A historical geography of town building in the Cherokee Nation, 1866-1907

This study examines the evolution of town settlement in the Cherokee Nation within the contexts of changing town settlement policies and regional development processes between 1866 and 1907. This includes an analysis of the development and implementation of townsite settlement policies by both the Cherokee Nation and the United States during their separate periods of townsite planning in the study area. The method of explanation used in this empirical study is the construction of an historical geographical narrative. Descriptive statistics and cartographic analysis are utilized in a temporal framework and support traditional historical archival research. A methodological contribution is made to the study of initial agglomerated settlement change at the regional scale of analysis. After the Civil War, the Cherokee Nation developed a town planning policy that allowed non-Cherokees to establish towns within their domain. By allowing Cherokee citizens to purchase use rights to town lots and lease them to noncitizens, this policy gave Cherokees a financial stake in the economic development of urban centers along railroads built through their land. The Cherokees\u27 policy, although modeled after railroad town planning strategies, confronted quite different problems that reveal the basic spatial contradictions of Indian sovereignty within the U.S. federal system. Nevertheless, the present urban pattern of the study area was established under Cherokee authority. In the 1890s, town growth in the Cherokee Nation and Indian Territory generally drove Congress to unilaterally initiate allotment in severalty among the Five Civilized Tribes. In the Cherokee Nation, the federal government allowed white town settlers to purchase the lots they occupied, and otherwise legitimized the rights of white squatters in towns. The federal plan to alienate townsites was poorly implemented due to budget shortfalls, which resulted in widespread townsite speculation several years prior to Oklahoma statehood