Tribe here to indian territory. We began the removals starting in 1829 and they culminated in our larger removal here to indian territory in the summer and fall months of 1836 with our arrival 1836, and throughout january of 1837, when we arrived at port gibson in indian territory. For about 20 years or so, beginning at about 1840, prior to settling here, we met at the grand council of our tribal towns until 1861. 1861 was the arrival of the civil war in the United States, and affected just about everyone. After the civil war, we had to sign a treaty, as many tribes involved in the civil war. We signed that treaty in 1856. 1867, we designed our tribal constitution, which was the foundation for Government Operations that established themselves in this area. Once we establish that new tribal government, we had a place for that. We settled on this very ground that we are on. It was in 1868 they constructed the First Council house, the twostory log cabin. It was the muscogee people named this town, they named it in 1868. That is a tie to our preremoval past, to alabama, georgia and the southern tennessee region. Outside of presentday macon, georgia, there is a mound site. We are descended from the mississippian mound builders who occupied that region, the southeast United States region, for many years. That site is name oakmogee mounds, not something that the National ParkService Named when they took management over the state. It was something that we as the muscogee people named in the distant past. That mound site has been very significant to us, and our oral history and oral traditions. That is one of the places where we first sat down as the muscogee people. When you jump forward to 1868, we never forgot the importance of that place for us and our culture and history. When it came time to name the place where the new government was going to be, we named it in honor of the old one in our preremoval homelands in the southeast. Think about it from your perspective, if one day you had to forcibly leave your home that you had known all of your life, a place where your ancestors are buried, and the place you have always known. When we had to remove here to indian territory, particularly in the 1830s, it was a largescale removal, 15,000 to 20,000 people of our people were removed to indian territory in that window. Some removals continued to happen in 1837 and 1838 and into the early 1840s. It pretty much upended what you had been used to, and having to piece that back together once you arrived here into somewhat of a foreign land. Our arrival point, as with other tribes, was fort gibson, just east of presentday muskogee, oklahoma. Thats people where coming through there and being processed at this point. Kind of an ellis island if you want to think about it that way. They were not naming, but they were taking the count. Its a government. Some of these removal parties, they took counts that said we left georgia or alabama, particularly alabama, there were say 5000 people in the party we were responsible for. When you arrive at fort gibson, they took account to see how many survived to indian territory. That was the significance. The truth of the matter is many of those removal parties, there was significant loss of life that occurred during our removal to indian territory. Not just for the muscogee people, but the other tribes that were removed here as well. The numbers were in the thousands. When we talk about 15,000 to 20,000, you are talking about 3,000 to 7,000 who perished on the trails, particularly in the winter months. When we left, particularly in the 1836 and 1837 removal, we left, particularly the alabama area, in late august and september. You are leaving in attire that is appropriate for that type of travel, but by the time the muscogee people made their way closer to indian territory, you are on the western side of presentday little rock, arkansas, and winter is setting in. The documentation that goes along with that is that that was a particularly harsh winter. Lots of snow, lots of mud, lots of ice. If you can imagine traveling, or making that walk with the close clothes on your back, having to go, having to walk in snow and ice and maybe not have great footwear and things like that. There are fairly graphic accounts of the lossoflife that was experienced, particularly in those winter months leading up to our arrival to fort gibson and indian territory in late 1836 and 1837. Before we continue our tour of the Council House, if the visitors have a question about our preremoval past, we invite them to visit the timeline on this wall. This places some context. The building you are in, we dont present to be the overall encompassing museum or Cultural Center for the tribe. The building you are in, we have chosen to focus on the years 1878 to 1907, because those are the years the muscogee people, our tribe, were using this building as our national capital. The layout you see in the building today is pretty close and reflective of the way the layout was and the way the creek nation was using the building in 1878 to 1907. Many of the spaces you see in the Council House served as daytoday operations for the tribe, but they served dual purposes when the Tribal Council met here. The space you are in is our National Treasurer, citizenship offices. This is kind of like the bank of the tribe, if you will. The building itself that has the offices of the principal chief and second chief, court system, social services. The offices that are available at tribe. This building is where all this activity was occurring in the years 1878 to 1907. At this time, the Tribal Council only met once a year. They met in the month of october, and this was by tribal law. They met once a year for a period of 30 days. They generally used the two spaces upstairs we will see later. During the general meetings, they utilized a number of spaces throughout the Council House because they broke down, broke apart into subcommittees. We had a Citizenship Committee, and this was one of the spaces they met in. When that Citizenship Committee was not utilizing this space in october, this space also served as the offices for our National Treasurer and auditor. This was the office that was in charge of the expenditures of the moneys that helped the tribal