University of Oklahoma College of Law Digital Commons

Title

Map Showing Indian Reservations within the Limits of the United States, 1889

Creator

Preview

Johnson's Bibliographic Reference

1889-108

Source Document Title

Report of the Secretary of the Interior; being part of the message and documents communicated to the two Houses of Congress at the beginning of the first session of the Fifty-first Congress : Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1889.

Creation Date

1889

Description

Compiled under the direction of the Hon. T. J. Morgan, Commissioner of Indian Affairs

As non-Indians moved westward, pressures were exerted upon the Indian land base. The federal government consequently evolved a policy of restricting the tribes to specified reservations. This goal was typically accomplished by treaty, exacted with varying degrees of persuasion and coercion, in which the tribe ceded much of the land it occupied to the United States and reserved a smaller portion to itself. On other occasions, the tribe was moved entirely away from the lands it was occupying to a distant reservation. (William C. Canby, Jr. American Indian Law in a Nutshell series)