| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

William T. Hagan. Taking Indian Lands: The Cherokee (Jerome) Commission 1889–1893. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2003. Pp. x, 279. $59.95.

On October 17, 1892, the Cherokee Commission, a three-man body authorized by Congress to negotiate the purchase of Indian lands "west of the ninety-sixth degree of longitude in Indian Territory," held a formal session with Kiowa tribal leaders at Anadarko. The commission chair, former Michigan governor David H. Jerome, began the morning session by repeating the government's offer to purchase the bulk of the Kiowa's three-million-acre reserve for $2 million. Frustrated by this return to a proposal tribal leaders had already rejected, a middle-aged Kiowa named Big Tree, rose to cut the white man off. "I [have] listened ... until the words go through the other ear and still you talk and talk," Big Tree declared. "Now you sit down and let us talk a little time." Jerome refused, barking back "I will not be stopped by you or any other Indian" (pp. 201–202). This exchange captures both the substance and the flavor of the Cherokee Commission's sorry procession through the central region of modern Oklahoma between 1889 and 1892. That campaign produced fifteen million acres of new homestead land for non-Indian settlers and speculators, triggering a new cycle of greed and betrayal and spelling the imminent end of the tribal governments that had come to Indian Territory in response to government promises of safe havens and new homes. William T. Hagan's book allows us to travel with the commission and lets us watch this disgraceful episode from a front-row seat.

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