Sam, Indian Territory: The Intruder: How America Led an Arkansas Boy Into the Choctaw Republic
In 1877 a young boy from Arkansas decided to unlawfully enter and settle on the land of the Choctaw Republic. The roots of his intrusion on the Tribe go back to the Civil War, to the Indian Removals of a generation past, to the English and Scots-Irish settlement of the American South, even to the British Isles of the previous century and beyond. His story, which turns on the two most heartbreaking events of his childhood, is intermixed with the historical, legal, and political context in which they occurred. These are fully re-imagined with unsparing commentary on the decisions and decision-makers that made the United States the violent and imperious place that it became in the 1800s for the Five Tribes of the South, but also for great numbers of their neighbors--Native, Black and White, friend and foe alike. All of these lived in the throes of America's longest war, its relentless attacks on the indigenous peoples, and especially on their right to occupy and exercise sovereignty over the land.
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As with all stories that touch on family, it is also about a particular place, the distinctive borderland of western Arkansas and the Choctaw country, from north of the Red River up to Fort Smith. This is where the nation built a frontier stockade and then a mid-century garrison, later repurposed to become a federal courthouse. Each was given an assignment that contradicted everything America was seeking to make of itself in that time. Each was tasked with making it appear that the nation was finally going to carry out its promises to the Tribes, to protect them from illegal immigrants, including the young Sam Wilson.