How was cattle ranching first brought to the Indian Territory? Describe the methods used by the Five Tribes.
Answers
While eastern tribes adapted to ranching with relative confidence, the situation was very different among the previously nomadic tribes occupying lands in the western portion of Indian Territory. Washington officials hoped that cattle ranching would ease the transition to "civilized" ways. Policy makers believed that in order to induce these peoples to settle on the reservation, they could not force them to take up agriculture. Thus, ranching was designed as a step toward the development of self-sufficient agriculture among the various tribes of western Indian Territory. Lacking the knowledge of ranching that the Five Tribes brought with them from their homelands, the nomadic tribes faced greater obstacles to the construction of an Indian-owned cattle operation.
Among the Cheyenne and Arapaho, agents sought the illusive goal of Indian self-sufficiency through cattle ranching. Agriculture proved ineffective as drought, lack of tools, resistance, and poor agricultural instruction caused crop failures. The Arapaho, living in the bottomlands of the North and South Canadian rivers, quickly adapted to stock raising. By the mid-1880s Arapaho elders held substantial herds, and their example was being followed by younger tribesmen. Despite the Arapahos' success reservation agents sought to bring white cattle ranchers onto the reservation. By the end of the 1880s the people of the Cheyenne-Arapaho Reservation were embroiled in one leasing controversy after another, and tribal and intertribal factionalism led once again to the failure of Indian-owned cattle operations.
By the time of the famous Oklahoma land runs of the 1890s, the dream of protecting Indian sovereignty and ensuring self-sufficiency through Indian-operated cattle ranches clearly would never be realized. There are a number of reasons for the failure of American Indian cattle ranching in Oklahoma. First, to operate the way the government ordered, all whites should have been excluded from the territory. The exclusion of all whites from Indian Territory was as much a pipe dream as were Indian ranches. Second, tribes lacked the political power to collect taxes from whites or other tribes who grazed cattle on their lands. Third, white ranchers manipulated tribal laws to their benefit and often did so by pitting tribes against each other. Finally, Indian-operated ranches failed because of tribal factionalism. Some tribe members sought to capitalize on revenues generated by encouraging whites to enter the territory