The Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.8, page 474, Dec. 1905, U. of Illinois Press

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The BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Papers where colored men have had an opportunity to experiment and learn something about lousiness administration and self-government in a way they do not have where these affairs are in control of the white race. Particularly in the Creek nation, where the Negroes who came out to this territory in INS, as the slaves of the Indians, are largely in control, has the colored population prospered. There are two Negro banks, a fire insurance company and a considerable number of stores in Muskogee, the principal town of that nation. The most interesting and significant thing I had an opportunity to observe on my visit to the Indian Territory was the way in which the different characters of the two races, the Indian and the Negro, have manifested themselves. I had for a time, while a teacher at Hampton, charge of the Indian students, and had learned to have a high degree of respect for their character and abilities. I was naturally anxious to learn, during my stay here, as much as I could in regard to them. It struck me, therefore, as at once sad and ominous, upon entering Indian Territory, that there were no Indians anywhere visible. I was told that they had gone back from the railways. When I reached the towns I was told again that the Indians had gone back from the town. They had retired to the hills. One old colored man told me very solemnly that he had observed that the Indian objected to whitewashed fences. As soon as civilization got far enough along that the people began to whitewash their fences, the Indian ''went back.'' The Negro, however, was everywhere in evidence. He was working on the streets and in the mines, side by side with Polish and Italian laborers. I noticed that white women had taken the places of the Negro in the hotels and occasionally in the barber shop. But on the other hand I found a considerable number of colored men in business of some kind or other, and many of them doing quite as well as the white man beside them. On the whole, I came away from this new Southwestern country with the feeling that the Negro people in this region were making real and rapid progress and doing as well as any one could possibly expect of them. Congregationalist and Christian World, go (Dec. So, 19o5), 979. 474