https://www.mininghistoryassociation.org/Journal/MHJ-v3-1996-Sewell.pdf
https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=LE007
https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=PA009
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/arkansas-western-railroad-13920/
https://www.condrenrails.com/Frisco/O&CC%20Ry/O&CC-History.html
As generic terms, Indian Territory, The Indian Territories, or Indian Country are used to describe an evolving land area set aside by the United States Government for the relocation of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas who held Aboriginal title to their land. In general, the tribes ceded land they occupied in exchange for Land Grants in an area purchased by the US Federal Government from Napoleon, the Louisiana Purchase. The concept of an Indian Territory was an outcome of the 18th and 19th century policy of Indian removal. After the United States Civil War the policy of the government was one of assimilation. By 1907, when Oklahoma was admitted as a state, Indian Territory ceased to exist.
The term Indian Reserve is used to describe lands the British government set aside for Indigenous tribes between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River in the time before the Revolutionary War.
More specifically, Indian Territory was an Unorganized territory whose general borders were initially set by the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834, and was the successor to Missouri Territory after Missouri received statehood. The borders of Indian Territory were systematically reduced in size as various Organic Acts were passed by the US Congress creating an Incorporated territory or Territory of the United States that would eventually be admitted to the union as a State of the United States.
Several tribes, (Seneca, Osage and Pottawatomi, etc.) were relocated more than once as Indian Territory shrank in size. As tribes were relocated, some received land grants in exchange for their former lands, and others (such as Osage, Seminole, and Chickasaw) ultimately purchased their land, usually receiving Fee simple title to the land.
The Oklahoma Enabling Act specified that Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory would be admitted as a single state of Oklahoma, which occurred in 1907. At that time, Indian Territory ceased to exist.
Definition of "Indian Territory"
Indian Territory, also known as the Indian Territories and the Indian Country, was land within the United States of America that was reserved for the forced re-settlement of Native Americans. The general borders were set by the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834.
While Congress passed several Organic Acts that provided a path for statehood for much of the original Indian Country, Congress never passed an Organic Act for the Indian Territory. Indian Territory was never an organized incorporated territory of the United States. In general, tribes could not sell land to non-Indians (Johnson v. M'Intosh). Treaties with the tribes severely restricted entry of non-Indians into tribal areas; Indian tribes were largely self-governing, were suzerain nations, with established tribal governments and well established cultures. The region never had a formal government until after the American Civil War. Therefore, the geographical location commonly called "Indian Territory" was not a traditional territory.
After the Civil War the Southern Treaty Commission re-wrote treaties with tribes that sided with the Confederacy, reducing the territory of the Five Civilized Tribes and providing land to resettle Plains Indians and tribes of the mid-west. These re-written treaties included provisions for a Territorial Legislature (which could only meet 30 days per year) with proportional representation from various tribes.
The Oklahoma organic act of 1890 created an organized incorporated territory of the United States of Oklahoma Territory, with the intent of combining the Oklahoma and Indian territories into a single State of Oklahoma. The residents of Indian Territory proposed to Congress that Indian Territory be admitted to the Union as the State of Sequoyah. However, Congress rejected the idea and Oklahoma became a state in 1907.
The citizens of Indian Territory tried, in 1905, to gain admission to the union as the State of Sequoyah, but were rebuffed by Congress and an Administration which did not want two new Western states, Sequoyah and Oklahoma. Citizens then joined to seek admission of a single state to the Union. With Oklahoma statehood in November 1907, Indian Territory was extinguished.
Many Indians continue to live in Oklahoma, especially in the eastern part.
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When Oklahoma's coal industry began in the early 1870s, the towns that developed around this industry were the private fiefdoms of the coal barons. For decades the mine operators controlled nearly every facet of life in these communities. Only after years of bitter struggle against such conditions were the miners and the other residents of these communities in this system, but political, economic, an able to gain a measure of control over their own lives and towns. The miners' union produced the first cracks d social
changes also undermined the semi-feudal nature of Oklahoma's coal towns. By the 1890s independent business developed as the mine owners' grip on these commumttes weakened. But it was not until the
1920s that the company-town system faded away, replaced by a competitive economic system. The communities that developed in association with southeastern Oklahoma's nascent coal mining industry in the early 1870s were classic company towns. Few
amenities existed in these company towns designed to provide only for the miner's basic needs. The two primary institutions in Oklahoma's coal mining com munities were the company house and the company store. The typical Oklahoma coal town was little more than an "appendage to the coal mine." The company owned all buildings and houses, built on land leased from the Choctaws in the territorial period. It was not until after the watershed agreement of 1903, in which the union won recognition and many other concessions
from the operators, that the strength of the company town diminished. Statehood pummeled the company town system further, but it did not die out completely until the 1920s....
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The Poteau and Cavanal Mountain Railroad was a railway which never operated, although it did at one time own 4.01 miles of track between Poteau, Oklahoma and what was then Witteville, Oklahoma. It acquired the line in 1923, but abandoned the same by 1931.
History
As background, the line was built in the 1892-1893 timeframe by the Cavanal Coal and Mining Company. The Cavanal Coal, Coke and Railway acquired it on August 27, 1895. An entity called the Indianola Coal and Railway, incorporated in Texas, got it between July 21, 1889, and November 8, 1899, but transferred it about November 21, 1899 to the Fort Smith, Poteau and Western Railway Company, which was created in West Virginia on that date. When the line went into bankruptcy, the trackage was acquired by one D.J. Evans, who had coal mining interests in the area. He then created the Poteau and Western Railroad Company as a West Virginia corporation on December 24, 1915, and rolled the line into the new company on January 10, 1916.
The railroad at that point operated 3.415 miles of mainline between a junction with the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway at Poteau to a coal mine at or near Witteville, Oklahoma, but also owned 0.595 miles of yard tracks and sidings. Its traffic was hauling coal out of mines. However, the coal traffic ceased during 1918 because mining was suspended. The railroad managed to function for a while utilizing three-quarters of a mile of its track carrying bricks out of a brickyard, but all operations had ceased by January 1, 1919.
On February 24, 1923, the Poteau and Cavanal Mountain Railroad Company was incorporated in Oklahoma. Its organizers expected that high-grade semi-anthracite coal mining would be commencing from a new location at Cavanal Mountain, and so acquired the rail line from Mr. Evans in a stock swap. The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) approved the sale September 11, 1923.
However, the mining venture never materialized, so the railway was never put back in operation. After filing reports with the ICC for a number of years to the effect that the track still existed but was not being operated, the railway reported in 1931 that the road had been dismantled.
The location of Witteville, halfway up Cavanal Mountain, is now within the city limits of Poteau. Cavanal Mountain, more commonly known as Cavanal Hill with its eccentric claim of being the “world’s highest hill,” has long since ceased to be the subject of mining.
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