Webster, 14-6”, Tulsa Daily World, October 27, 1973; “Phone Call Helped Spur Webster to Grid Title”, Tulsa Daily World, November 12, 1973; “Webster Standouts Grab Player of Week Honors”, Tulsa Tribune, November 13, 1973.

30 Darrell Pettie interview.

31 David McAlear, interview by author, April 24, 2023.

32 Terry Landrum, interview by author, May 20, 2023.

33 Jeff Maynard, interview by author, April 26, 2023.

34 See Webster High School graduation photographs, Tulsa Public Schools, Tulsa Enrollment Center, 2819 South New Haven Avenue, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 74114.

35 Darrell Pettie interview.

36 Darrell Pettie interview.

37 Darrell Pettie interview.

38 Darrell Pettie interview.

39 Darrell Pettie interview; Lula Pettie interview.

Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame: Rachel Caroline Eaton, Carolyn G. Hanneman, and Sarah Eppler Janda

By Matthew Pearce*

The Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS) has honored inductees to the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame since 1993. This award is the highest honor given by the OHS and recognizes important contributions to the preservation, collection, interpretation, and dissemination of Oklahoma history. Criteria for the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame are available on the OHS website. Nominations are received annually and considered by the OHS Awards Committee.

One hundred twenty-five individuals have been inducted to date. The inaugural class of inductees featured Berlin B. Chapman, Grant Foreman, Joseph B. Thoburn, and Muriel H. Wright. Honorees reflect the diverse scope of Oklahoma’s historical profession. Notable inductees include Chickasaw Governor Bill Anoatubby, educator Mildred Imach Cleghorn (Apache), journalist John Erling, historian John Hope Franklin, author John Joseph Mathews (Osage), and artist Charles Banks Wilson. Author and attorney Hannibal B. Johnson and educator Debra Echo-Hawk (Pawnee) were inducted in 2024.

On March 20, 2025, Rachel Caroline Eaton, Carolyn G. Hanneman, and Sarah Eppler Janda were inducted into the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame during the annual Oklahoma Historical Society Awards Banquet in Oklahoma City.

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Rachel Caroline Eaton

Born on July 7, 1869, Rachel Caroline “Callie” Eaton (Cherokee) attended the Cherokee Female Seminary in Tahlequah. Because the female seminary burned down in April 1887, Eaton graduated from the Cherokee Male Seminary in June 1888. She went on to obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree from Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, graduating cum laude in 1895. She subsequently attended the University of Chicago, earning a Master of Arts in History in 1911 and a PhD in History in 1919.

Eaton taught at the Cherokee Female Seminary for one year after graduating from Drury College. She also held positions at Trinity University in Texas, the State College of Columbus in Mississippi, and Lake Erie College in Ohio. Eaton returned to Claremore by 1920 and was elected superintendent of Rogers County public schools. She served two terms.

Eaton wrote extensively on Cherokee and Oklahoma history. Her research combined available written and archival sources with oral histories passed down through generations, including those conveyed by her mother and grandmother. Her book John Ross and the Cherokee Indians, completed in 1914, was recognized at the time as among the authoritative accounts of principal chief John Ross. In 1930, she

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published “The Battle of Claremore Mound” in The Chronicles of Oklahoma 8, no. 4. She wrote several articles for the Tulsa Daily World on a range of historical subjects. Eaton was a member of several organizations, including the Order of the Eastern Star, the Tulsa Women’s Indian Club, and the Young Women’s Christian Association. In 1908, she organized the Sequoyah Historical Society in Rogers County and served as its first president.

In recognition of her achievements, Eaton was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1936. She died of breast cancer two years later, on September 20, 1938. Eaton was working on a book manuscript at the time of her death, and it remained unpublished for decades. Through the efforts of her descendants, publication of Eaton’s manuscript is forthcoming from the University of Oklahoma Press.

By naming Rachel Caroline Eaton to the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame, the Oklahoma Historical Society formally acknowledges the contributions of a historian whose work advanced the fields of Cherokee and Oklahoma history during the early twentieth century.

Carolyn G. Hanneman

Carolyn G. Hanneman grew up on a farm southwest of El Reno. She attended Oklahoma State University, receiving a Bachelor of Science in Social Studies, a Master of Arts in History, and completing coursework

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for a PhD in History. While in graduate school, Hanneman completed three biographies of Oklahoma governors that were included in Oklahoma’s Governors 1955–1979: Growth and Reform (1985).

Hanneman played a pivotal role in the development and publication of Oklahoma State University’s Centennial Histories Project. The project involved publishing twenty-five books to document the history of Oklahoma State University. Hanneman served as editor for twenty volumes and was coauthor of The First Hundred Years: Oklahoma State University; People, Programs, Places (1990).

After completing the Centennial Histories Project, Hanneman attended the University of Oklahoma to pursue a Master of Library and Information Studies degree. She worked as a graduate assistant in the Western History Collections, where she assisted researchers while working with vast manuscript collections and archival materials. Shortly after completing her degree, Hanneman obtained a position as an archivist in the Carl Albert Congressional Research and Studies Center. She provided reference assistance to scholars, processed collections, helped create exhibits, and worked with members of Oklahoma’s congressional delegation to donate their papers to the Center.

