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Capt. John Cooper
Nancy J. Cooper et al. v. The Choctaw Nation is one of the classic botched cases in the annals of the Dawes Commission, the Federal government’s attempt to deal a death blow to tribal sovereignty at the close of the nineteenth century. I had heard rumors about my Cooper relatives and how they were kicked out of the Choctaw Nation. But I never knew the whole story until recently.
J. W. Howell mentions the case in a textbook studied today in law schools. John Cooper, our ancestor, was a Choctaw chief who owned a plantation near Linden, Tennessee. The family was seated at the dinner table one evening when a vigilante mob broke in. They were told at gunpoint to leave, their possessions forfeit.
The men swam their horses across the Mississippi River at Memphis and left the women encamped under the willows on the other side while they went back to try to recover some of their cattle. John and Nancy’s old mother, who was in her eighties, died before they returned, empty-handed. The party proceeded to Indian Territory.
In 1896, the family encouraged Nancy, blind, unmarried and no longer able to care for herself, to enroll with the Choctaw Nation. They and a large group of kinsmen won roll numbers. But they were all stricken from the rolls by an adverse decision of the Choctaw-Chickasaw citizenship court a couple of years later. More than a hundred of them joined in a class action suit.
“We’re still fighting it,” says Pam Kahler of Vian, Oklahoma. "My husband and I talked to the BIA in Muskogee and found out about the old ruling. They told us the reason it was overturned was because the people named in the court ruling were not living in the Choctaw area when they were added to the Dawes rolls.” They, in fact, were living in the Chickasaw area of Duncan, Comanche area, Stephens County.
Aunt Artie Meecie was told that the family was “too poor to be on the rolls.”
In February and March 1907 matters came to a head. The Attorney General of the United States declared the lower courts out of line and ordered that hundreds of Choctaw Coopers, Browns and others were, after all, entitled to enrollment.
The only trouble was that the Attorney General’s decision of March 4, 1907, did not reach the department until March 6, 1907, two days after the rolls were closed by operation of law. There was then no authority in the Secretary of the Interior, under the law, to enroll them.
Nancy Cooper was laid in a pauper’s grave. Not only was the family too poor to be Indian, it was two days too late.
Read more on the Choctaw Pages of Panther’s Lodge at http://www.pantherslodge.com/choctaw.html.
Comments
If only 2 days earlier I would not be reading the sad story of your ancestors.Thank you for sharing.
First I have to slightly apologize for using this format to contact you and I know you are a busy guy. I thought you might be interested in this when I noticed your Choctaw Cooper (I am a Blevins among others descendent). I have Intersitial lung disease
and am going thru a tough spell. I joined a forum. I am being treated with Colcochine for FMF and have good results. Now I see it is being used in many autoimmune diseases. What I noticed is that several members of the Pulmonary Fibrosis forum have Schlerdoma
and when checking out DNA because I would not have been away myself without being into genealogy and finding several Sephardic Jewish lines in my own ancestry, that Scherlodma is noticeable high in the Creeks. I found this study that ties in with some genealogy
and thought you might be interested. I also would like to find out what families may have been represented and thought this is likely confidential. I figure if anyone has the professional expertise to unlock this data and bring it to us, it is most likely
you. When I read the list of symptoms, it fits my mother and I to the letter and the tests they give include many that I have high results for. I will probably persue a clinical diagnosis though the meds and treatment are consistent with most autoimmune disease.
I just want my family to be as well informed as possible. Our little group of "melungeons" have intermarried and moved west over the entire USA and are being misdiagnosed daily because they do not know or care or were taught to hide their heritage. Here is
a link to the study. Please let me know if you find anything useful. Thank you for your time. A Google will show a few more studies including one in Michigan http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/oct98/niams-29.htm
I am related to coopers, myers, mccarters, I had hoped to prove indian heritage blood. It's sad to think 2 days late. This story was told in my early childhood (I didn't believe it) So I have indian bloodline but can't claim indian heritage....that's so
wrong
Really too bad that it was two days too late. Can imagine what a difference that would have made.