Buck—The Settlement of Oklahoma. 355 
by furnishing seed wheat to the farmers at actual cost 
without transportation charge, to be paid for out of the 
crop without interest. With this help and that of favorable 
weather conditions, abundant crops were produced in all lines 
in 1891, and the farmers were well started on the road to 
prosperity. 1 
THE CHEROKEE STRIP AND OTHER OPENINGS. 
The act of March 2, 1889 (25 Stats., 1004), by which Okla¬ 
homa proper was opened to settlement, also established a com¬ 
mission of three members to be appointed by the President to 
negotiate with the Cherokee® and all other Indians owning 
or claiming land west of the ninety-sixth parallel in Indian 
Territory, for the cession of all title in such lands to the United 
States. This body, known as the Cherokee commission, pro¬ 
ceeded at once to negotiate treaties or agreements with the 
Iowas, May 20, the Sacs and Poxes, June 12, thePottawatomies 
and Absentee Shawnees, June 25 and 26, and the Cheyennes 
and Arapahoes, October 18, 1890. By these treaties the sev¬ 
eral tribes agreed to take up land in severalty and to relin¬ 
quish to the United States the remainder of their reservations, 
Tracts 2, 4, 7 and 13, Plate XII. 
By an act of Congress of February 13, 1891 (26 Stats., 
749), the Iowa and Sac and Fox agreements were ratified and 
the President was authorized to open the land to settlement. 
Another act of March 3rd (26 Stats., 1016) ratified the agree¬ 
ments with the Pottawatomies and Shawnees, and the Chey¬ 
ennes and Arapahoe®, and appropriated nearly three million 
dollars to pay the Chickasaw® and Choctaws, who also had a. 
claim over part of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe reservation, for 
all interest in the lands ceded by them in trust to the United 
States in 1866. 
The allotments to the Indians having been completed in all 
these reservations except the Cheyenne and Arapahoe, the Pres¬ 
ident, issued a proclamation September' 18, 1891, opening the 
remaining nine hundred and forty-one thousand acres of the 
1 Sec. Int. Rept., 1891, vol. 3, pp. 450-451. 