Hanneman continued to publish while working as an archivist. She and historian Richard Lowitt coedited the autobiography of US Senator John William Elmer Thomas, Forty Years a Legislator (2007). Her article “Baffles, Bridges, and Bermuda: Oklahoma Indians and the Civilian Conservation Corps–Indian Division” received the Muriel H. Wright Award as the outstanding article published in The Chronicles of Oklahoma 77, no. 4. Hanneman also contributed fifty entries to The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. She retired in 2012 but continues to share her passion and expertise by volunteering at the Truman Elementary School Library in Norman, serving as a judge during the annual Oklahoma National History Day competition, and contributing as a Citizen Archivist to the National Archives and Records Administration.

For her accomplishments as an author, editor, and archivist, the Oklahoma Historical Society names Carolyn G. Hanneman to the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame.

Sarah Eppler Janda

Born in Blanchard, Sarah Eppler Janda credits her grandmother with inspiring her interest in history. She attended the University of Oklahoma, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in History and Philosophy. She completed graduate work at the University of Oklahoma as well, earning a Master of Arts and a PhD in History. Along with her husband, Lance, Janda has taught history at Cameron University in Lawton for over two decades.

Janda is the author of three books: Beloved Women: The Political Lives of LaDonna Harris and Wilma Mankiller (2007); Pride of the Wichitas: A History of Cameron University (2010); and Prairie Power: Student Activism, Counterculture, and Backlash in Oklahoma, 1962–1972 (2018). In 2021, the University of Oklahoma Press published This Land Is HerLand: Gendered Activism in Oklahoma from the 1870s to the 2010s, which Janda coedited with historian Patricia Loughlin. In partnership with Oklahoma Humanities and the Oklahoma Historical Society, Janda hosted workshops and online programs in which contributors to This Land is Herland discussed the relevance of their research.

Janda is a member of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, the Coalition for Western Women’s History, the Oklahoma Historical Society, and the Western History Association. She has served on

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multiple boards, including the Faculty Advisory Council to the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, the Oklahoma Council on History Education Advisory Board, the Western History Collections Dale Society Board of Trustees, and the editorial board of the Western Historical Quarterly.

As an educator, Janda has made a profound impact on Cameron University students by offering a variety of courses in US and Oklahoma history. She mentors graduate students and young scholars at the annual Phi Alpha Theta regional conference and other professional meetings. She has served as chair of Cameron University’s Faculty Senate and president of the Cameron University chapter of the American Association of University Professors. Janda has received the Harold and Elizabeth Hackler Award for Teaching Excellence from Cameron University. In February 2025, she was inducted into the Cameron University Alumni Association Faculty Hall of Fame.

For her contributions as an author and educator of Oklahoma history, the Oklahoma Historical Society names Sarah Eppler Janda to the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame.

100

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Endnotes

*Matthew Pearce is the state historian for the Oklahoma Historical Society.

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Book Reviews

RESISTING OKLAHOMA’S REIGN OF TERROR: THE SOCIETY OF OKLAHOMA INDIANS AND THE FIGHT FOR NATIVE RIGHTS, 1923–1928. By Joshua Clough (University of Nebraska Press, 2024. Pp. i. 342. $65.00 cloth).

In Resisting Oklahoma’s Reign of Terror, Joshua Clough resurrects a forgotten but significant inter-tribal Indigenous organization: the Society of Oklahoma Indians (SOI). The SOI came together in response to an alarming 1924 investigative report that detailed allegations of widespread fraud perpetrated against Indigenous people in eastern Oklahoma. Osage communities often refer to this era as the Reign of Terror. For the most part, the SOI failed in its central mission. Plagued by internal divisions and a lack of political influence, the Society collapsed less than five years after forming.

Despite the organization’s short life, Clough argues that the SOI deserves to be understood and remembered. The organization loudly objected to the systematic looting of Indigenous communities when few others dared speak. Moreover, the Society had ambitions beyond the crisis that led to its birth, experimenting with public projects in Okmulgee and Pawhuska, Oklahoma, and weighing into national debates about the purpose of the Office of Indian Affairs. Clough convincingly places the SOI in a longer continuum of national Indigenous organizations, such as the Society of American Indians, the American Indian Federation, and the National Congress of American Indians.

Clough deserves significant praise. His prose is snappy, insightful, and genuinely fun to read. His colorful descriptions of the SOI’s personalities, meetings, and initiatives obscure a painstaking reconstruction powered by many days and nights of careful newspaper and archival research. The book shines brightest when Clough uses this

research to explore episodes in the organization’s history. For example, the chapter on a “suburban Indian camp” that formed in Sand Springs during the SOI’s first meeting is sublime.

Clough’s framing of the SOI reflects a growing push by Oklahoma historians to rethink the state’s often romanticized history. At first glance, the story of the Society of Oklahoma Indians seems largely limited to a small but significant historiography exploring white settlers’ early twentieth-century ransacking of Indigenous estates in eastern Oklahoma. Other works in this subfield include Angie Debo’s And Still The Waters Run (1940), Tanis Thorne’s The World’s Richest Indian (2003), and David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon (2017). However, Clough argues that the Society contained multitudes. Readers will find valuable discussions about Indigenous organizations and activism, Indigenous tourism, the relationship between the federal government and Indigenous peoples, and Oklahoma politics.

