Part three
Editors’ note: During the World War II era, the federal government condemned and leased hundreds of thousands of Indian acres for military use, much of it never returned to Indian hands. In this series, Indian Country Today spoke with Native people affected by the takings, many who served their country in wartime, lost their land to the government, and still harbor strong feelings on the matter.
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – When spring came to eastern Oklahoma this year, the trees were dry as tinder matchsticks. Old folks were saying they hadn’t seen anything so dry since the Dust Bowl.
Gerald Summerlin, who grew up during the Depression, has a long memory, too. Rather than wear it on his sleeve, he’s had it printed in bold letters on a big red feed cap: “The U.S. Took Our Land Three Times.”
Summerlin was 10 years old in 1942 when an infantry training camp was carved out of 66,000 acres in the Cookson Hills, about half of it Cherokee allotments.
His grandmother, Armine Summerlin, took allotment No. 17722 at the turn of the century. Forty years later, the government condemned it and appraised the 160-acre tract at about $900.
“We had two houses, two barns, two ponds, a 20-acre orchard and a garden,” said Sheila Ratliff, Summerlin’s sister, rifling through a stack of photos on her kitchen table. “We grew peaches, apples, plums, grapes for canning. You basically grew everything you ate.”
It was late summer when the family had to go. Gerald’s older brother sneaked back in and toted some corn out of the field in an old wagon. The family moved into a dilapidated house with a caved-in roof just beyond the new Camp Gruber. A few years later they were moved off another plot for a federal dam project.
“The rumor was that after the war was over they’d get their land back,” Summerlin said. His own parents “left there believing that this was going to happen. But it was never to be.”
The Summerlins, enrolled Cherokee, see the Gruber seizure as the back end of a double taking. Their great-great-grandparents were herded west on the Trail of Tears – and it was their granddaughter, Armine, who took out the allotment.
“Why did the government, with all the land that was available in Oklahoma, why did they choose that down there where it was all Indian?” Ratliff asked. “And they’d take it again.” At least 45 Cherokee families were moved, their property valued one-third lower by government appraisers than by the BIA.
“These people are patriotic,” Gerald explained. “The government says ‘we need your land,’ [and they say] ‘I’ll be out tomorrow.’ It’s the government that handled this,” he added quickly. “I don’t have no grudge at all against the military.” A Korean-era and Vietnam War veteran, Gerald is part of a family with more than 100 years of military service.
The family has written to presidents, governors, senators, even tribal officials to recover their land. They get a form letter back if they’re lucky. The Gruber taking has not been a tribal priority since the late 1940s.
The old Summerlin homestead is now part of a state wildlife refuge, separate from the camp and deeded to the state of Oklahoma. A visit takes an hour and a half on 10 miles of bad road, and the gate is open only twice a year.
The camp was temporarily deactivated after the war. Some of the unused Gruber land was leased out to cattlemen over the years, a sore point with many displaced families.
Today, Gruber is a National Guard operations center with training facilities for urban guerilla fighting. What sounds like a flock of ivory-billed woodpeckers along Highway 10 turns out to be the rat-tat-tat-tat of small-arms fire.
“They told my dad that the people that lived there, the people that moved out, they was just going to use the land for so many years for a camp until the war was over,” said Tom Battenfield, a boy when the family plot was condemned. “Then it would be given back to the people that own the land. We had 40 acres and had a livable house and a pretty good-size barn and orchard.
“We just got out maybe a day before they were supposed to bring the bulldozers in there and run through the house. They came in there and told my mother. She said, ‘We still live here.’”
They got about $400 from the government, Battenfield said.
Though not enrolled, the family is proud of their Cherokee descent. The Dawes Commission rolls that established tribal membership are still disputed. Two of the Battenfield brothers look Scandinavian; another is darker-skinned than most Cherokee.
“Mom and dad didn’t ever cash the check,” added Tom’s brother, Olen, the best way to protest the meager offer. “They said if she didn’t cash it, they was going to void it. And she said she wasn’t ever going to cash it.” The family kept all the paper on the land, even the money. But it never did any good.
A great-uncle helped the government dig up graves on the condemned land – a shovelful of dirt to a box – and move them to Greenleaf Cemetery near Tahlequah, where they rest today with the dead of the Summerlins and other displaced families.
The Birdtails, in-laws of the Battenfields, are also part of the Gruber web. Dave Birdtail, Cherokee, had 60 acres in cultivation, 30 in orchard within the camp. He protested the taking and got a little extra money for his trouble. But he didn’t fight too hard, afraid he wouldn’t get a penny in the end. The government gave him $300 and the promise the land would come back.
His son, Raymond, enlisted in the 45th Infantry Division and was injured in Korea. His health had been bad earlier this year, but his memory was still sharp. The day they moved off their property, “my dad stood between two pear trees and cried,” he said. “So did I.” Raymond Birdtail passed away this summer.
Recently, Gerald Summerlin, a neighbor of the Birdtails on the Gruber property, went back to pay a sentimental visit. He saw a familiar stand of flowers and transplanted them to Sheila’s place. “After 60 years, those irises are still there,” he said proudly – and a burning bush, more than just a memory, that now blooms in her yard.
(Continued in part four)
Philip Burnham is the recipient of a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.