The Supreme Court's Role in Choctaw and Chickasaw Dispossession^*

* I am extremely grateful to the late Terry G. Jordan‐Bychkov, who taught me more about writing, scholarship, and geography than my own meager research efforts could ever demonstrate. I will long remember our seasons together in the field. This study was funded in part by generous grants from the Committee on Creative Work and Research, Valparaiso University, and the Valparaiso University Alumni Association.

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, Indian groups throughout the United States saw their lands taken from them through a variety of means, including land cessions and allotment. The Choctaw and Chickasaw, two of the Five Civilized Tribes of the southeastern United States, endured this process of dispossession. Although the U.S. Congress promulgated much of this dispossession through treaty‐based territorial demands, the Supreme Court proved an able partner in the process by subverting treaty guarantees and expanding congressional power. The dispute over the area known as “Greer County” provides an example of the Supreme Court's role in Indian dispossession, for its ruling in 1900 extinguished the Choctaw and Chickasaw claim to most of southwestern Oklahoma, earlier treaty provisions notwithstanding.

• Indian dispossession
• historical geography
• Supreme Court
• Oklahoma

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jon T. Kilpinen

Dr. Kilpinen is an associate professor of geography at Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Indiana 46383.