Resisting Oklahoma’s Reign of Terror will appeal to popular and academic readers alike. This volume is an essential addition to Oklahoma history. It will hopefully encourage further investigation and documentation of Indigenous organizations in the state (what might a book about the Four Mothers Society look like?). Many readers will be interested in this text as an eastern Oklahoma story, traversing Tulsa, Sand Springs, Muskogee, Pawhuska, and Okmulgee. This book will be of special value to the Cherokee, Osage, and Muscogee (Creek) Nations, whose citizens comprised most of the SOI membership. Finally — for anyone who watched Killers of the Flower Moon and wanted to learn more: buy this book.

John Truden Dickinson College Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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JUSTICE

FOR ALL:

DICK T. MORGAN, FRONTIER LAWYER

AND COMMON MAN’S

CONGRESSMAN.

By Michael J. Hightower (University of Oklahoma Press, 2025. Pp. 386. $24.95 paper. ebook).

In his latest book, Justice for All: Dick T. Morgan, Frontier Lawyer and Common Man’s Congressman, Michael Hightower paints a picture of the early territorial and statehood period in Oklahoma through the life and experiences of Dick T. Morgan, an eventual congressman who came to Oklahoma on the first day of the 1889 Land Run.

Dick T. Morgan was born on his family’s farm in Prairie Creek, Indiana, in 1853. His passion for helping farmers later in life was kindled by his experiences working on the farm in his formative years. After high school, he attended college where he focused on mathematics and met his wife, Orietta. After a stint as a teacher and principal, he went to law school in Indianapolis. Upon completing law school, he joined a law firm in Terre Haute, Indiana, and was elected to the Indiana House of Representatives in 1880 at twenty-six.

Morgan was a staunch Republican, dedicated to Lincoln’s ideals. After the Gerrymander of 1885 shifted Indiana toward the Democratic Party, he sought his fortune elsewhere. He moved his family to Garden City, a burgeoning city on the plains of western Kansas, and set up a new law practice where he helped homesteaders with their land claims. This work on land claims would prove to be his bread and butter for the remainder of his law career.

Hightower does a good job of chronicling Morgan’s significant milestones and decisions, but he doesn’t neglect delving into who he was. Morgan was a devout member of the Disciples of Christ denomination; wherever he went, he would join the local congregation. If there was not a congregation, he would establish one. It was common to find him preaching a Sunday sermon or leading a Sunday school class. He was devoted and loving toward his wife and son, Porter. He was an accomplished singer and was known to give lessons occasionally. He viewed politics as serving his fellow citizens and not as a mechanism for gaining power.

Morgan arrived in Guthrie on April 22, 1889, and established his law practice across the street from the US Land Office. There, he offered his services to land claimants navigating disputes during the first few chaotic days after the Run. Morgan would write a user manual for

homesteaders that would become indispensable to them. In the early years of Oklahoma Territory, he put his name on the ballot as the territorial delegate to Congress but was unsuccessful. He advocated for the territory’s admittance to the Union without Indian Territory because he believed its southern sympathies would pull the new state into Democratic Party governance.

One of the unique aspects of the book is that Hightower chronicles the trips he would take with David and Kenyon Morgan (Dick T. Morgan’s great-grandsons) to the places Dick Morgan lived, not only in Oklahoma but in Indiana and South Dakota as well. They spoke to local experts and gained an understanding of how it must have felt to live in these frontier towns. The description of these excursions added color and context that one does not often get in historical biography.

President Roosevelt appointed Morgan the register of the US Land Office in Woodward in 1904, which set him up for the political success he had been seeking for many years. Morgan ran for Congress in 1908 and won. Once in office, he used his position to help his district and was nicknamed the “Million Dollar Congressman,” advocating for tighter regulations on corporations, the protection of bank deposits, and increased access to farm credit.

This book is a marvelous addition to any Oklahoma history buff’s library, and Hightower has once again proven to be engaging and informative in his prose. People unfamiliar with Morgan’s life before reading this book will come away wishing we had a few more elected officials like him.

Trait Thompson Oklahoma Historical Society Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

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A GENERATION REMOVED: THE FOSTER AND ADOPTION OF INDIGENOUS CHILDREN IN THE POSTWAR WORLD. By Margaret D. Jacobs (University of Nebraska Press, 2014. Pp. 320. $35.00 paper, ebook).

Margaret D. Jacobs’s A Generation Removed places the international crisis of Indigenous child removal firmly in the long history of assimilation and colonial “benevolence” movements. Similar to boarding schools decades earlier, the adoption of Native children by settler families in the United States, Australia, and Canada became popular in the post-World War II era as a way to provide for children who society viewed as “forgotten” and underprivileged because of their race. It was also popularized by important liberal leaders in the United States, from the director of the Indian Adoption Project, Arnold Lylso, to pastors and priests as a way for Christian families to move the nation toward a colorblind future. What Jacobs finds, though, is that this future was anything but. While non-Native children were often placed with extended family members, Native children were actively adopted into white families outside of their communities or even countries.

Jacobs highlights how the popularity of Indigenous adoptions served as a way for the state to save money and continue its assimilation programs, including termination. She argues that the state demonized traditional kin networks and published advertisements that portrayed American Indian communities as impoverished and in the throes of an unwed mother epidemic, justifying the need to remove Native children from their communities and into a nuclear family instead. The results were, of course, devastating. Jacobs writes, “Adoption proponents in the United States, Canada, and Australia all imagined that the transfer of Indigenous children to white, middle-class families would lead to better outcomes for Indigenous children as well as to racial reconciliation, albeit through the elimination of Indigenous peoples as distinct cultures and nations” (p. 249).

