| A Guide to the Indian Tribes of Oklahoma, first issued in 1951 as Volume 33 of the eminent Civilization of the American Indian Series, has passed through eight printings, a ringing confirmation of its inherent value as a scholarly reference. Its republication is timely. The Guide will appear on the threshold of the centennial of the passage of the General Allotment Act. Adopted in 1887 by the United States Congress and popularly known as the Dawes Act after its author, Senator Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts, this statute drastically altered the cultures and life-styles of all the Indian tribes in Oklahoma. Its application by federal officials to each of the nations and reservations in Indian Territory, preparing American Indians for transition to the future state of Oklahoma, necessarily is a dominating theme of the Guide. |
| As the Guide appears in its ninth printing, its compelling essence must be the author's nonpareil credibility as spokesman for the sixty-seven tribes she profiles in the volume. Muriel Wright brought to the enterprise the advantage of her ethnic heritage, her exposure to learned mentors, her lifetime of productive research, and her literary experience as editor and author. |
| Muriel Wright descended from Choctaw tribal lineage. Her paternal grandfather, Allen Wright, served as principal chief of the Choctaw Nation in the period 1866 to 1870, a traumatic time for the Choctaws and other tribes of Indian Territory, the future Oklahoma, the aftermath of destructive involvement in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy. His uncommon leadership ameliorated for the Choctaws the pain of war's defeat and Reconstruction and prepared them for the new order that federal officials prepared to inflict on all tribes in Indian Territory. Principal Chief Wright also proposed the name Oklahoma for the state eventually carved from Indian Territory. Muriel Wright brought to her research and writing the strength, pride, and creative tradition of this distinguished genealogy. |
| She was additionally blessed with the tutelage of the triumvirate of Oklahoma historyJoseph Thoburn, Grant Foreman, and Edward Everett Dalewho transformed the Sooner epic from simplistic tradition and lore to objective scholarship. With this trio the Choctaw woman served a demanding apprenticeship in historical research, editing, and writing that yielded a prime bibliography of articles, essays, and books, the final major work being her Guide to the Indian Tribes of Oklahoma. She devoted her professional lifetime to the Oklahoma Historical Society, serving most of her tenure as editor of the Chronicles of Oklahoma, the state's historical quarterly. Her ethnic heritage and enlarging knowledge of the state's American Indian roots enhanced her qualifications for undertaking the monumental task of producing the Guide. Another strategic advantage, derived from her tribal heritage, that of an Indian viewpoint, she applied to this enterprise, infusing instinctive, properly placed sympathy into each tribal sketch. |
| The Guide's format follows the pattern of Frederick W. Hodge's Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico; Hodge had introduced readers to many of the tribes included in Muriel Wright's Guide. |
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