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Title
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“Evidence” from Choctaw Nation vs. U.S., 1886
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Date
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2018
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Bibliographic Citation
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Carleton, Kenneth H. 2018. “Evidence” from Choctaw Nation vs. U.S., 1886. Digital KML file with all land claims and associated documentation.
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annotates
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(From Carleton) In 1881 the Choctaw Nation sued the U.S. government for monies derived from the sale of Choctaw lands east of the Mississippi River as a result of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek Treaty, 1830 (U.S. Court of Claims: Choctaw Nation v. United States, case #12,742, Decided March 3, 1884; ruling appealed to the Supreme Court: Choctaw Nation v. United States, 119 U.S. 1, Decided November 15, 1886). As such, they only presented things that directly supported their case but these included a large number of documents including information on the Removal, sale of lands, Reservations claimed under Article 14 of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek and especially the investigations of non-compliance with Article 14 made by the Choctaw Claims Commission (1837-ca. 1844). The CCC deposed ca. 5-7,000+ people over the course of its existence particularly concerning the locations of Choctaw residences on September 27, 1830 (date of the signing of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek). Unfortunately, since there are literally thousands and thousands of pages of documents generated by the CCC, only a small portion of these were submitted as evidence and I suspect even fewer were actually published in the two volumes of the evidence that were printed. Most of the depositions that were published deal with reservation claims that were rejected rather than the ones that were approved. The “Evidence” submitted by the Choctaw Nation in the case Choctaw Nation v. U.S. was published in a two volume set (ca. 1886, no publishing information is provided in the volume; there is no title page but the spine say “Evidence”).
Information about the books:
The 2 volumes have no publishing information in them. There is no title page. The first page starts the index with “Court of Claims, No. 12742. The Choctaw Nation of Indians v. The United States, Index to Claimant’s Evidence” at the top of the page. It is not at all clear when these volumes were published or which court case (the original Court of Claims case or the Supreme Court appeal) they were published for. The Court of Claims case was initially filed in 1881, with an updated petition filed in 1884 and the final ruling occurring in March, 1884. This ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court where oral arguments occurred in October 1886 with a final ruling in November, 1886. If the 'Evidence' was published in association with the Court of Claims case, then the publication date is probably ca. 1882-1884/85 with the latter years being more likely. If the 'Evidence' was published in association with the Supreme Court appeal, then they were likely published in the 1885-1887 period. I have decided to call them ca. 1886 to coincide with the final ruling by the Supreme Court more as an arbitrary decision than one supported by any specific evidence.
I have now photographed both volumes (Volume I in Kenneth H. Carleton’s possession and Volume II, Henry S. Halbert’s copy in the possession of the Alabama Department of Archives and History) and made PDFs of them. Unfortunately since they are photographic PDFs these files are large (2-300 megabytes) so distributing them is sort of difficult. The quality of the photographs varies from extremely good to pretty bad, but most of the text is legible.
Information about the Google Earth map:
What I have decided to do it put the claims for Reservations and the information about place of residence in 1830 into Google Earth, which I can then save and disseminate as KMZ files.
The color key thus far is:
Yellow: Reservation claims from the Martin list
Green: Reservations sold
Red: Choctaw house locations in 1830 from depositions to the Choctaw Claims
Commission
Magenta: individual reservations granted by Treaty
Pink: Choctaw owned lands from the 1916 Reeves Report
-There are clearly a lot of caveats attached to this data including the mapped units are little more than sketch maps. There are many examples of duplicate reservation claims listed for the same land parcels which will need to be figured out using county land records or other government documents. Some of these duplicates are noted in the text (e.g. ‘parcel previously claimed by a different Indian’). So the Google Earth maps really are more of a “Heads-Up – You Need to do more Research!” than it is definitive information. But it does at least give a location and names to start that research.
-In Google Earth you will see various folders labeled ‘Depositions’ or other things (e.g. ‘Abstract’) with locations of residences in 1830. These are depositions given to the Choctaw Claims Commission. A number of the people giving these depositions gave more than one. Generally I have made separate folders for each deposition (although the first couple of times I encountered this I think I combined the different depositions with the dates noted in the folder name). Because the individuals were giving multiple depositions, there are some duplications of people/locations from deposition to deposition. Some of these also give varying levels of information – particularly where one list only gives a section location and another deposition gives a quarter-section location for the same individual. I have not duplicated the listings on the map when this occurs but have made note in the listing title with the ¼ section designation and the page number of the disposition.
-There are sections and quarter sections with multiple house locations. In order to clearly show these on Google earth I have nested the lines rather than piling them on top of one another. So, this results in the section/quart section lines being much smaller than a section or quarter-section. The lines are representational, not literally mapping the location of the house. So, a square that is much smaller than a quarter section but located in a quarter section represents the entire quarter section.
-For the list of sold Reservations and the list of Reservations claimed, there is NO GUARANTEE that there was ever a Choctaw house site on the property. Early on, people are probably mostly claiming the land on which they lived, but it is clear that later in the claim process people were being assigned claim locations that are well away from where they were living and a number are noted as being claimed in a completely different District from where they lived in 1830. I think these distant claims were made simply based on where there was land available that had not been sold by the government. As far as I have been able to determine so far, there is only a single DRC Treaty Reservation that was still owned by the descendants of the original claimants into the 20th century and it was apparently lost to taxes in the early 20th century (ca. 1920s-30s).
For the current mapping project, I am concerned with the locations of Choctaw houses in 1830. It is irrelevant to me whether the Government approved or disapproved the individual ‘reservation’; this is particularly true since the most common reason for disallowing a claim is the Choctaws did not stay on the land for 5 years which was usually because they were run off their land by white settlers taking the land regardless of status. Therefore, the status of their claims is irrelevant when they list where they were living in 1830. So, I have mapped all the disallowed claims the same as the approved claims.
In addition to the 1830s information, there is also a list of Choctaw owned lands from 1916. Again, this is probably not a complete list, even though the person making it was trying for that and it is only a single snapshot but it is something to start with. In 1900 there was a LOT more Choctaw owned land than is on this list, but between the 1905-1907 Dawes Removal (during which a lot of the Choctaws who went to Oklahoma to receive land allotments sold land they owned in Mississippi before going to Oklahoma) and several really bad years of farming in the ca. 1910-1915 period which resulted in a lot of land lost to taxes or non-payment of mortgages, the amount of Choctaw owned land decreased significantly before by 1916.
Choctaw Land Claims