The author weaves numerous personal experiences of those touched by these policies throughout the book, asserting that these stories from adoptees and their biological families help garner change in the United States and beyond. Organizations like the Devils Lake Sioux Mothers’ Delegation and the Association on American Indian Affairs demanding an end to this new form of Indian removal led to the eventual passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) in 1978. This landmark legisla-

tion encouraged activists to partner with Indigenous communities in Australia and Canada.

Although initially published in 2014, this reprint remains incredibly important, arguably more so considering the recent attempt to overturn ICWA in Haaland v. Brackeen (2023). As more Americans become aware of this history through this work and popular podcasts like This Land and Stolen, Jacobs’s original argument still echoes. While Australia and Canada have publicly recognized and apologized for the pain they caused to the Stolen Generations, the US remains silent.

Chelsea Ball

University of Central Oklahoma Edmond, Oklahoma

WEST OF HARLEM: AFRICAN AMERICAN WRITERS AND THE BORDERLANDS.

By Emily Lutenski (University Press of Kansas, 2023. Pp. xi, 332. $29.95 paper, ebook).

In West of Harlem, Emily Lutenski makes a compelling case for continuing to broaden our horizons regarding the Harlem Renaissance. While Lutenski does not downplay the importance of cities, the centrality of the South, or internationalism, she seeks to enhance our understanding of the era by calling attention to the West’s importance to the Black imagination.

Lutenski begins with a chapter on the “largely forgotten” Anita Scott Coleman. Coleman and her husband are veritable boosters of the West and the promise of landownership. Even after Jim Crow laws drove Coleman to leave New Mexico for California, her move to Los Angeles altered the dream from homesteading to home ownership. While Coleman detailed the fraught relationship between Black women, homes, and domestic work, Lutenski also establishes that Coleman continued to believe that the opportunities to build toward autonomy were greater in the West than in any other region.

The following three chapters investigate authors who moved away from the West but whose work was significantly impacted by their experiences there. While Arna Bontemps’s work seems firmly rooted in the South or cities, Lutenski points out that throughout his life, he

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self-identified as a Californian and unearths an early unpublished novel that depicts a dynamic, multiethnic Los Angeles. This depiction figures into many of his writings as a point of comparison to other nodes in the diaspora. Lutenski believes it bears a striking resemblance to Bontemps’s birthplace of Louisiana, concluding, “Bontemps’s archived writing reveals the scale of the borderlands, stretching at least from the mouth of the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico to the harbor at San Pedro . . .” (p. 118).

The Utahan Wallace Thurman is often exclusively associated with the urbanity of Harlem. Lutenski’s close reading of his entire corpus and letters illuminates his revulsion of middle-class assimilation efforts and sexual mores regardless of region, as well as his attraction to polygamy. Bookending this section is a chapter about Langston Hughes’s relationship with his expat father and his experiences in Mexico at the tail end of the Mexican Revolution. Lutenski theorizes that Hughes constructed his world view in opposition to his father’s self-interest and class politics. This chapter is a wonderful prelude to Yuval Taylor’s scholarship on Hughes’s later strained relationship with his patroness, shedding light on Hughes’s emergent class politics.

Lutenski finishes the main text with an examination of Jean Toomer’s intellectual evolution post-Cane (1923). She demonstrates that Toomer continued to work and engage African American culture, especially during his extended stays in the West. Toomer, though, came to reject what he perceived as “racial chauvinism,” and he sought the birth of a new, explicitly multiracial American identity. Lutenski concludes Toomer’s ideas were ultimately a “subversion” of a simplistic binary racial system (p. 220). For Toomer, the West represented just as much hope for a multiracial society as did New York City.

In the coda, Lutenski examines a series of other Western authors’ embrace or ambivalence toward the African American experience, including the well-known mixed-race Osage John Joseph Mathews. While Lutenski documents Mathews’s insensitivities toward African Americans, she also shows how in his most well-known work, Sundown (1934), the antihero hits “rock bottom” in the immediate wake of his mistreatment of a Black laborer (p. 244).

West of Harlem develops a complex, sorely needed portrait of key authors’ perceptions and representations of the West. Additionally, Lutenski’s research opens promising avenues for further research,

such as her analysis of Western Spingarn winners (pp. 36–37). These are invaluable contributions, and it also bears pointing out that Lutenski’s methodology provides an exemplary template for future studies as it ensures a close reading of individual thinkers’ ideas. Ultimately, thanks to Lutenski, future scholars of the Harlem Renaissance will not be able to ignore the importance of the West to the Black imaginary.

Gregory Kosc

Oklahoma State University

Stillwater, Oklahoma

UNDER JACKIE’S SHADOW: VOICES OF BLACK MINOR LEAGUERS BASEBALL LEFT BEHIND.

By Mitchell Nathanson (University of Nebraska Press, 2024. Pp. 224. $34.95 cloth. ebook).

The views expressed in this review are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Air Force, Department of Defense, or the US Government.

