With baseball season underway, you need to know about something called the Allotment Act.

Back in 1887, the United States had only recently become truly united, by post-Civil War reunification, and by the completion of the trans-continental railroad that linked America’s two coasts. European-American settlers were pouring into the West, looking to stake claims, build homesteads, and bust some sod.  

And in their way stood dozens of native American reservations, some of which had been created – just two generations earlier – by the forced eviction of native nations east of the Mississippi, whose people were forced to walk the Trail of Tears to lands out on the frontier that the federal government promised them would be theirs ‘forever.’  

But now, daggumit, those natives were standing in the way of progress! And that’s when an easterner, a senator from Massachusetts named Henry Dawes, got a truly wicked idea: bust up the native nations for good. He devised an insidious law that identified which members of the nations were the ‘good indians’ – based on such things as whether they intermarried with whites, converted to Christianity, could read and write, adopted formal laws, and were generally ‘well-assimilated.’ These individuals would be granted 160 acres of land for their private ownership, as long as they became US citizens. The rest of the natives, the ‘bad indians,’ would be ‘detribalized’ – i.e. made homeless – and the remaining parts of the reservations would be broken up.  

The Allotment Act was mercilessly effective. Between 1887 and 1934, about 100 million acres of reservation lands, some 2/3 of the property that had been originally promised to the natives, was stolen from them. Perhaps even worse, their cultures of communal property ownership that had existed for millenia were replaced by a private ownership model that was completely alien to them.  

And here come two terrible ironies. First, just as this bust-up was taking place, professional sports leagues were popping up all over the country, and many of those teams adopted quaint mascots that purportedly celebrated the cultures that were being destroyed. In 1912, in Senator Dawes’ home state, which was almost completely devoid of any remaining native culture, a baseball team couldn’t resist the alliteration, “Boston Braves.” They subsequently moved to Milwaukee in 1953, and then to Atlanta in 1966, but the name went unchanged. In the era of cable TV, the team’s games were broadcast nationally on TBS, which led the them being referred to as, “America’s team.”  

And second, this team now plays in a ballpark not far from the Chattahoochee River, which was once the sacred home of the Creek nation. And, once upon a time, the Creeks were officially designated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs as one of ‘five civilized nations’: they were good indians who intermarried with whites, converted to Christianity, could read and write, adopted formal laws, and were generally ‘well-assimilated.’ But no matter, that didn’t stop Andrew Jackson from taking their land and forcing them to walk all the way to Oklahoma.  

So, welcome to baseball season. Time for America’s team to defend their title. If none of this bothers you, then by all means, head on over to Braves stadium, or log onto TBS.com. Grab a beer, and your styrofoam tomahawk. Pound your drum, chop with your elbow, and scream your head off.  

HIII-yo-HIYO! HIIIII-yo-HIYO!!  

Louder please, they can’t hear you all the way out in Tulsa.