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“An Exhibit as Will Astonish the Civilized World”: Seeking Separate Statehood for Indian Territory at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2023
Abstract
Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Muscogee, and Seminole citizens employed the Indian Territory exhibits at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition to advance the separate statehood movement. Increasingly shut out of the formal political realm, they adopted creative measures to exert their political will, including participating in the world’s fair. Employing insights from settler-colonial theory and public history, this paper argues that the politics of display expanded the agency of a group marginalized from political representation. The U.S. government, pressured by the territory’s growing population of non-Native settlers, had begun planning for statehood, passing the 1898 Curtis Act to force allotment and dissolve the Five Tribes’ governments by 1906. To protect their land and sovereignty, a cohort of Native citizens pursued statehood for Indian Territory separate from Oklahoma Territory. Although joint statehood won out, separate statehood advocates succeeded in creating exhibits that centered on the survival of Native nations. They also articulated an Indigenous conception of citizenship, developing an imaginative vision for a future in which self-determination and U.S. citizenship could converge in a Native state. This represented a novel contribution to ongoing debates over how to integrate remaining western territories into the United States and how to incorporate diverse peoples within the citizenry.
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- The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , January 2023 , pp. 20 - 40
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- © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE)
References
Notes
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46 C. A. McNabb to Frank Hubbard, Oct. 21, 1903, box 1, entry 410, RG 48, NA; Photographs Relating to the Indian Territory Building at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, box 1, RG 48, NA.
47 T. B. Ferguson to Edgar Marchant, June 24, 1904, enclosed in Edgar Marchant to Frank Hubbard, June 27, 1904, box 3, entry 410, RG 48, NA.
48 William Busby to Frank Hubbard, Sep.10, 1904, box 4; T. B. Ferguson to Frank Hubbard, Sep. 19, 1904, box 5, entry 410, RG 48, NA.
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51 Frank Hubbard to Thomas Ryan, Dec. 14, 1903, box 1, entry 408, RG 48, NA.
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53 Joe LaHay to Frank Hubbard, Oct. 14, 1903, box 1, entry 410, RG 48, NA.
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56 The governor of the Chickasaw Nation was unable to attend but approved the resolutions. Congressional Record, 57th Cong., 2nd sess. (Jan. 7, 1903), 567.
57 Choctaw memorial: U.S. House, Committee on Territories, Statehood for Indian Territory, 58th Cong., 2nd sess., 1903, H. Doc. 101, 2. The Creek memorial simply stated that they “would have more influence in the organization of a State formed out of Indian Territory alone.” Quoted in U.S. Senate, Proposed State of Sequoyah, 59th Cong., 1st sess., 1906, S. Doc. 143, 27.
58 U.S. House, Committee on Territories, Statehood for Indian Territory, 4; Creek memorial quoted in U.S. Senate, Proposed State of Sequoyah, 28.
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62 St. Louis Republic, Sep. 16, 1903.
63 Durant (Indian Territory) Weekly News, Aug. 12, 1904; Tahlequah (IT) Arrow, May 14, 1904. Some art was provided in a less voluntary manner by the school children of Indian Territory. Wichita Daily Eagle, Mar. 3, 1904.
64 St. Louis Republic, May 9, 1904.
65 Vinita (Indian Territory) Weekly Chieftain, July 7, 1904.
66 Indian School Journal, Oct. 1907, 44; Indian Chieftain (Vinita, Indian Territory), Nov. 21, 1901; Tahlequah (IT) Arrow, Nov. 16, 1901.
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68 Narcissa Chisholm Owen, Memoirs of Narcissa Owen, 1831-1907 (n.p. 1907), 47.
69 Daily Ardmoreite (Ardmore, Indian Territory), May 2, 1904. With some objects arriving late, it took a few more weeks before the entire exhibit was completed.
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