Mitchell Nathanson, law professor at the University of Villanova and one of the founders of the Villanova Center for the Study of Sports Law, has authored numerous books and articles on sports law and pieces focused on baseball history. This book tells the stories of Black minor league baseball players overlooked since Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947. In these stories, Nathanson reveals what being Black in the minor leagues in the 1960s and 1970s was like. Nathanson conducted oral interviews with each retiree and beautifully transcribed their stories throughout his book, where each chapter stands alone as its own short story. This method emphasizes thirteen different minor leaguers, many unknown to even the most dedicated baseball fans. While all of Nathanson’s subjects played baseball for a living in the 1960s and 1970s, each player had different experiences. Although Jackie Robinson’s traumatic experience opened the door for countless Black athletes to play in the minor leagues, they did not receive the same opportunities afforded to their white counterparts. These players experienced racial segregation, were battered by racial slurs, and were even promoted at a slower rate than their white team-

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mates, no matter their talent. For example, during spring training in 1969, Edgar Pate was told he would have to beat out other Black players to make the team, but he would not take the spot from a white ball player. Nathanson also included beliefs from several interviews that the sport—to this day—was not open enough to Black ball players and inner-city kids. By expressing the players’ beliefs, Nathanson allowed for the authenticity of each narrative to shine.

While he initially desired to minimally edit the transcription of each interview, Nathanson revised them to follow each player’s story better. Nathanson dutifully recognized the faults of other authors who attempted the same feat and chose to acknowledge the edits he made, never claiming that they were exact transcriptions, which prevented him from falling into similar criticisms. Despite his edits, Nathanson took exceptional care to ensure each baseball veteran’s voice was well represented throughout the book. Although Nathanson’s method gives agency to each player, his authorial voice is noticeably absent. The book reads more as an anthology than a complete narrative of these thirteen Black minor leaguers.

Three suggestions could improve Nathanson’s book. First, Nathanson could provide the questions he asked each interviewee, which would give insight into his method. Second, if Nathanson provided interview transcriptions, readers could analyze the differences between the interview and Nathanson’s book, as Nathanson did to Rob Neyer’s work. Finally, a conclusion synthesizing common threads between the interviewees’ answers and attitudes toward baseball would allow Nathanson’s authorial voice to shine and could provide a summary of this collection of interviews.

Under Jackie’s Shadow is a brilliant work. Nathanson successfully brings agency to thirteen Black minor leaguers and writes much of the untold and ugly side of baseball in the 1960s and ‘70s. Nathanson is proficient in editing his interviews and weaving a chronological story of each ball player’s past, showing their emotions, thoughts, and actions, and relaying the stories to his readers as candidly as possible. His work is a step toward reconciliation with baseball’s complicated racial past.

Doyle C. Gehring, 2LT Texas Christian University

Ft. Worth, Texas

For the Record

Oklahoma Historical Society

Board of Directors Quarterly Meeting

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

Call to Order

Compliance with Open Meeting Act. The regular quarterly meeting of the Board of Directors of the Oklahoma Historical Society was called to order by President Duke R. Ligon at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 23, 2024, at the Honey Springs Visitor Center, 423159 East 1030 Road, Checotah, Oklahoma.

Pledge of Allegiance

Roll Call

Board members present: T. S. Akers, Jack Baker, Randy Beutler, Michael Birdsong, Ken Fergeson, Deena Fisher, Billie Fogarty, Karen Keith (1:33 p.m.), Duke R. Ligon, Terry Mabrey, Jonita Mullins, Shirley Nero, Lindsay Robertson, Donna Sharpe, David Sigmon, Kenny Sivard, Charles Tate, Barbara Thompson, Jim Waldo, Weldon Watson, and Dan Lawrence (Emeritus)

Board members excused: Cheryl Evans, Ann Hargis, Alan Loeffler, Patricia Loughlin, and Carlisle Mabrey

Declaration of quorum. Trait Thompson declared a quorum had been met.

Possible Discussion, Revision, and Vote to Approve the Minutes of the July

24,

2024, Quarterly Board Meeting

Kenny Sivard made note that he was not listed in the roll call for the July meeting minutes. He was not in attendance. Ken Fergeson moved to approve the minutes of the July 24, 2024, quarterly board meeting. Seconded by Weldon Watson, the motion carried unanimously.

Treasurer’s Report

Donna Sharpe stated that the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS) has $1,775,797.19 in cash at the State Treasurer’s Office. The OHS has $200,414.05 invested in a Morgan Stanley account. This was originally a $150,000 investment.

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The OHS has $97,745.61 invested at Federated from an original investment of $150,000. The OHS has $15,588,176.19 invested in the Oklahoma City Community Foundation Endowment Fund. The total cash and invested funds of the OHS amount to $17,662,133.04.

Introduction of Honey Springs Battlefield Staff and Friends of Honey Springs Battlefield

Trait Thompson, executive director, introduced the Honey Springs Battlefield staff and Friends of Honey Springs Battlefield as they assisted in the preparations for the board meeting. Members of the friends group were introduced, and they spoke about how proud they were of Molly Hutchins, site director of Honey Springs Battlefield. Ms. Hutchins introduced the rest of the staff and provided a brief introduction about herself as she has been in her current position for one week.

Executive Director’s Report

Review of budget projections and expenditures from the 1st quarter (July 1, 2024, to September 30, 2024). Gabby Hosek, chief financial officer, provided a review of the budget projections and expenditures from the first quarter of FY 25, stating that everything is falling as it should for the quarter and the friends group contributions have been greater than anticipated.

