Somewhat amazingly, today’s stamp celebrates one of the most shameful episodes in American history. The 3-cent stamp issued on October 15, 1948 says “Indian Centennial” followed by a list of five tribes—Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole – and then at the bottom, the statement “The Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma.”

So apparently, this is a stamp that celebrates the fact that members of the five tribes came to Oklahoma 100 years ago. But let’s be clear. The tribes didn’t exactly come there voluntarily. They were forced to move there from their homes in the southeastern U.S. Thousands of people died on that journey, which became known as the “Trail of Tears.” Moreover, while they were promised that the new land would be their forever, in the 1890s that land was opened to white settlers and became the state of Oklahoma.

Before exploring the question of why anyone would think of celebrating this in a stamp, it’s worth explaining the reference to the five “civilized tribes.” The term refers to the fact that European settlers considered these tribes “civilized” because many members had adopted European ways of life. (Tribes that didn’t were considered “savages.”) The term became so widespread that it is used in federal laws related to those tribes. However, in more recent years, members of those tribes have declared that such language is a form of colonization and control by white society and that it would be more appropriate to refer to the tribes as the Five Nations.

This still begs the question as to why someone thought it was a good idea to celebrate the forced relocation of the “civilized tribes” to what became Oklahoma and why the centennial was 1848 when Native Americans had been relocated to the area for several years before that. Apparently before 1848, there wasn’t anything called the Five Civilized Tribes. Rather, only three tribes in the southeastern United States generally made treaties with the government. The Choctaw and Chickasaw were closely related and usually treated together. This was also true of the Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole tribes. The Cherokees were the third tribe. But on October 12, 1848, the Chickasaws withdrew from the Choctaw Nation and established relations with the United States independently. Later in the same month, the Muscogee Nation gave the Seminoles their own independent government. Thus, the “Five Civilized Tribes” came into being in October 1848.

In the 1930s, Grant Foreman used fragments from thousands of manuscripts and in official and unofficial reports to document the history of the forced migration, as well as the creation of the Five Civilized Tribes in a series of seminal books. Foreman also was the prime mover behind a two-day “Indian Centennial” commemoration in 1948 that would celebrate “100 Years of Progress” and be held in Muskogee, Oklahoma, which is where the Indian Agency overseeing the resettlement had its headquarters.

As part of the planning for the event, in 1947 organizers asked the Post Office to issue a commemorative stamp for the occasion. The Postmaster General informed them that the year’s commemorative stamps were already set and none would be issued for the Indian Centennial. Undaunted, the committee got members of the state’s congressional delegation to sponsor legislation requiring the Post Office issue a stamp commemorating the centennial. They did; the measure passed; it was signed into law by President Harry S. Truman in May 1948; and the stamp was released on October 15 as part of the celebration. Moreover, in late September, Truman also made a campaign stop in Muskogee where he spoke to a crowd of at least 25,000 people.

So the event and the stamp did have their roots in a recognition of how the tribes came to be in Oklahoma. But it also appears that in doing so the organizers and the stamp did so in ways that downplayed or even ignored the harsh and brutal realities behind that story and in doing so, left us with a stamp that is almost as bizarre as the 1951 stamp honoring Confederate war veterans or the various stamps that have honored Robert E. Lee. When I look at such stamps, I can only shake my head and ask “what were they thinking?”

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.