The Stories of the Places Where He Lives: The Invention of the Indian Territory by John Milton Oskison—Cherokee Cowboy, Writer, Journalist, and Activist

John Milton Oskison was a Cherokee writer because his mother was part Cherokee, but also because he was born and grew up in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory.  Despite these connections, the Dawes Commission questioned his Cherokee citizenship and suspended his enrollment because he had been away for four years at Stanford and Harvard to complete his education.  The attorneys representing the Cherokee Nation argued that “by this absence he has forfeited his right to participate in the allotment of the lands of the Cherokee nation, and has lost all of his rights as a Cherokee citizen.” In his final statement, Oskison declared: “All interests I have are in the Indian Territory, Cherokee Nation, and that I have never regarded any other place as my permanent residence.”  His application can thus be seen as an appropriate symbol of the tight connection between “lives” and “places.”  The third aspect of the AHA theme, “Stories,” is also at the core of Oskison’s existence because most of his career as a writer and an activist of the Society of American Indians was dedicated to writing Tales of the Old Indian Territory and to performing new representations of the Indian.  The Indian Territory, which suffered from a bad reputation as an outlaw refuge, was badly in need of writers who would tell positive stories of the lives taking place there. In the Indian Territory, a “New Indian” was being shaped, according to Oskison, one who could contribute to U.S. society without necessarily losing himself.  By telling the stories of his place, Oskison told about himself in what I call an auto-biogeography. The places of his life were inseparable from his identity, so when Oskison described his Indian Territory home, he wrote his own story and the stories of turn-of-the-century Indians.