The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 50, July 1946 - April, 1947 Page: 179

Book Reviews

Indians and others from some of the western states and Texas
in removing to Oklahoma-"Home of the Red Man"-make up
the records of The Last Trek.
This is a factual book. It begins with the first treaty made
with the Delaware Indians in 1778, when our government was
in its infancy, and then traces the history of the removal of
the northern Indians to Oklahoma. The scene is the broad
expanse of that part of America which lies between the East
Coast and Oklahoma. The people in the book live in its pages.
They are the agents who mismanaged Indian affairs, the medi-
cine men who called upon the Great Spirit to bury and smother
the white men under the soil, the traders who sold cheap
whiskey, and the homeless Indians who marched even though
they were cold, sick, and grief-stricken. The Indians who left
their hunting grounds for Oklahoma, where now the pitiful
remains of once great tribes are being absorbed into the white
man's civilization, show us what can happen when people are
driven from their homes by their more powerful neighbors.
Not more than four, or possibly five, of Oklahoma's Indian
tribes are indigenous. The movement of the immigrant Indians
to their present and final home is a vital story in history. To
attain an accurate picture of the Indians dealt with in this book,
it may be necessary, says the author, "to revise preconceptions
of them." The uninformed, if he has any impressions at all,
is likely to think of Indian tribes as permanent organizations
with fixed limits and populations. On the contrary, many of
the tribes north of the Ohio were permanent neither in their
homes nor in their tribal organizations and territional limits.
The government undertook Indian removal without plan or
experience. There was no system and no order. In some in-
stances, where a whole tribe could not be induced to move, a
band or faction under the influence of a leader would surrender
and start west. Where a faction was thus removed, the reader
of current reports might be confused, thinking that the whole
tribe had emigrated.
The subject of migration of the Indians to their final home
in Oklahoma automatically divides into tribal groups, periods,
and phases. Broadly speaking, removal of the Indians from
the east to the west side of the Mississippi River was substan-
tially completed between 1830 and 1845. The second aspect of
the movement takes into account the brief residences of these

179