INDIAN MERIDIAN (Indian Meridian and Indian Base Line). Located approximately
twelve miles west of the 97th meridian. As provided in treaties
between the U.S. government and the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations in 1866,
Indian land east of the 98th meridian was surveyed according to the
public land survey system of the U.S. General Land Office. Established in 1785
and first applied to the Northwest Territory, this system of land survey used a
mathematically determined method to divide the public domain into standard units
called "sections." In Oklahoma, the survey into standard units was
accomplished in 1870 by E. N. Darling and Thomas H. Barrett. According to the
1871 Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, an initial
point was arbitrarily selected about one mile south of Fort Arbuckle (at a point
approximately six miles west of present Davis, in Murray County). From Initial
Point, a north-south line called the Indian Meridian and an east-west line
called the Indian Base Line were surveyed across all of present Oklahoma except
No Man's Land (the Panhandle). Then the land was surveyed from Initial Point by
drawing township lines running north and south and range lines running east and
west. There are twenty-nine townships north and nine south of the Base Line, and
there are twenty-seven ranges east and twenty-six west of the Indian Meridian.
Their intersections form a grid of blocks measuring six miles square. Within
each block are thirty-six one-mile-square blocks called "sections."
Using these lines, all land in Oklahoma (except the Panhandle) is surveyed from
Initial Point, using Indian Meridian and Indian Base Line as determining
factors. After 1866 that portion of the Indian Meridian between the Cimarron and
Canadian rivers became the eastern border of the unoccupied public domain called
the Oklahoma District. Thus, it became one of the boundary lines from which
thousands made the Land Run of 1889 into the Unassigned
Lands.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Berlin B. Chapman, "Indian Meridian" (manuscript,
1967, Archives and Manuscripts Division, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma
City. Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office for the Year
1871 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1872).
Dianna Everett
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