Legislative update. Trait Thompson proceeded with the legislative update, stating that Senator Bill Coleman has been asked to carry the agency’s legislation seeking to increase the annual amount of funding from the sales and use tax that flows into the maintenance fund from $1.6 to $2.2 million per year. Then, Representative Scott Fetgatter has been asked to carry the legislation to fix the areas of statute that do not recognize our exemption from the state’s surplus real estate property laws. In August, the House, Senate, governor’s office, and lieutenant governor’s office staff were hosted at Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum. Tours were hosted at OKPOP for current and incoming legislators, as well as incoming Senate Appropriations Chairman Chuck Hall, two weeks ago. In November, incoming House Speaker Kyle Hilbert will be given a tour of OKPOP. Congresswoman Stephanie Bice was given a tour of the Inaugural Impressions exhibit at the Oklahoma History Center Museum (OHCM) and collections archive. In November, Congressman Frank Lucas will hold his staff retreat at the Oklahoma History Center, and they will also receive a tour.

Legacy Capital Fund projects update. Mr. Thompson stated in July and August, architects visited each of the OHS museums and historic sites to assess needs and planned projects. They produced a 250-page preliminary report.

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A day-long meeting was held on September 23 to review the architects’ assessment and recommendations, as well as the recommended prioritization of projects. The final report is being written, and a solicitation document is being prepared for use in the hiring process of a construction manager. Solicitations should begin the first week of November.

Neon sign restoration grant update. The OHS was awarded a $327,500 grant by the Oklahoma Route 66 Commission to restore the neon signs planned for the neon sign park. A big thanks to Development Officer Brittney Berling for her hard work on the grant application.

Update on sale of Jim Thorpe Home. The sale of the Jim Thorpe Home to the Jim Thorpe Foundation was completed on July 26.

Update on White Hair Memorial. Mr. Thompson spoke about the resignation of Tara Damron, site director. He stated that after her departure in June, the Osage Nation was approached to discuss entering an agreement about handling the daily operation of the site. The Osage Nation will provide staff who will be paid $74,000 per year from the Burkhart Trust. This amount is based on the salary previously paid to the staff while Ms. Damron was employed at the site. The agreement was approved by the Burkhart Trust in September. The Attorney General’s office and the Osage Nation Attorney General approved the contract language. Chief Standing Bear signed the contract on September 26. This contract will be reviewed yearly as it is similar to contracts the OHS has with its affiliate sites. Mr. Thompson mentioned the site is currently closed due to some much-needed repairs but will reopen as soon as everything is completed.

FY 24 OHS Annual Report. Mr. Thompson made notice of the printed FY 24 OHS Annual Report in each board member’s folder. He gave a big thanks to Jennifer Towry for her graphic design work and putting everything together, to Nicole Harvey for gathering the information needed, and to everyone who assisted with the report.

Update on OKPOP Fundraising

Managing Director of the OKPOP Foundation Abby Kurin introduced herself to the Board of Directors and began presenting her update on the fundraising efforts for OKPOP. She stated that the deadline to receive the $18 million match from the state is only 388 days away.

THE CHRONICLES OF OKLAHOMA

In Accordance with Title 53, Section 1.9, A Proposal of Acquisition of the Standing Bear Park, Memorial, and Education Center in Ponca City, Has Been Made to the OHS. Within Sixty Days, A Study Will Be Completed to Evaluate the Feasibility of the Acquisition

President Duke R. Ligon stated that this agenda item will not be discussed during the meeting because the necessary steps to begin the process were not completed prior to the board meeting.

Update on the HVAC System of the Oklahoma History Center

Ed Wade, director of operations, provided a presentation on the HVAC system of the Oklahoma History Center (OHC) and its need for replacement. He spoke on how over $760,000 has been spent on maintenance costs to keep the HVAC system operational. Mr. Wade mentioned that the life of boilers, chillers, and cooling towers is approximately fifteen to twenty years. The OHC’s HVAC system is reaching its twenty-year anniversary and has not received the proper constant maintenance during that time. Trait Thompson reminded the Board of Directors how the HVAC unit not only maintains the comfort for visitors of the OHC but also the relative humidity of the collections that tell the history of Oklahoma and its people.

Discussion and Possible Approval on Amending FY 26 Legislative Budget Request

Trait Thompson requested that the Board of Directors amend the FY 2026 legislative budget request to reflect the need to replace the HVAC system at the OHC. Mr. Thompson suggested making a one-time request for $3.5 million to cover the cost and any inflation changes which may occur.

T. S. Akers moved to approve the amended FY 26 legislative budget request. Seconded by Karen Keith, the motion carried unanimously.

Discussion and Possible Approval on the New Membership Fee Schedule and Membership Levels

Membership Officer Angela Spindle spoke about the possible new changes to Membership. She provided a presentation showing a new digital membership card, digital subscriptions to Mistletoe Leaves and The Chronicles of Oklahoma, which would be available through ISSUU, a subscription to the North American Reciprocal Museum Association, a special donor event, a private lunch at the member’s choice of museum or site, and complimentary tickets to the annual awards banquet. She also spoke about raising the international shipping rates from $10 to $20. After some discussion from board members,

it was determined that $30 for international shipping would cover the cost.

