334 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts , and Letters. 
but it served as a means of protecting property rights among 
the settlers. 1 
Here, then, are twenty-four million, seven hundred and seven¬ 
ty-four thousand, four hundred acres in all, occupied by less 
than seventeen thousand Indians, who can at best make use of 
but a very small part of it. It could not be expected that all 
the rest of the land would lie idle when surrounded by settled 
states in which land was a,t a premium. Consequently the 
natural thing happened, and this vacant land was taken possess¬ 
ion of by stock raisers with their vast herds of cattle. At first 
they simply drove on their herds and asked no question as to 
the ownership of the land. But the Indians soon saw that here 
was an opportunity to turn their vast unused acres to account, 
and they began to make leases to the cattlemen, which, although 
at absurdly low rates per acre, netted them large sums of money 
because of the great extent of the area leased. 
An investigation of these leases made in 1885 2 shows that the 
Cherokees had leased the six million acres in the Outlet to the 
Cherokee Strip Live Stock Association for one hundred thouss 
and dollars per annum, or less than two cents an acre. The 
Cheyennes and Arapahoe® had leased the whole western part 
of their domain, about three million, -eight hundred thousand 
acres, in eight different leases at two cents per acre. The Os- 
ages had leased three hundred and eighty thousand acres in six 
leases at six cents per acre, and the Kansas Indians, fifty-two 
thousand acres at four cents and three hundred acres at fifty 
cents, the latter being under cultivation. Each of the other small 
tribes, the Kez Perces, Poncas, Pawnees, Otoes and Missourias, 
Sac® and Foxes and the Iowas, had leased about half of its reser¬ 
vation at an average rate of three cents per acre. The Okla¬ 
homa district, being thus surrounded on nearly all sides by 
leased grazing lands, was of course overrun with cattle for 
which no payment was made to anyone. 3 Some of these Indians, 
as the Cherokees, who held their land in fee simple, seem to 
1 Int. Rept., Misc. Repts., 1900, pt. 2, p. 671. 
2 Sen. Ex. Doe., 17, 48 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 12-15. 
3 Ibid., pp. 90, 91. 
