Indian Territory

Indian Territory in U.S. history, name applied to the country set aside for Native Americans by the Indian Intercourse Act (1834). In the 1820s, the federal government began moving the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw) of the Southeast to lands W of the Mississippi River. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 gave the President authority to designate specific lands for them, and in 1834 Congress formally approved the choice. The Indian Territory included present-day Oklahoma N and E of the Red River, as well as Kansas and Nebraska; the lands were delimited in 1854, however, by the creation of the Kansas and Nebraska territories. Tribes other than the original five also moved there, but each tribe maintained its own government. As white settlers continued to move westward, pressure to abolish the Indian Territory mounted. With the opening of W Oklahoma to whites in 1889 the way was prepared for the extinction of the territory, achieved in 1907 with the entrance of Oklahoma into the Union. See Oklahoma .

Indian Territory the land west of the Mississippi River that was set aside by the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834 for relocated Native American tribes. The land, which included the area in present-day Oklahoma north and east of the Red River, Kansas, and Nebraska, came to be known as Indian Territory, though it was never an organized territory as others were. The term is also used more specifically to denote the area to which the Five Civilized Tribes (Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, Cherokee, and Chickasaw) were forced to move by treaties between 1820 and 1845. Other tribes moved there also, but each remained self-governing. The size of Indian Territory was reduced by the creation of Kansas and Nebraska territories in 1854, and its western half was ceded to the United States in 1866, eventually becoming the Territory of Oklahoma. Under the Dawes Act of 1887, individual landholdings were granted to Native Americans who renounced their tribal holdings, and the Dawes Commission, appointed in 1893, sought to reorganize Indian Territory by abolishing tribal land titles in favor of individual allotments. This effort succeeded in 1906. The next year Indian Territory and the Territory of Oklahoma were merged to create the state of Oklahoma.