Credit: Denver Public Library, Western History Collection
Media type: photograph
Museum Number: 100320420
Annotation: In 1871 Congress declared that tribes were no longer separate, independent governments. It placed tribes under the guardianship of the federal government. The Kiowa Indians were uprooted from their native lands and forced to settle on a reservation in Oklahoma. The prevailing view among whites was that Indians should be absorbed as rapidly as possible into the dominant society: their reservations broken up, tribal authority abolished, traditional religions and languages eradicated. The most dramatic loss of Indian land and natural resources took place in Oklahoma. At the end of the 19th century, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek nations held half the territory's land. But by 1907, when Oklahoma became a state, much of this land, as well as its valuable asphalt, coal, natural gas, and oil resources, had passed into the possession of whites.
Year: 1890