1887 Map of Indian Reservations in the United States. It has been folded up in the back pages of the "Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs" ever since that year. It could use a little TLC but it's an interesting piece of history. 1887 was the year the General Allotment Act (Dawes Act) was passed. I won't pretend to be an expert on it, but it would dramatically alter the existing system of Indian land ownership. You should look it up. Every Oklahoma Landman has seen the Allotment Patents that were one result of this Act. The book itself came from the Surgeon General's Library in Washington, D.C., which later became the Army Medical Library. It seems to have been well used, as there are still old bookmarks and hand-written scribblings from some unnamed clerk or student tucked into its pages. As a rule, I always leave them in the pages where I find them.
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+5
Wade Brawley
3d
An interesting find! Thank you for sharing
Chris Fox
1w
Ooff that’s so cool
Dylan Morgan
5d
Awesome find Chase!
Title Operations Manager at The Needham Companies
1wAs an interesting side note, the Library of the Surgeon General's Office was housed in Ford's Theater where Lincoln was shot. The collection was moved to a different building in 1887, the same year as this book/map were printed. So this copy may have started out there for a short time.