Oversight Hearing on Select Provisions of the 1866 Reconstruction Treaty Between Choctaw & Choctaw Nations
RE: Oversight Hearing on Select Provisions of the 1866
Reconstruction Treaties between the United States and Oklahoma Tribes
Honorable
Senators,
This letter and comments are
intended to provide a different point of view regarding the “Select Provisions
of the 1866 Reconstruction Treaty” between the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations. I
respectfully ask that it become part of the Congressional Record of this
hearing.
As the lawyers for the Choctaw
and Chickasaw Nations presented their positions on the “Reconstruction Treaty
of 1866” and the issue of citizenship, they left me asking more questions about
two points made by the attorneys that were not directly addressed by this
hearing on a certain class of Freedmen Descendants.
The class of “Freedmen
Descendants” that comprised the litigants in
Equity Case 7071; Bettie Ligon et al.,
Plaintiffs v Douglas H. Johnston et al., Green McCurtain, et al., and James R.
Garfield Secretary[i] of the Interior Defendants at
the time it was filed was estimated to be worth fifteen-million dollars in land
value. Today, that value lost by Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen descendants
could range anywhere between one-half a billion to over nine-billion dollars
and that is a question that was not entertained during the hearing on the “Reconstruction
Treaty of 1866.” As the great grandson of the lead litigant Bettie Ligon whose
father, my great-great grandfather Robert Howard Love was one of the signers of
the treaty I feel it is my responsibility and obligation to bring long overdue
attention to this obvious miscarriage of justice before your committee for a resolution.
The plight of the estimated fifteen-hundred
(1,500) to two-thousand (2,000) individuals as citizens based on their “lineal descent” should have been part
of the decision to make them citizens at their birth and following the
ratification of the 1866 treaty[ii]. It was not until 1898 when the
Dawes Commission began creating a “census” of “citizens” on a blood roll and
freedmen roll when the tribes and United States government began to
disenfranchise the litigants involved with Equity Case 7071 based on the “race of a female ancestor or parent.”
Both attorneys clearly
illustrated that point when Judge Michael Burrage’s initial comments confirmed their
rights as citizens with the following statement; “to be clear, the Freedmen
issue, as it relates to the Choctaw Nation, has nothing to do with race. Tribal
membership is based on blood, not race.”
Judge Burrage immediately
followed that up with, “Today,
Choctaw Nation’s tribal membership includes African Americans as well as those
from other races. All members of our Tribe share one characteristic in common,
they are all Choctaw by blood. They are all the lineal descendants of Choctaw
Indians.”[iii]
Judge Burrage emphatically confirmed
to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs that the claimants in Equity Case
7071 who sought citizenship based on their “lineal
descent”[iv] to a recognized citizen of the
Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations had a legal right to that citizenship but because
of the racial policy of excluding people who had a “freedmen” mother while
disregarding their father deprived each and every one of them citizenship and
the value of three-hundred and twenty acres of land.
From 1866 to 1898 to 2022 this is
the legacy of the decision that mixed blood freedmen were not “lineal
descendants” and worthy of citizenship and equity in the land distribution of
the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations. It is why nine, 9-Billion dollars is a small
price to pay for the continued injustice that occurred in 1866, 1898 and
presently in 2022.
I mentioned that attorney Stephen
Greetham shares this view that “lineal
descent” is the basis for citizenship in the Chickasaw Nation and despite
his best efforts to obscure that fact you only have to look at the lone footnote
in his prepared statement.
“The Chickasaw Nation and Choctaw Nation share a close treaty
relationship, starting with the Removal
Era treaties of the 1830s which vested them with undivided interests in the
realty of the secured treaty territory.”
In the 1830 Treaty that is mentioned by Mr. Greetham it states
that the land that was to become the state of Oklahoma was for the benefit of
the people who were a party to that treaty and
their descendants. If you take into consideration the words of Mr. Burrage
that citizenship is based on “lineal
descent” then the descendants of every person that was a claimant in Equity
Case 7071 has a legal right to “equity” for the loss of land value that was
incurred based on the “racial” biases that saw them erroneously being placed on
the freedman rolls.[v]
Every action taken by Department of the Interior and the Choctaw
and Chickasaw nations to refuse citizenship and land equity for the “mixed race”
Chickasaw and Choctaw “freedmen” and their descendants was about race. The
claims of sovereignty today only mask that history of their nations but the
record is clear; today as it was then, a specific class of Choctaw and
Chickasaw Freedmen Descendants have been denied their “rights and privileges”
within the nations of their ancestor’s birth based on the political construct
of race and a suitable remedy must be found by Congress as well as the Choctaw
and Chickasaw Nations.
