Cherokee Commission

The Cherokee Commission, was a three-person bi-partisan body created by President Benjamin Harrison to operate under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, as empowered by Section 14 of the Indian Appropriations Act of March 2, 1889. Section 15 of the same Act empowered the President to open land for settlement. The Commission's purpose was to legally acquire land occupied by the Cherokee Nation and other tribes in the Oklahoma Territory for non-indigenous homestead acreage .

Eleven agreements involving nineteen tribes were signed over the period of May 1890 through November 1892. The tribes resisted cession. Not all understood the terms of the agreements. The Commission tried to dissuade tribes from retaining the services of attorneys. Not all interpreters were literate. Agreement terms varied by tribe. As negotiations with the Cherokee Nation snagged, the United States House Committee on Territories recommended bypassing negotiations and annexing the Cherokee Outlet.

The Commission continued to function until August 1893. Lawsuits, Supreme Court rulings, investigations and mandated compensation for irregularities ensued through the end of the 20th Century. Congress failed to respond to a legal protest from the Tonkawa, or to an Indian Rights Association investigation that condemned the Commission's actions with the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Commission attempts to negotiate signed agreements produced no results with the Osage, Kaw, Otoe and Ponca.

The 1887 Dawes Act empowered the President of the United States to survey commonly held tribal lands and allot the land to individual tribal members, with the individual land patents to be held in trust as non-taxable by the government for 25 years.

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