Oklahoma, The Indian State

The stone honors Charles Curtis as a Kaw allottee and leaves out the law that carries his name. As a Kansas congressman he sponsored the act of June 28, 1898, which abolished tribal courts in Indian Territory, made tribal laws subject to the president's approval and had the Dawes Commission draw new citizenship rolls for allotment without the nations' consent. Curtis, an enrolled Kaw citizen, wrote that he was unhappy with the final bill after five committee revisions. He served as vice president under Herbert Hoover from March 1929 to March 1933, not the years cut here.

What the plaque says

Oklahoma The Indian State Land in this area was granted to Cherokee Indians by U.S., 1828. Opened to white settlement, 1893. Kaw Indian tribal reservation, 5 miles east. There was located land allotment of Hon. Charles Curtis, Kaw Indian, Vice President of U.S., 1928-32. Oklahoma Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Etzanoa — 6.0 mi
  The ancestral Wichita town on the Walnut River that Spanish soldiers called the Great Settlement in 1601, located again by archaeologists at Arkansas City and opened to visitors in 2026.
• Kanza Museum — 19 mi
  The Kaw Nation's museum at its Kaw City headquarters, telling in the Nation's own voice the century after the Kanza left Kansas: allotment, legal erasure, a drowned reservation and the return.
• Marland Mansion — 19 mi
  E. W. Marland's 55-room Palace on the Prairie, built in Ponca City from 1925 to 1928 on oil first struck on a Ponca allotment, and lived in for only about three years.
• Standing Bear Park & Museum — 22 mi
  An eight-acre park and museum in Ponca City built by six area nations and the town together, under a 22-foot bronze of the Ponca chief whose 1879 case made Native people persons at law.

More markers nearby

• Chilocco Indian School — steps away
• Cherokee Outlet — 2.0 mi
• Oklahoma War Chief — 18 mi
• The Gas That Wouldn't Burn — 20 mi