Not one of those slaves that were part of the removal with the
Choctaw and Chickasaw nations willingly travelled west. But all you hear about
are the sorrow and degradation of the tribes. When the descendants of Kissander
and Daniel who worshipped alongside their enslaver Tennessee Bynum, their
descendants[vi] are now recognized
citizens of the Chickasaw Nation because of “lineal descent.” But because of
the peculiarities of “race” the descendant of Margaret Ann Wilson who came west
with Benjamin Love; her daughter Bettie Love-Ligon and the “lineal descendants”
of two-thousand other similarly situated people don’t share the distinction of
citizenship and have been deprived of the generational wealth that came with
owning 320 acres of valuable land in the new state of Oklahoma.
Congress and the Senate has some difficult decisions to make
concerning the people who were denied equity and protection based on their
status as a protected group living under the power of a protectorate[vii] (Choctaw and Chickasaw
Nations) of the United States. They were placed in a position that did not
guarantee their citizenship, equity and due process before the law that Mr.
Greetham declared when he stated that “Treaties matter!”
These same two nations created a “race” of people and denied many
of them their citizenship because of the “taint of negro blood[viii]” so the cries of
sovereignty somehow are meant to wipe away all of this history, land and
citizenship and still to this day ignore the humanity of the people that were the
“lineal descendants” of numerous Choctaw and Chickasaw men, some who even
signed the duplicitous treaty of 1866, like Bettie’s father Robert Howard Love.
As a descendant of Bettie Love-Ligon Choctaw Freedman Card #106 and
Ella Jackson-Freeman Choctaw Freedman Card #1252, who were both litigants that
sought to be transferred from the Freedmen Roll to the by blood roll; I speak
for the tens of thousands descendants of Equity Case 7071 filed April 13, 1907;
Bettie
Ligon et al., Plaintiffs v Douglas H. Johnston et al., Green McCurtain, et al.,
and James R. Garfield Secretary of the Interior Defendants.
We demand that Congress open up this case for the due process that
our ancestors deserved but were denied. We demand that descendants of the
litigants of Equity Case 7071 be paid for the racially discriminatory act that
saw them lose the value of 640,000 acres of land and their citizenship dating
back to 1866 when the “Reconstruction Treaty” was signed. We are asking for $9
Billion dollars, for the land loss because of the racial practices of the
Choctaw Nation, Chickasaw Nation and Department of the Interior.
In an interview in March of 1911, Webster Ballinger the attorney
that was to argue Equity Case 7071 before the Supreme Court of the United
States “I some time ago abandoned the theory
advanced in the Bettie Ligon case that any person of mixed Indian and negro
blood, regardless of the degree, was entitled to enrollment as an Indian. I
shall only advocate in the future the enrollment of persons of this class who
are unquestionably Indians.” M
Ballinger felt the litigants in Equity Case 7071 “would be prejudicial” to the cases in
his opinion that would be “successful in
securing the rights of that class of cases about which there is no question.”
Again more evidence that the issue of race was paramount in the litigants in
Equity Case 7071 being recognized rightfully for citizenship and their 320 acre
land allotments.
Prior to this change of “legal theory” Webster Ballinger was
waging a vigorous parallel challenge for the transfer of his clients in the Senate
and House where he was met with resistance from practically the total Oklahoma
Congressional delegation at the time.[ix] So it is more than
peculiar that his change in theory just months before he was to argue the case
before the Supreme Court of the United States in October of 1911 would have
been welcomed by the people he represented.
Ballinger decided he would drop the court case to pursue a
resolution through congressional action. That is why it was an extreme joy for
me to be present to hear the arguments given by the counsel for the Chickasaw
and Choctaw Nations. They confirmed that the legal theory first proposed by
Webster Ballinger to be sound, that “lineal descent” or “any person of mixed Indian and negro blood, regardless of degree, was
entitled to enrollment as an Indian.” Judge Michael Burrage, a Choctaw
Citizen and Chief Counsel for the Nation confirmed it when he began his
presentation to the committee. There can only be one conclusion drawn from this
hearing and the voluminous historical documentation that the litigants in Bettie Ligon et al., Plaintiffs v Douglas H.
Johnston et al., Green McCurtain, et al., and James R. Garfield Secretary of
the Interior Defendants are entitled to citizenship and compensation for
the tremendous harm done to their descendants dating back to the signing of the
“Reconstruction Treaty of 1866.”
