forbid Allotment, discourages white settlement
among the Creek, and creates a police force called
the “lighthorse” to enforce them. Recruitment ef-
forts draw many more Creek as well as disaffected
Choctaw, Cherokee, and Seminole to Hickory
Ground. (See also entry for JUNE 27, 1901.)
1901The Sequoyah League is founded.
Non-Indian journalists George Bird Grinnell and
Charles Lummi establish the Sequoyah League,
a philanthropic organization based in New York
and Los Angeles and named after the inventor
of the Cherokee syllabary (see entry for 1821).
Grinnell and Lummi advocate the preservation of
traditional Indians ways but tend to view Indian
peoples condescendingly. They oppose Indian
schools and the allotment of Indian lands, not
because they threaten Indians’ autonomy but be-
cause Indians are too “backward” to benefit from
these “civilizing” forces.
January 27
U.S. marshals arrest Crazy Snake
followers.
Alarmed by the Crazy Snakes (see entry for AU-
TUMN 1900) and their threat to his leadership,
Pleasant Porter, principal chief of the Creek, asks
federal officials to send in troops to break up
the radical movement. They respond by send-
ing in U.S. marshals, who raid the Crazy Snake
capital at Hickory Ground and arrest the rebel
government’s leader, Chitto Harjo, and 100 of
his followers. In federal court in Muskogee, In-
dian Territory, the Creek agree to plead guilty on
several counts in exchange for suspended fines
and prison sentences. Although the judge warns
them to stop their campaign against Allotment,
most of those arrested continue their efforts after
they return to Hickory Ground. (See also entry
for FEBRUARY 1902.)
SeptemberGeronimo attends the presidential
inauguration.
The great Apache war leader Geronimo, who has
been confined as a prisoner of war for 15 years (see
entry for MARCH TO SEPTEMBER 1886), is tempo-
rarily freed and sent to Washington, D.C., to ride in
the parade celebrating Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugu-
ration. Geronimo takes the opportunity to ask the
new president to release him and his fellow Apache
prisoners from jail and to allow them to move back
to their southwestern homeland. Roosevelt refuses,
explaining that the people of Arizona Territory will
not let them return.1902Eva Emery Dye’s The Conquest is published.
In her novel The Conquest: The True Story of the
Lewis and Clark, suffragette Eva Emery Dye recasts
the legend of Sacagawea (Sacajawea), the Shoshone
woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Ex-
pedition (see entry for APRIL 1804), to represent her
as an emblem of a modern independent woman. Al-
though Dye bases much of her book on the original
journals of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark,
she inaccurately elevates Sacagawea’s role from a
valued interpreter to a guide whose skills were re-
sponsible for the expedition’s success.The Reclamation Act calls for the irrigation
of western lands.
Sponsored by Francis G. Newlands of Nevada,
the Reclamation Act establishes the Reclamation
Service, an agency authorized to build irrigation
projects in 16 western states. The areas designated
for development include large areas of Indian-held
lands. As these lands become irrigated and thus
more attractive to non-Indians, Indian control over
them will be increasingly threatened.Charles A. Eastman’s My Indian Boyhood
is published.
A graduate of Dartmouth and Boston College, phy-
sician and reformer Charles A. Eastman tells the