This innovative reappraisal of federal courts in Indian
Territory shows how the United States Congress used judicial reform
to suppress the Five Tribes' governments and clear the way for
Oklahoma statehood. Historians Jeffrey Burton traces the changing
relationship between the federal government and the distinctive
institutions of the Indian republics, from the post-Civil War
Reconstruction treaties to the Enabling Act that carried Oklahoma
to the threshold of statehood.
Although this is not a partisan statement for or against tribal
sovereignty, Burton demonstrates how judicial reform, by extending
the authority of the United States in Indian Territory, undermined
the governments of the five republics until abolition of the tribal
courts spelled the end of self-rule. Marshaling a great array of
historical material from federal and tribal archives, contemporary
newspapers, and other sources, Burton penetrates the jurisdictional
fog that descended on Indian Territory during the 1890s, when an
influx of settlers and a mounting backlog of citizenship cases and
other civil disputes demanded a coherent court system. Most
fascinating is his analysis of the term of Isaac C. Parker-which
affords a deeper understanding of the Western District of Arkansas
without the sensationalism usually accompanying accounts of "the
hanging judge."
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