The Congress of the United States failed our ancestors because the
climate in the country at the time made it sufficiently easy for racial
attitudes of the day to hold sway. As I listened to Chairman Schatz and
Vice-Chair Murkowski of Alaska, as well as Senator Lankford of Oklahoma their
sentiment was to reconcile the issue of citizenship for the Indian Territory
Freedmen, on this matter there should be little opposition, the descendants of
Equity Case 7071 have waited more than one-hundred and twenty four years to be
recognized as citizens. They have waited over one-hundred years to receive
their rightful share for the value of land they were denied, by the courts, by
their attorney, by the Dawes Commission, by the Department of the Interior and
by the Congress of the United States.
There is no doubt the claims of Bettie Ligon and the other
litigants was a just cause and deserved to have their day in court. Today we
have the documentation and the science to support their claims as “lineal
descendants” and because the case was never argued before the Supreme Court it
would seem Congress, the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations have an obligation and
responsibility to “repair” this massive injustice.
I will leave you with this short story about my great-grandmother
Bettie Love-Ligon who died on November 21, 1912. Over the years of researching
my family’s history I always wanted to know who Bettie was what made her the person
chosen to be the lead litigant in Equity Case 7071? What was her demeanor? What
was in her character to become the lead litigant in what was considered to be
one of the most important cases in Indian Territory? One day I found a letter
in her land allotment jacket that told me everything I needed to know about
Bettie Ligon.
Bettie’s attorney Albert J. Lee wrote to J. George Wright the
Commissioner of the Five Civilized Tribes on December 14, 1907. In his letter
to Wright he stated:[x]
“Yesterday morning Betty Ligon,
the principal plaintiff in the case known as Ligon Vs. Johnson, came to our
office with Freedmen patents No. 3643, 3650, 3412, 3413, 3411, 3559, and 3414
which had been registered to her at Newport, Oklahoma. On receiving the envelope from the Post Master and on opening one of them which disclosed a Freedman
patent, she immediately came to our office without opening the rest of the
envelopes.”
“An attempt has been made once
before to deliver these patents to Betty Ligon, and those similarly situated,
but acting upon advice of their attorneys, they have refused to receive them and
we return to you, herewith, the above numbered patents, and inform you that it
is useless to again mail these patents, to Betty Ligon, as she declines to
receive them until after the courts have finally passed upon the case now
pending, which case will determine whether or not she is entitled to
participate in the tribal property as an Indian by blood or as Freedman.”
Senators, Bettie and her children reluctantly accepted freedmen
allotments of 40 acres, yet she fought from the first time she applied for
citizenship in the Chickasaw Nation in 1896[xi] up to her death in 1912
for her rights as a citizen in the Chickasaw Nation. Bettie always made it
known, she was the daughter of Robert Howard Love “who was the same Robert Love
that signed the Reconstruction Treaty of 1866.” Bettie, like the other “similarly
situated” litigants left a legacy that they were Chickasaw or Choctaw by blood[xii] and as their descendants
we are here to claim that identity as well as the compensation for the land our
ancestors were denied and unable to leave to us, the “lineal descendants of
Equity Case 7071: Bettie Ligon et al.,
Plaintiffs v Douglas H. Johnston et al., Green McCurtain, et al., and James R.
Garfield Secretary of the Interior Defendants
Terry J. Ligon
Great Grandson of Bettie Love-Ligon
Great-Great Grandson of Robert Howard Love
[i] Ligon,
Bettie, et al v. D.H. Johnson et al, Green McCurtain et al, James R. Garfield,
Secretary of Interior
Melven Cornish
Collection Box 10, Folder 6, Native American Manuscripts Collection, Special
Collection University of Oklahoma Western History Collections
[ii]
Senate Report 5013 (59-2) Part 2, page 1526
[iii] Michael
Burrage YouTube Video (33rd minute)
[iv]
Senate Report 5013 (59-2) Part 2, pages 1497-98
[v] Choctaw
Nation 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, Articles II & IV
[vi]
Chickasaw Freedmen Cards #570 & #570, Chickasaw by Blood Card #1846
[vii]
The Chickasaw Freedmen, A People Without a Country by Daniel F. Littlefield,
Jr. page 52
[viii]
Daily Ardmoreite, October 4, 1908 page1, column1&2
[ix] Vinita
Daily Chieftain March 16, 1910 page 4
[x] Bettie
Ligon, Choctaw Freedmen Enrollment #2604 Land Allotment Packet page 7., (Letter
to J. George Wright)
[xi] 1896
Application for Citizenship in the Chickasaw Nation Bettie Ligon #73 (NARA
Record Group 75, M-1650)
[xii]
Joe and Dillard Perry Petition to Transfer Files 1-254, NARA Record Group #75,
NRF-90C