government operate during this particular time period. Thats what occurred in this space. What you will see throughout the exhibits is we also wanted to touch on key points in history that really relate to the topics of the treasurer, auditor, and Citizenship Committee. You will see information about how allotment affected creek people in the 1890s, early 1900s. A lot of people are familiar with the dawes act, and the Dawes Commission. The process for the dawes act was to get native people largely living on land in common, even native people who were removed here over time and were living here, you lived on land that was in common. You might have a homestead, but you use what you need and people recognized that. With the arrival of the dawes act, it was to change native people into formal, you are a landowner, and you are assigned plots of land, 40 acres, 60 acres, that type of layout. You get everyone on 40 acres and 60 acres, theres lots of surplus land left over. When you look at the history of oklahoma, you see we have a series of land runs that happened leading up to the 1880s. You had these land runs as you get these particular tribes on their plots of land and more surplus opens. You have a land run that occurs. That is whites coming in from the east . That is nonnative peoples, there are lots of movies and lots of films about this particular time, they are staking out their plots of land in the oklahoma territory. [gunshot] [horse whinnying] [cheers] you still have native People Living in those areas, but there is lots of land that has opened up for nonnative settlements and Business Development and things of that nature. By the time those land runs conclude in the 1880s, what is left is this area thats still called indian territory. When those land runs end, we shared an International Border with the oklahoma territory. Everything out west was called the oklahoma territory, and the eastern part of presentday oklahoma was known as indian territory. There were still tribes living in this part of the region. That was because the initial passage of the dawes act did not apply to the tribes living in the eastern part of indian territory. The federal government passes, they create the Dawes Commission, and their job is to visit the tribes, the remaining tribes, and convince them to go along with the initial provisions of the dawes act. Go ahead and create the roles in partnership with the federal government and go through the process of assigning these privately owned plots of land. This occurs over a number of years, and predominantly the five tribes the cherokee nation, chickasaw, choctaw, seminole, and muskogee nation are against going along with that process and pretty much resist until 1898. The federal government, because the Dawes Commission was not successful in convincing the remaining tribes to go through that process of allotment, the federal government passed a law called the curtis act. It pretty much says, guess what, you will do it now. There is a law in place, and you will do it. But it has other provisions in place that go with it and there are things built into it. It sets the stage to oklahoma as a state. It sets a deadline for when the remaining tribes have to have their tribal rolls completed and go through the allotment process with tribal members. It also has other procedures in there that dismantle the foundation of the tribal government, which you will see in the Council House. At the creation of our constitution that we created in 1867, we created the offices of principal chief, second chief. A lot of people dont know it wasnt until 1868 that the muscogee people, creek nation, were united under one chief. With the passage of the curtis act, it set the stage for dismantling all of those pieces of our tribal government, and the federal government assumed control of all of those offices. When i talk about our National Council at the time, it would be meet in this space and pass the laws, and the curtis act said it would not recognize the lawmaking authority of we as the muscogee people, and also our elected officials who were serving on the National Council to make those laws. While those who were serving in the legislature, those were elected offices, the federal government allowed those elections to run out. Even if we had been meeting and passing laws, the federal government would not have recognized the authority of our tribal government to pass and execute those laws. In brief, that is sort of how the curtis act impacted us, and it also impacted the remaining tribal nations who had not gone along with the process. In 1907, we as muscogee people, the creek nation, were forced to vacate this building, the Council House that we built to house our national government. We had to vacate it. The idea behind that was since the arrival of statehood, the state of oklahoma and the federal government were really not looking at tribal governments functioning at that time. If your tribal government is not functioning, you dont have a direct need for your capital building. We had to vacate. We had our last meeting here in 1907. From 1907 until 1919, the tribe, through the federal government, we leased this building to the city of ulkmogee for about 12 years. It functioned kind of like a city hall. The Sheriffs Office was in here, maybe court from time to time. Boy scouts, red cross, knights templar, all of those things that happen in a city hall space. In 1919, we were forced to sell our Council House, once again through the federal government, to the city. We sold it for 100,000. From 1919 until 2010, the building and the square that now is the center of the town, where we placed our Council Houses, we did not own the space where we established our tribal government in the late 1800s. In 2010, we purchased the Building Back from the city for 3. 