Twentieth Century Cherokee Property Claims: A Study Based on the Case Files of Earl Boyd Pierce

American Indian Law Review Volume 19 Number 2 1-1-1994 Twentieth Century Cherokee Property Claims: A Study Based on the Case Files of Earl Boyd Pierce Richard S. Crump Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/ailr Part of the Indigenous, Indian, and Aboriginal Law Commons Recommended Citation Richard S. Crump, Twentieth Century Cherokee Property Claims: A Study Based on the Case Files of Earl Boyd Pierce, 19 AM. INDIAN L. REV. 507 (1994), https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/ailr/vol19/iss2/8 This Special Feature is brought to you for free and open access by University of Oklahoma College of Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in American Indian Law Review by an authorized editor of University of Oklahoma College of Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact . SPECIAL FEATURE TWENTIETH CENTURY CHEROKEE PROPERTY CLAIMS: A STUDY BASED ON THE CASE FILES OF EARL BOYD PIERCE Richard S. Crump* Cherokee property issues represent some of the most protracted claims in United States history. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the procedural process involved in pressing tribal claims before the Indian Claims Commission and in federal court. The development of the Outlet cases, the Texas Cherokee claims, and the Freedman cases will be outlined. The Arkansas riverbed litigation, still pending, will also be explored. The historical data used in this study is primarily based on the files of Earl Boyd Pierce, who became the first full-time Cherokee tribal attorney in 1938. Pierce, Chief W.W. Keeler, and other great Cherokee warriors were responsible for organizing the Cherokee Nation's government as it exists today. This effort was made possible because of funds awarded on the basis of Cherokee property claims. Pierce was born January 29, 1904, near Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. He was raised in what was historically known as the Cherokee Nation West Indian Territory. Pierce entered the University of Oklahoma in 1922 where he studied Cherokee history. In 1925 he entered the University of Oklahoma College of Law and focused his studies on the legal history of the Cherokee people. After graduating in 1928, Pierce settled in Muskogee, Oklahoma, and started a general practice. Over the next ten years, Pierce held a wide range of positions. From 1930 to 1933, he worked as the assistant county attorney. In 1934, he joined the federal government's Staff of the Solicitor, Department of the Interior, and by 1936, he was employed with the Department of Justice. These positions allowed Pierce to continue his Cherokee historical research. In Washington, Pierce became friends with United States Sen. Robert Latham Owen (D.-Okla.) and Frank Boudinot, who represented the Cherokees in the early 1900s in the original Cherokee Outlet cases.' While working for the government in Washington, Pierce was immersed in an atmosphere that was dominated with attitudes such as those expounded by George T. Stormont. Stormont was in charge of Indian litigation at the Justice Depart* Third-year student, University of Oklahoma College of Law. This paper won the Frank C. Love Memorial Scholarship, University of Oklahoma College of Law, April 15, 1994. The author expresses thanks to the Cherokee Heritage Center, Tahlequah, Okla., and James Wilcoxen, Attorney at Law, Muskogee, Okla., for their invaluable assistance. 1. In 1910, the original outlet litigation eventually resulted in a per capita payment of $133.19 to each Eastern Cherokee. See United States v. Eastern Cherokees, 202 U.S. 101 (1906). Published by University of Oklahoma College of Law Digital Commons, 1994 AMERICAN INDIAN LAW REVIEW [Vol. 19 ment and was noted for being no friend of the Indian.2 Stormont's overt plan was to defeat Indian claims by delay and by meticulously searching for all possible offsets to claims in order to negate awards? The resulting effect of this was to fuel Pierce and his peers to increase their efforts in asserting the Cherokee Nation's rights. Often, these efforts were funded by Pierce and his colleagues with their own money. Pierce's education had impressed him with the fact that the Cherokee were no longer a cohesive group. They had been historically split into three political groups. The first group, known as the Old Settlers or Western Cherokee,4 were the Cherokee who in 1817 traded a portion of their ancestral lands in the southeastern United States for property in northwest Arkansas. In 1828, the Old Settlers exchanged their Arkansas property for land located in what was to later become northeastern Oklahoma. The land in Oklahoma included the Cherokee Nation proper and the outlet to the west. The second group of Cherokee, called the Treaty Party or Political Cherokees, was composed of several thousand eastern Cherokee who complied with the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, which called for the cession of the Political Cherokees' southeastern holdings and for their removal to the west into Western Cherokee lands.- The Treaty Party Cherokee split from the third group, which was known as the Eastern Cherokee. The Eastern Cherokee were those people who opposed any relinquishment of their ancestral lands. They were forcibly removed along the infamous Trail of Tears during the 1830s. Disunity, which Pierce and the Cherokee leaders faced in the 1940s, was further enhanced by the fact that the long separation between the Eastern and Western Cherokee allowed these groups to develop separate political organizations. There were additional problems with discord because, in addition to the above groupings, there was further subdividing into "bands" based on various political, business, social, and religious lines.6 At the turn of the century, the Dawes Commission negotiated with the Cherokee for the purpose of extinguishing tribal title to their lands in what was to become the State of Oklahoma.7 This was done by establishing a tribal roll and allotting tribal lands to individual members An effort to abolish tribal government coincided with the disbursement of tribal property. 2. H.D. ROSENTHAL, THEIR DAY IN COURT 54-55 (1990). 3. Id. 4. MORRIS WARDELL, A POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE CHEROKEE NATION 1838-1907, at 5 (1977). 5. EARL BOYD PIERCE & RENNARD STRICKLAND, THE CHEROKEE PEOPLE, INDIAN TRIBAL SERIES AND THE CHEROKEE NATION 40-43 (1973); see RUSSELL THORNTON, THE CHEROKEES: A POPULATION HISTORY (1990) (discussing Cherokee post-Trail of Tears population distribution); WARDELL, supra note 4, at 8-10. The Treaty of 1835 was ratified by Congress on May 29, 1836. 6. PIERCE & STRICKLAND, supra note 5, at 40-43. 7. THORNTON, supra note 5, at 116. S. Id. https://digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/ailr/vol19/iss2/8 No. 2] SPECIAL FEATURES "The Indian governments were declared to be non-American . . .radically wrong ... and growing worse."9 These efforts culminated in the-Act of June 30, 1906, wherein Congress made final settlements with the Cherokee Nation and provided t (...truncated)