Rural Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles in Oklahoma during the Great Depression.

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes rural Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole communities in Oklahoma during the Great Depression. It examines the impact of Indian New Deal policies in the areas of economic, education, health, and political reform. Moreover, it refutes the commonly held belief that the rural Indians of the Five Civilized Tribes were a largely landless people, starving and spiritually bankrupt by the 1930s. In fact, this study argues that those Indians who continued to live in the small, rural communities of the Five Civilized Tribes region relied upon time proven kin and clan networks to maintain their social and cultural traditions. This better enabled them to endure the economic hardships caused by the Great Depression. The devotion they showed to their communities and traditions also allowed them to assimilate or resist assimilation on their own terms as opposed to the terms set down by whites, more assimilated tribal members, or the federal government. In that sense, it is, more than anything else, very much a study of Indian cultural and social perseverance.