Without permission from the Denver Post, September 15, 1993.
------------------------------------------------------------
Popular Versions of History Misleading
by Jim Carrier
Ponca City, Okla., celebrates one of the West's most colorful
chapters tomorrow - the Cherokee Strip Land Run, in which 100,000
settlers holding wooden stakes lined up along 226 miles of the
southern Kansas border and, at the sound of gunshots, raced into
Oklahoma to claim 160-acre farms.
Imagine the scene 100 tears ago: men on horses, wagons,
bicycles, railroad cars and foot tearing across 57 miles of prairie
after 40,000 plots, the largest scramble for free land in history.
By dusk most were claimed, many more than once. Ponce City, 25
miles from the line, was founded by an instant population of 2,500.
The images of that day live on in artwork hanging in Oklahoma
museums: the lineup, the rush, and the staking of homesteads. When
sculptor Jo Saylors was commissioned to create a centennial work
she came up with a twist: a horseback rider on a rearing horse,
about to dismount with a stake in his hand. A committee called it
"This Land is Mine," a slogan that adorns curios, T-shirts and 100
replicas.
But the slogan will be missing from Saylor's statue. The reason:
it offended the Poncas, a 2,500 member tribe whose 100,000 acre
reservation in 1893 has shrunk to 14,000 acres. At their request the
statue also was moved out of sight of a Ponca junior high school.
"The image of this thing perpetuates the wrong history," said
Maynard Hinman, a tribal planner. "The land was taken through fraud
and deceit. For them to claim this land was theirs legitimately
violates our sense of justice."
Before the run, Oklahoma (Choctaw for "red people") had been a
dumping ground for Indians displaced from every part of America.
The Cherokee "trial of tears" from the south ended here 14 million
acres, protected by treaties going back to 1828. But the land was
gradually stripped away by Congress through wholesome treaty
violations and mandatory allocation by which individual Indians won
deeds to farms. Most lost them; by 1920 the Five Civilized Tribes,
so called because of schools and newspapers, were in poverty. Wilma
Mankiller, principle chief of the Cherokee, says, "The Cherokee
Strip Land Run vividly marks a bit of romantic American folklore
that ignores the harsh reality."
The people who sponsored the land-run statue are typical
Westerners: hard-working, well-meaning and fiercely proud. At the
Cherokee Strip General Store they've been coming in and telling of
grandpa who came in a wagon that still sits out by the cistern.
Their common rejoinder is, "You can't change history."
But it seems odd - no shameful - that we haven't learned that
history didn't begin when we starting writing it. Or that Indian
life today is a result of that version.
Conoco, based in Ponca City, began with the Willy Cry lease,
but his Ponca descendants are not rich. Why? "The white man took
advantage of Indians anyplace he could," said ex-banker Larry
Stephenson, who chairs the centennial. "In retrospect, we would have
probably, if we had thought about it, designed the statue
differently."
To Ponca City's credit, a fund has been created to sculpt
Standing Bear, a Ponca chief who stood up to white man's law. Jo
Saylors believes a very heroic image can be created. After all the
knashing over Columbus and Custer, we should know it's not a
question of rewriting history but of repairing it.
~+*~+*~+*~+*~+~+*~+*~+*~+*~+~+*~+*~+*~+*~+~+*~+*~+*~+*~+~+*~+*~+*~+*+
"When we walk upon Mother Earth, we always plant our feet carefully
because we know the faces of our future generations are looking
up at us from beneath the ground. We never forget them."
-Oren Lyons, Onondaga Nation
*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+*~+~*
milo@scicom.alphacdc.com Michele Lord Alpha Institute
+*+ +*+ +*+ +*+ +*+ +*+