Oklahoma Organic Act

Oklahoma Organic Act

Other short titles	Organic Act Oklahoma
Long title	An Act to provide a temporary government for the Territory of Oklahoma, to enlarge the jurisdiction of the United States Court in the Indian Territory, and for other purposes.
Nicknames	Oklahoma Organic Act of 1890
Enacted by	the 51st United States Congress
Effective	May 2, 1890
Citations
Public law	51-182
Statutes at Large	26 Stat. 81
Legislative history
Introduced in the Senate as S. 895 by Orville H. Platt (R–CT) on February 4, 1890 Passed the Senate on February 13, 1890 (27-16) Passed the House on March 3, 1890 (154-96, in lieu of H.R. 6786) Reported by the joint conference committee on April 20, 1890; agreed to by the House on April 21, 1890 (Agreed) and by the Senate on April 23, 1890 (50-5) Signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison on May 2, 1890

An Organic Act is a generic name for a statute used by the United States Congress to describe a territory, in anticipation of being admitted to the Union as a state. Because of Oklahoma's unique history, (much of the state was previously a place where aboriginal natives were resettled), an explanation of the Oklahoma Organic Act needs a historic perspective. In general, the Oklahoma Organic Act may be viewed as one of a series of legislative acts, from the time of Reconstruction, enacted by Congress in preparation for the creation of a unified State of Oklahoma. The Organic Act created Oklahoma Territory, and Indian Territory that were Organized incorporated territories of the United States out of the old "unorganized" Indian Territory. The Oklahoma Organic Act was one of several acts whose intent was the assimilation of the tribes in Oklahoma and Indian Territories through the elimination of tribal reservations and the elimination of the tribes' communal ownership of property.

"Indian removal" was a nineteenth-century policy of the US Government to relocate aboriginal natives living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river.

The Indian Removal Act, a specific implementation of the Removal Policy, was signed by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830. The Act transformed most of the current state of Oklahoma into an Indian Territory, where southern aboriginal natives (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole, also called the Five Civilized Tribes) were relocated. The Trail of Tears is a name given to the forced relocation of the Choctaw Nation in 1831.

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