Before the Founding of Lawton

Land Lottery and Auction

Game

Teaching Materials

Credits

The Jerome Commission, named after General Jerome, was made up of a group of white men.  They had a plan to open up the reservations to whites. In the fall of 1892, the men came to the reservation.  They met with the three tribes who lived at Fort Sill.  (These were the Kiowas, the Comanches, and the Fort Sill Apaches). The commission's job was to get the natives to sign a treaty.  The treaty would allow the allotting of land.

The Jerome Commission Delegation

The tribes owned a lot of land.  White men wanted the land for farmland.  They did not think the natives should have this land.  The white men thought the land should be given to them to put to use.

Promises made to the native people were broken. The U.S. had promised that when allotments were made, the lots would be 320 acres each. Congress promised this in the Treaty of Medicine Lodge.

But a mistake was made.  Now the Dawes Act said that each plot would only be 160 acres. There was a big difference in the size of the plots of land that had been promised to the native tribes.  And the allotting of land was not supposed to take place until 1898.  The commission tried to allot land in 1892--six years too early.