Oklahoma Journeys
Week of March 29, 2008
Crazy Snake Rebellion
This week on Oklahoma Journeys we examine one of the last Native American uprisings in the history of the United States. The Creek tribe, forcibly removed to Oklahoma in the 1830s, faced in the early 1900s the division and parceling out of their tribal land. The reaction to that loss was mixed. Some tribal members used it to their advantage; some accepted it, and some, the topic of this week’s edition, rose-up to fight against it. It’s the Crazy Snake rebellion of 1909 this week on Oklahoma Journeys from the Oklahoma Historical Society.
From the Oklahoma Historical Society, this is Oklahoma Journeys. I’m Michael Dean.
In the late 1800s most tribes in Indian Territory were forced to give up their communal lifestyle and accept the division and allotment of their tribal land into various acreages. The large Five Tribes managed to delay this process, but by the early 1900s, even they were facing the inevitable act of allotment. Within the tribes, particularly the Creeks, there was growing resistance to this government interference. Some members preferred to live according to traditional Creek laws and insisted upon the sovereignty of the original removal treaties made between the United States and the Creeks in the 1830s.
This dissident group of Creeks was led by Chitto Harjo, whose name in English roughly translates to Crazy Snake. Harjo circulated among the tribes of Oklahoma coordinating resistance to the allotment of the Creek lands. His followers were not only Creeks, but members of other tribes, as well as former slaves. From 1900 to 1909 Harjo led and coordinated resistance to the federal government’s interference in Creek tribal affairs. The snakes, as the group was called, formed their own break away Creek government and abided by their own laws and rulings. The headquarters for this insurgent group was the Creek ceremonial site known as the Hickory Grounds. There Harjo’s group met periodically with several dozen people occupying the site year round. It was at the Hickory Grounds where federal officials made their final strike against Harjo’s group. There were numerous people wounded and some were killed, but Harjo wasn’t among the group.
It was in this week of 1909 that government agents tracked Harjo to his cabin some miles away from the Hickory Ground and began a two-day running gun battle with the Creek leader and his bodyguards. In the exchange of gunfire Harjo was seriously wounded, but he escaped under cover of darkness. The incident put an end to organized Creek resistance, and Harjo the dissident managed to live out the remainder of his years in exile either in the Choctaw territory or in Mexico, depending on which story you believe.
The Oklahoma Historical Society holds thousands of documents, artifacts and resource materials on the history of the Creek Nation in the Indian Territory as well as on the allotment process, and you are invited to investigate the history of our wonderful state by visiting the Oklahoma History Center on NE 23rd Street just east of Lincoln Boulevard in Oklahoma City.
The Oklahoma Journeys is a production of the Oklahoma Historical Society, dedicated to the collection, preservation and sharing of our state’s past. I’m Michael Dean.