Ms. Spindle then spoke about an agreement the OHS has with Oklahoma Credit Union (OKCU). OKCU gives new accounts at their credit union an OHS membership at a discounted rate. Currently, there are approximately sixtyto two-hundred people every year who have become OHS members through OKCU. Ms. Spindle suggests creating an introductory member through OKCU instead of a full member.

Randy Beutler moved to table the portion concerning OKCU until further detailed. Seconded by Karen Keith, the motion carried unanimously.

T. S. Akers moved to approve the new membership fee schedule and membership levels, with the addition of making international shipping $30. Seconded by Kenny Sivard, the motion carried unanimously.

Discussion and Possible Approval of Adopting Advertising Rates for The Chronicles of Oklahoma

Anna Davis, editor of The Chronicles of Oklahoma, proposed adding an advertising section to the back portion of the publication for university presses. She has spoken with other states whose publications are approximately the same size and shape who charge $150 per issue and have less than half of the OHS’s 3,300 readership. Ms. Davis proposes charging $250 per individual issue for one black-and-white page ad or $800 for a full year.

Jim Waldo moved to approve the adoption of the advertising rates for The Chronicles of Oklahoma. Seconded by Karen Keith, the motion carried unanimously.

Discussion and Possible Approval on Deaccessioning of the Items Listed in the Board Packet Under Item 14

Deputy Executive Director Karen Whitecotton asked the Board of Directors to approve the deaccessioning of items that were in the OHS collection but had no relevance to the mission of the OHS. She did note one item, a Confederate flag, that was donated to the OHS by someone who had moved to Oklahoma from Mississippi. The flag itself has no ties to the state. Therefore, it is being sent back to Mississippi.

Deena Fisher moved to approve the deaccessioning of the items listed in the board packet under Item 14. Seconded by T. S. Akers, the motion carried unanimously.

THE CHRONICLES OF OKLAHOMA

Discussion

and Possible

Approval

on Acquiring the Items Using Funds from the Bob Blackburn Collections Endowment Fund

Listed in the Board Packet Under Item 15

Karen Whitecotton sought approval to acquire items using funds from the Bob Blackburn Collections Endowment Fund. Those items are: for OKPOP—Tommy Allsup’s original custom Fender guitar ($125,000), Leon McAuillife’s custom steel guitar ($40,000), Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys original Cain’s Ballroom stage sign ($25,000), and seventy-four original handpainted Cain’s Ballroom show posters ($10,000); for Will Rogers Memorial Museum— forty pieces—memorial calendars and calendar art prints from the 1940s and 1950s relating to Will Rogers ($3,000); for the Oklahoma History Center Direct Care Costs—one hundred textile storage boxes ($4,390), one hundred storage boxes ($750), five packs of buffered tissue paper ($381.25), one pack of Pigma Micron pens ($29.10), two packs of tags ($73.80), sixteen packs of various storage bags ($692.20), three packs of trading card sleeves ($123.30), and shipping costs ($1,730.40).

Karen Keith left the meeting at 3:11 p.m. and was not present for the voting of this agenda item.

Jack Baker moved to approve the use of funds from the Bob Blackburn Collections Endowment Fund to acquire the items listed under agenda Item 15. Seconded by T. S. Akers, the motion carried unanimously.

Notification of Declarations of Emergency

Honey Springs Battlefield—HVAC system—September 27, 2024. Trait Thompson notified the board of the declaration of emergency which occurred on September 27, 2024, at Honey Springs Battlefield. The HVAC system has been repaired and is working properly.

New Business

There was no new business.

Announcements

There were no announcements.

Adjournment

There being no further business, President Duke R. Ligon adjourned the regularly scheduled quarterly board meeting at 3:15 p.m.

Trait Thompson, Executive Director Duke R. Ligon, President

Corrections

In the board minutes of January 24, 2024, which appeared in The Chronicles of Oklahoma 102, issue 2 (Summer 2024), the following corrections are noted:

On page 225, the following item was omitted from the OHS board minutes:

Discussion and Possible Action on Moving the 2024 Meeting of the Membership from April 20 to May 4

Trait Thompson stated that in addition to the Board of Directors approving the amendments to the OHS Bylaws, the date of the 2024 Meeting of the Membership needs to be moved from April 20 to May 4 due to a conflict with the Fort Gibson Historic Site’s 200th Anniversary Commemoration.

Kenny Sivard moved to accept moving the date of the Meeting of the Membership from April 20 to May 4. Seconded by Cheryl Evans, the motion carried unanimously.

In the minutes of the Meeting of the Membership from May 4, 2024, which appeared in The Chronicles of Oklahoma 102, issue 3 (Fall 2024), the following corrections are noted:

On page 352, the following sentence featured a typo. The corrected sentence is below:

This new software reduces our data storage costs by storing all of the information in the cloud.

In the board minutes of July 24, 2024, which appeared in The Chronicles of Oklahoma 102, issue 4 (Winter 2024–25), the following corrections are noted:

THE CHRONICLES OF OKLAHOMA

On page 468, the following words appeared in error:

Update on the installation of the Blue Goose airplane in Bethany. Trait Thompson provided an update on the first aero-commander plane, the to create a map of each OHS historical marker but doing so will take at least two years.

On page 470, the following item was omitted from the OHS board minutes:

Discussion and Possible Action on the FY 25 Budget.