2 million. We were looking at a three or four year renovation project, and we are proud to have the Building Back within the muscogee, creek nation. It has been humbling for me personally. We talk about a building, but i think for a lot of muscogee people it represents more than just the building. This was the foundation of our presentday tribal government. It has an important place in our history, and it is directly tied not just to our preremoval past to indian territory, but our presentday tribal government as it exists as a sovereign tribal government. Not just from the state of oklahoma, but the United States as well. We have jurisdiction of 11 counties here in eastern oklahoma. Once again, our capital is here in present day ulkmogee. We have a citizenship base somewhere between 75,000 and 80,000 registered tribal citizens part of the muskogee nation. Many live in the present day jurisdiction of the 11 counties in oklahoma. We still have a significant number of tribal citizens who live beyond the borders of the jurisdiction, scattered just like everyone else. These chairs you will see a number of these chairs throughout the Council House, and these are original to the Council House, between the years 1878 and 1907. This room is, this was a room that was used by the council thats called the Foreign Relations committee. This had been the committee that would work with the chief and the Overall Council to send members or delegates, if you will, to the federal government in washington, d. C. Right here you see some photos of some of the delegations or ambassadors that visited and spent a significant amount of time in washington, d. C. Its not we say this International Diplomacy because it was still international between the muskogee nation and the federal government. Its not unlike the meetings we still have today with the federal government in terms of the passage of laws or policies that will impact indian country, if you will. One of the things we also try to cover in the exhibits is things you might not get in your u. S. History or oklahoma history, and one of these, talking about the march to Oklahoma Statehood, was that the tribes, the native People Living in this part of indian territory were proposing an indian state and not to be included as part of the impending arrival of Oklahoma State in 1907. It was called the sequoia convention because they were going to call it the state of sequoia. They met beginning in 1905, and coming up with a plan for how this could function and be the native state of sequoia. They get everything together. Our last principal chief who was in office before statehood, he served on the convention. Alexander posey, known as a writer and journalist, he served in the legislature for a few years and also served on the board of education and managed one of the orphan schools here. Charles haskell would become the first governor of oklahoma, he actually served on the convention as well. There was a plan in place that hopefully this area would not be absorbed into oklahoma in 1907. What ultimately happens is it makes it to the desk of president roosevelt, and roosevelt does not sign the act that would have made this, it couldve stayed the state of sequoia. Since president roosevelt does not sign the act, we move forward to Oklahoma Statehood in 1907. Moving along to the next space, and if you have any questions as we move along, you are welcome to ask. This room was the office of the board of education. It is not just a representation we did not just put this in here so our visitors could see what a Period School room would look like. We know that when the board of education was not utilizing this room, this very room was utilized as a day school for the creek children living in the area. The layout you see is period specific desks. We have a creek reader here. This is interactive if someone wants to these are words from the muskogee language. It is an interactive and you are welcome, we invite visitors to use it. [speaking creek words] john the individual here was a teacher. She taught in this school room, so this was not we found someone who taught in this particular school room. Her name was lila lindsay, and she was a creek citizen. She taught here for about a term and then moved to tulsa with her husband and became involved in the tulsa education system, a figure with getting schools started in the tulsa, oklahoma area. During the allotment process, she was assigned i think about 80 acres, and she donated half of her allotment to the city of tulsa at the time on the understanding the city of tulsa would build a school there. And they did. It changed names over a number of years, it became known as the riverview school, and for a time it was the lindsay school, lindsay academy. It stood until the early or mid1970s, when it was demolished. Some of my relatives remember when lindsay school, when it was active and existed in tulsa. This is just some information about the schools as they operated in the muskogee nation. Day schools, boarding schools, intermediate manual labor and high schools. The schools were funded by some of the payments we had received through agreements with the federal government. We passed a law, there was a law passed in the 1890s, about two thirds of the income we were receiving from pasture lands we leased to people, that would also go to support our School System in the muskogee nation. We also had as part of the School System a couple of orphanages. One of the orphanages was here in the city, and one of the managers at the time, we were introduced to him earlier, was alexander posey. He lived here and managed the orphanage here at the time. A lot of people can see an image of that our visitors will go, where was that, can we see that . No, it is not standing today. This is the last remaining piece of plaster from the original construction of the Council House. I imagine there is a lot of history in this wall right here. As we are passing into the next part of the tour, this is an interactive we have at the Council House called muskogee people. It is an introduction to our creek citizens of today. We have a lot of these photos come from our archives and collections. It is interactive because we invite our citizens, if they want to put pictures of their own family or relatives on this wall, they can. It doesnt have to be specific to the time period of the Council House. The people of the following generations, they are directly tied to this tribal government that was utilizing the Council House. Over time, we will rotate these photos off and add new photos in and have a binder or folder for the photos that rotate off. They will still be part of the ongoing exhibit for the muskogee people and be a representation