Buck—The Settlement of Oklahoma. 
333 
times considered part of the original Oklahoma, Tracts 2, 7, 13 
and 14, numbered about two thousand, one hundred and sixty 
souls, and their territory included roughly about one million, six 
hundred and fifty thousand acres of the best land in the terri¬ 
tory, an average of about seven hundred and seventy acres for 
each individual. 1 Some of these Indians were partly civilized 
and some were still in the blanket stage. Tracts 3, 4 and 8 
contain in round numbers about eight million acres and were 
held by ten thousand, three hundred blanket Indians, making 
an average of seven hundred and fifty acres apiece, 2 but these 
Indians were not so well off comparatively as the others, be¬ 
cause their land was located farther west and much of it was of 
little value. 
There remained about six million acres of the Cherokee strip, 
one million, eight hundred and eighty-eight thousand acres in 
Oklahoma proper, and Greer county with a million and a half 
acres, 3 in which there were no Indians. In the latter there was 
already some white settlement under the jurisdiction of Texas. 
Outside of the Indian Territory, but afterwards a part of Okla¬ 
homa, was the Public Land Strip, or “Ho Man’s Land,” con¬ 
sisting of three million, six hundred and eighty-one thousand 
acres. 4 This strip of land, which had accrued to the United 
States from Texas, had never been organized or placed under 
the jurisdiction of any state or territory. It was, however, 
a part of the public domain, and as such was open to settlement 
under the homestead laws. There were already quite a num¬ 
ber of settlers in this land along the edges of the streams where 
. settlement was possible, and as they were entirely without law 
they had organized a provisional government, and on March 4, 
1886, resolved themselves into a territory to be called Cimiarron 
and elected a certain Dr. Chase as delegate to Congress to de¬ 
mand recognition. Hothing came of this organization, however, 
1 S>ec. Int. Rept., 1883, vol. 2, p. 142. 
2 Ibid., pp. 118, 128; Congressional Record, vol. 17, Appendix, pp. 175- 
76. 
3 Int. Dept., Mis’c. Repts., 1902, pt. 2, p. 493. 
4 Ibid., p. 492. 
