Moore's Seminole Roll and Land Guide by [Oklahoma]. [Indian Lands] - 1915

[Wewoka, Ok: Lasiter Print Co.], 1915. Good plus.. [4],52,[6]pp.; 28 leaves, plus small folding map. 12mo. Original thick, untreated calf wrappers, riveted at gutter; front wrap lettered in black. Wrappers moderated rubbed and scuffed. Scattered contemporary ink ownership stamps. Ink stain along fore-edge, not affecting text or maps. Short closed tear to map from gutter. Light tanning. A scarce land guide for Seminole County, Oklahoma, compiled by J. Read Moore. The work contains a wealth of local information including a complete roll of full-blood Seminoles and new-born Freedman, fifty-six pages of township maps showing land ownership, and a small folding map of the county, colored by township. The preface notes the maps were provided by a local surveyor named E. Hastain, so that the allotment rolls, plat maps, and ownership data could be combined in one convenient volume. The combination and importance of the information contained herein apparently justified the high original price of $12.50, also noted in the preface. The guide enabled purchasers to go some way toward determining the availability of land in the county. The first section lists the approximately 2800 Seminoles by Blood and Freedmen in Seminole County on the final rolls when lands were allotted to the "Five Civilized Tribes" in Oklahoma via the Curtis Act of 1898, as well as several hundred "new born" Seminoles and Freedmen added to the roles in 1905. Additional information accompanying the names provides the sex, age, and percentage of Indian blood of the person listed, as well as the page and section numbers in which his/her allotment appears in the maps that follow. Most interestingly, the guide also provides information on whether the person listed has died since the rolls were made up, with an "x" or a "y" denoting whether the Seminole in question had died before or after the allotment was made, as well as a table for calculating present age from the one given at the time of enrollment. The present copy bears several contemporary ink stamps denoting that it was the house copy of the Okemah National Bank, located in the county seat of neighboring Okfuskee County. A fascinating document of the wrangling over land that continued in Oklahoma well after statehood. We locate copies at only a small handful of institutions.