not just for this time period, but who we are now and who we are going forward. This room served as a Meeting Place for the judiciary committee. This committee met and discussed and interpreted some of the laws that would be proposed or existed at the time. There would be further discussion in front of the National Council. In this room, we cover the impact railroads had for the creek nation and muskogee nation. The treaty that was signed in 1866, the reconstruction treaty, it said we had to allow two railroads across the creek nation, one east and west and north and south. When the railroads came through, it asked for large rightofways beside the railroads. That means the amount of land thats available on each side of the railroad. We are not talking a few feet, particularly in the initial railroad, a few miles on each side of the railway. What happens is, particularly at these railroad points, these stations, muskogee is one of them, you have a lot of nonnative people who come to live within the rightofway. If you were a nonnative person, our laws did not apply to native persons. If you were in a disagreement with a nonnative person, our laws did not apply to them. There were lots of noncreek People Living in the rightofway. We had to pass laws to protect our Natural Resources. To create a rail line, you need lots of timber for railroad ties. We created a law that says its against the law to use our Natural Resource without our oversight or approval. We wanted to give the visitor a little bit of insight into the history of the railroads and how it impacts the creek nation. The next room is the finance committee. We have a similar committee, the business, finance, and judiciary committee. These things have been found in the walls of the Council House or the floors of the Council House when they have been doing the various excavations over the years. This is another interactive piece we have for students. We ask if they can identify some of the articles that are here in the case. So this room that we are in right now, this room served as the office of the principal chief and his assistants and second chief. The desk you see here was one of the original desks that the principal chief used from 1878 to 1907. You will hear me say it a number of times, at least a couple of times during our tour. This is not just a restored historic building. This is also a functioning presentday tribal government building. When our visitors come, and since we are a functioning tribal government building, we have the pictures of the leadership of our tribe. Our principal chief james r. Floyd and second chief lewis hicks. As time goes on, we will have new chiefs who hold those offices. We will update the photographs of the new chiefs who are in office. We also have a book here that has the chiefs that have served in office overtime. Theres pleasant porter. He was the last elected chief of our tribe. That is an interesting part of that history. When i was talking about the curtis act, it did away after 1907 we did not elect our principal chiefs. By and large, they were appointed by the federal government until 1970. Pleasant porter was our last elected chief. He served two terms starting in 1899, and he was elected for a second term in 1903, but he passed away right before Oklahoma Statehood, and his office was filled by motey tiger, who finished his term. Because we were not at Oklahoma Statehood yet, our tribal law was still in place in terms of who if a representative or chief dies in office. Motey tiger at that time was serving as the second chief to pleasant porter. He went ahead and filled out the remainder of pleasant porters term, then motey tiger was appointed the chief after Oklahoma Statehood. We are making our way to the second floor of the Council House. The second floor is largely composed of the chambers of the Tribal Council as it existed during this time. You will see the grand hall, which is and a smaller space that was another part of the legislature. Up in this space, which we will visit directly, was the office of the Supreme Court. If we could do a brief tour through here. In this space we give a brief history and a little bit of information about how the court system operated during this particular time period. We had, by tribal law, we had a series of district courts, and they handled the execution of civil and criminal law. This office that we are in served as the office of the Supreme Court. They largely were involved with the interpretation of the constitution, the laws, and any sort of case that was brought before them in the amount of over 100. It became a little less active after the passage of the curtis act in 1898 because the curtis act took steps to dismantle our Tribal Court System and the office of the Supreme Court during this post1898. The room we are in right now is called the house of kings. One way to think about that, it was like the senate. The room we will visit in a few minutes was called the house of warriors. It was like the house of representatives. During this time period, we had about 40 or so with all of our tribal towns. The way the house of kings was set up is each of the tribal towns could have one representative in the house of kings, which is the smaller of the two representative bodies. The way the tribal government worked at this time in the creation of laws is it was broken down. We visited some of the rooms already, the committee rooms. Each of those committees was made up of members from the house of kings and the house of warriors. When it came time particularly during the month of october when the tribal law was set up, any proposed law or change that was going to be proposed had to come out of one of those committees. These were joint committees between the two houses. If any piece of proposed legislation had favorable support in one of these committees, it would be heard by the full National Council. When i say the full National Council, it would be everyone who was a member from this room we are in here, the house of kings would go over and join everyone in the space we are going to see in a few minutes in the house of warriors, and combined that was the full National Council at that time. They were probably approaching 100 plus people in one room discussing and