Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903)

Between 1890 and 1899, the issue of what to do with Indians, as they were known then, was becoming more pressing and increasingly confused as diverse groups of Anglo Americans proposed their solutions to the “Indian problem.” As both citizens and new immigrants looking for the American Dream of becoming landholders in their own right focused on Indian Territory, the most important aspect of the problem facing the U.S. government was how to separate the Indians from their incredibly vast land holdings and redistribute those lands and resources to Anglo Americans.

Massachusetts Senator Henry L. Dawes soon put forward a plan to survey and divide tribally held lands into 160-acre allotments that would be individually owned by each head of household Indian claimant enrolled in the tribe. Dawes deemed 160 acres a sufficient land base for subsistence farming. Furthermore, by turning the very mobile hunter-gatherers into sedentary agrarians, it would free up millions of acres. The balance of this “excess” land would then be opened up to claim by Anglo homesteaders. The Dawes Severalty Act, otherwise known as the General Allotment Act, was passed by Congress in 1887.

Contested by Indians and their Anglo advocates throughout the 1890s, it was this congressional action that led to the 1898 legal filing by Lone Wolf of the Kiowa tribe from the Comanche/Kiowa/Apache Reservation surrounding Fort Sill in the southwest corner of Indian Territory. This reservation had been created as part of the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867. Congress's pronouncement that it was going to open up 2,150,000 acres of the reservation's land to Anglo settlement was a direct breach of the treaty.

By 1901, Lone Wolf's hired lawyers had fought their case throughout the court system all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The action named Secretary of the Interior Ethan A. Hitchcock; hence, Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock. Lone Wolf contended that the land had been held in a nontitled communal fashion by the entire tribe and that the Dawes Act was a direct violation of existing treaties. Lone Wolf argued that if the Dawes Act were allowed to go forward, it would lead to the catastrophic loss of hunting, foraging, and ceremonial grounds held by the Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache tribes. Additionally, it would destroy the Indians’ lifestyle, resulting in the loss of the ability and the right to feed and clothe themselves as they had for millennia, as well as the loss of access to their cultural and religious sites.

The court, however, ruled against Lone Wolf. The opinion of the court stated,