American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In the winter of 1869, after several hard days of travel, a cold and weary delegation of Citizen Band Potawatomis and government officials arrived in the heart of the Indian Territory. There they selected a thirty-mile-square tract of land to serve as the future site of the Citizen Band reservation. Having endured the long and laborious journey from Kansas, all were relieved that their venture met with success. A similar delegation sent the year before had not been so fortunate; after facing impassible wagon roads, ”deep mud and overflowing streams,” it had been forced to turn back. Within a year the Secretary of the Interior approved the Potawatomis’ new claim, and tribal members eagerly prepared for removal from Kansas. Unfortunately, their high spirits were soon dampened by tempestuous circumstances. The Citizen Band’s unique, yet vulnerable, legal status not only exposed them to charges that they had no right to own or inhabit any reservation, but threatened to strip them of their tribal identity as well. They also found themselves embroiled in a bitter feud with the Absentee Shawnees, a group of Indians who had strong prior claims to the lands the Potawatomis had selected. To further complicate matters, the federal government failed to establish a dividing line between the two tribes and promoted conflicting allotment policies on the reservation. In response to these challenges Citizen Band members developed strategies which reflected their atypically “progressive” characteristics, and employed their highly effective, though much maligned, Business Committee, to great advantage.