debating the proposed passage of those tribal laws. It is pretty similar to the way the federal Government Works and how our tribal government operates today. The principal chief could veto it, but the council had opportunity to override the veto if they felt it was important enough to pass. Some of the things you see in here, all of the seating in here, it gives you an approximation of what the layout was like and what it looked like at the time. The chairs you see here are original to the Council House. The chair you see here was the original chiefs chair. When the principal chief would attend a meeting here in the house of kings, this was the chair he sat in. We will go across the hall and see the house of warriors. While the layout is reflective of the 1878 to 1907 time period, we want our visitors to know the layout you see here is not 100 authentic to the layout. Our reason for that is this layout reflects the current layout of our presentday tribal government. What you see is the layout of our current National Council. We have 16 members. We are broken down into eight voting districts, and each of those districts can elect two numbers to the National Council. What you see around the table here are 15 seats because the National Council, they also elect a speaker to the National Council. When we were working on the layout of this, it was with the idea that our National Council, they had an interest if they would want to have meetings here in the Council House. This was the space that the National Council during 1878 to 1907 met in. It is not too much of a leap it was not a leap, in fact that our National Council meets in this space today on occasion. In fact, since about march of 2019, they have been renovating that space, and they needed a space to meet. So they have been utilizing this space for their monthly general session meetings since march of 2019. All of our National Council meetings, in the general session but also the Committee Meetings they have leading up to the general session throughout the month, those are open to the public. And not just our tribal citizens, but also the general public as well. If they want to attend any of the Committee Meetings, and certainly the general session of the National Council. The space you are in, we are utilizing it in the very same manner as the way they did in one of the same manners of why it was built in the first place. The bits and pieces of history that our visitor sees on the panel, this is all tied to not just the process that happened here originally, but also to the process that our present day tribal government, the law they are passing, it is directly tied to that. It is a tie to our preremoval past. It is a tie to the moundbuilder culture. When you look at the moundbuilder culture, there were a lot of People Living in those mound sites. When you have lots of People Living around mountain sites, one of the things is this type of governments is something that has never been foreign to us, the concept of governments and tribal sovereignty. We have known that for millennia. What you see here, the visitors who happen to be here, this is certainly tied to all of that. Thank you. Thank you all for allowing the Youth Council to be part of the meeting today as we are celebrating our fourth anniversary of the council, i would like to sing a song. If you know it, please sing along with me. [singing] this is American History tv on cspan3. Each weekend, we feature 48 hours of programming exploring our nations past. Tonight, on real america, a Bipartisan Group of five units orsators u. S. Senat proposes to end the vietnam war on may 12, 1970. Here is a preview. Senator mark casteel, oregon, androm senator mcgovern from wisconsin would have withdrawn all troops. It was the sweeping amendment. They knew they could not introduce this as legislation, so they put it as an amendment to the appropriations bill that would eventually pass. They had to get american supported the day they introduced that amendment, that night president nixon went on National Television and announced that he was authorizing american troops in enclavesto attack the of the vietnamese. In cooperation with the armed forces of south vietnam, attacks are being launched this week to clean out major enemy sanctuaries on the cambodian border. Forwardwas a huge step and escalation of the war. Americanbroke out on campuses. Even conservative campuses had demonstrations. The most tragic took place at cap state, just a few days after the announcement, where National Guardsmen fired on and killed students on campus. A week later, there was a similar shooting at jackson state in mississippi. This was a tragic moment. 100,000 people marched on washington to protest. The senators felt the president could get airtime anytime he wanted. Could make these announcements to the public, but they could not respond. There was no cspan in the chamber at that stage. If you were lucky enough to be on the news, it was just for a minute or two. Maybe you would get on the sunday morning news program. They wanted a chance to respond. They went to the federal Communications Commission and asked for equal time. They wanted free time on National Television to respond to the present. The fcc would not grant that. They took out a 60,000 loan and purchased half an hour on nbc 12,broadcasting on may 1970, right after the news. They made that program. Is simply this that it is no longer the opinion of president s and senators, but the evidence of history that over 40,000 deaths and this amount of resource expended has proven each one of those escalations to be wrong. How many more american men have to be heaped upon that funeral aior of war to disprove doctrine of military action that has been wrong every time it has been acted upon . The u. S. Is not going to impose any permit solutions in asia to settle asian problems among asian people on the asian mainland. The idea that we are going to do that runs against the whole current of history. Watch the full program easternat 10 20 p. M. Here on American History tv. Next, an interview with Abraham Lincoln interpreter george buss. [applause] fellow citizens of the senate and house of representatives, since your last annual assembly, another year of health and bountiful harvest has passed