Chronicles of Oklahoma
Volume 7, No. 3
September, 1929
AN HISTORIC LETTER OF INTEREST
Page 331
Fort Smith, Ark., Feb. 19, 1876.
Editor Cherokee Advocate:—
As I have always been a great friend of the Cherokees, I wish to call your attention to one great evil, and what is considered
a fraud by many and that is, the admission of the Little Rock and Fort Smith R. R. into the Cherokee country to a point opposite
Fort Smith, Arkansas. I am told by those who are in the ring here that it is their intention to first get the Cherokee authorities
to allow them to run the railroad two miles into the nation and establish a depot opposite the reserve at Fort Smith. That
they want, in order to gain admission into the nation; then with the aid of Clayton and Dorsey, in the Senate, they propose
to gobble the reserve in Fort Smith and also gobble enough land from the Cherokees adjoining Fort Smith to make a Territory
ten miles square, taking in that part of Crawford county, Arkansas, lying above Lee’s Creek, and then form a county to be
known as the county of Clayton, with Fort Smith as the county Seat. You will be visited by an agent, sent by a lot of old
played out Politicians in Fort Smith, to request a permit to run the Railroad into the nation, and as a friend to the Cherokees,
I feel it my duty to apprise you of this dangerous step they will ask you to take, and which they will draw you into if in
their power to do so. If the country is ever to be opened up, I should think there would be ample time to consider their wants.
More Anon,
Isaac D. King.
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