Trait Thompson provided an overview of the FY 2025 budget due to Ms. Hosek’s absence. He stated that the agency is expecting a little more than $26 million, which includes one-time sources of revenue such as the Civil Rights Trail grant program and recurring expenses, such as salaries and utilities. Mr. Thompson anticipates the agency to spend approximately $9.6 million on personnel in FY 2025 using appropriated funds and almost $2 million from earned revenue. He also anticipates receiving $3.2 million in earned revenue through operations.

Jack Baker moves to approve the FY 2025 budget. Seconded by Karen Keith, the motion carried unanimously.

On page 471, the following item was omitted from the OHS board minutes:

Strategic Priority: Optimizing Internal Operations and Staff Development. Goal 5.) Strengthen staff development and optimize internal processes.

Objective: Improve staff development, procedures/policies, and internal communication to create a cohesive and efficient organizational environment.

On page 472, the following sentence featured a typo. The corrected sentence is below:

OKPOP can provide audio digitization with the use of a Stephens Machine which transfers two-inch forty-track audio tapes.

Join the Oklahoma Historical Society or renew your membership, and help preserve Oklahoma’s heritage for future generations.

Oklahoma Historical Society memberships start at $40, and include unlimited admission to all OHS museums and historic sites. You will also receive a oneyear subscription to The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Mistletoe Leaves, and EXTRA! Visit okhistory.org/membership to view a full list of benefits and levels. You can easily join online or call our membership office at 405-522-5242.

Take advantage of all that we have to offer and know that your membership provides vital support for the Oklahoma Historical Society!

Pawnee Bill's Original Wild West Show

Saturday, June 14, 2025

The Pawnee Bill Ranch and Museum celebrates Major Gordon W. “Pawnee Bill” Lillie, his wife May Lillie, and their famous Wild West Shows each June. Pawnee Bill’s Original Wild West Show is held at the original historic ranch site. Stagecoaches roll amid thundering horse hooves while the lightning of gunfire explodes around Pawnee Bill, May, and their cohorts as the talented performers thrill and amaze audiences. This celebration features exhibitions of acts from the original Pawnee Bill’s Historic Wild West Show.

History in Focus

The Race by Cornish, Croft, or Miller, September 16, 1893 (18656, Carl Sadler Collection, OHS).

A photograph synonymous with Oklahoma history, “The Race” captured the start of the Cherokee Outlet opening on September 16, 1893. The iconic motion image, considered a landmark in early news photography, was the first of four taken by associates of William S. Prettyman, an Arkansas City, Kansas, photographer.

Atop a high platform built near one of several starting points, Prettyman positioned four cameras to be manned by his assistants, Messrs. Croft, Miller, and Cornish. The men were instructed to snap the camera shutters at two-second intervals, following the land run’s signal to begin at noon. When everything was ready, and all were in their place, Prettyman slipped away, mounted his horse, raced, and successfully secured a land claim for himself.

THE CHRONICLES OF OKLAHOMA

Full text of Volumes 1–100 of The Chronicles of Oklahoma are available free of charge online on The Gateway to Oklahoma History at gateway. okhistory.org. The tables of contents for Volumes 70–102 can be found online at okhistory.org/publications.

Oklahoma Historical Society Officers

Duke R. Ligon, President

Donna Sharpe, Treasurer

Karen Keith, Vice President

Gov. Kevin Stitt, Ex-Officio

Trait Thompson, Executive Director

Board of Directors

T. S. Akers, Oklahoma City*al

Jack D. Baker, Oklahoma City*5

Randy Beutler, Weatherford*al

Michael Birdsong, Choctaw**al

Cheryl Evans, Burlington**6

Deena Fisher, Woodward*6

Ken Fergeson, Altus**4

Billie Fogarty, Oklahoma City*al

Ann Hargis, Stillwater**al

Duke R. Ligon, Oklahoma City**5

Alan Loeffler, Oklahoma City**al

Patricia Loughlin, Stillwater*al

Karen Keith, Tulsa*al

Terry Mabrey, Tulsa*1

W. Carlisle Mabrey, Tulsa**1

Jonita Mullins, Muskogee*2

Shirley Ann Ballard Nero, Clearview**al

Lindsay Robertson, Norman*4

Donna Sharpe, Checotah*3

David Sigmon, Bartlesville**2

Kenneth Sivard, Idabel*al

Gregory R. Stidham, Checotah**3

Barbara Thompson, Oklahoma City*al

James R. Waldo, Oklahoma City**al

Weldon Watson, Broken Arrow**al

*denotes that a director is elected by the OHS membership **denotes that a director is appointed by the governor Number 1234 denotes membership district al denotes appointed or elected at-large

The Oklahoma Historical Society is governed by a twenty-five-member board of directors; thirteen are elected by OHS members and twelve are appointed by the governor. To ensure statewide representation, two members are elected or appointed from each membership district, and thirteen are elected or appointed at-large.

The Chronicles of Oklahoma Editorial Board

Dr. Heather Clemmer, Southern Nazarene University

Dr. Joshua Clough, University of Oklahoma

Dr. Brian Hosmer, Oklahoma State University

Dr. Sarah Janda, Cameron University

Dr. Sunu Kodumthara, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Dr. Michelle Martin, Northeastern State University

Dr. Natalie Panther, University of Central Oklahoma

Dr. Matthew Pearce, Oklahoma Historical Society

Dr. John Truden, Dickenson College