Choctaw & Chickasaw Descendants-Black History Day 11 part 2, 1873 Act To Adopt Freedmen as Citizens

Choctaw & Chickasaw Descendants Black History Day 11, #BlackHistory365

Hearings before the Committee on Indian Affairs House of Representatives (61-2)

H.R. 192789, H.R. 19552 & H.R. 22830 pp 56-58

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Argument & Brief Part 2

Argument by Harry J. Cantwell, esq.

Now, going back to this question of freedmen, which I will discuss in the limited time at my disposal, I desire particularly to impress on the members of the committee this matter of the freedmen. Because of its relations to this question it is of great importance, in my opinion. 

This right to 40 acres was confined to those who had been former slaves. It was provided that whenever Choctaws and Chickasaws should give to these particular individuals this area of 40 acres of land and admit them to the tribe, to equal rights in the tribe, except to the other lands and annuities of the tribe, that the $300,000 held in trust by the United States should be paid over to the Choctaws and Chickasaws. 

Now, in 1883 the Choctaws did pass a law granting the 40 acres to the particular individuals who had been slaves, and, mark you, it has never been applied by either the treaty or by the Choctaw people, nor by any act of the Choctaw council, to anybody else except the particular individual who had been a slave.

The Chickasaws, while they passed an act in 1873 to the same effect, yet before it was approved, they made it conditional upon the approval of Congress. Before its approval by the United States it was withdrawn by the Chickasaws, and the Supreme Court of the United States held that it never was effectively done by the Chickasaws. Consequently those people remained there during all that period, from 1866 to 1896, in what condition?

In the first place, they were guaranteed by that treaty, and guaranteed by the constitutions of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, equal rights. The treaty provided especially that there should be no discrimination against the negroes. It was as broad as the civil rights bill; every bit as broad. 

It used the word “negroes” as distinguished from the word “freedmen,” which was confined to the men who were former slaves, and there was nothing in the treaty and nothing in the constitution of either the Choctaws or Chickasaws which would attempt to deny to persons thereafter born free, and born in the allegiance of the tribe, their equal rights.

House Executive Document 207 (42nd Congress, 3rd Session)