Shelterwood

The earlier timeline featured in Shelterwood takes place in southeastern Oklahoma in 1909. The central conflict of the timeline, which focuses on the displacement and exploitation of Choctaw children by wealthy white settlers, is based on actual historical injustices perpetrated against the Choctaw people. While the novel deals specifically with the experiences of Choctaw characters, this context also closely mirrors the historical experiences of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Muscogee, and Seminole peoples during this general time frame.

Using earlier exploitative treaties with Indigenous nations as a precedent, President Andrew Jackson persuaded Congress to enact what was then referred to as the “Indian Removal Act” of 1830, which empowered the president to “grant lands west of the Mississippi in exchange for [Indigenous] lands within existing state borders” (Drexler, Ken. “Indian Removal Act: Primary Documents in American History.” Library of Congress Research Guides, 11 Oct. 2024). However, what this amounted to in practice was the forced removal of thousands of people from the Choctaw Nation and other nearby nations that originated in Mississippi and Alabama. The Choctaws were the first of five southern nations to be forcibly relocated to Oklahoma from 1831 to 1838. The journey of close to 20,000 Choctaw people (along with approximately 50,000 members of the other southern nations) was grueling and deadly. People were exposed to disease, starvation, and other hardships that claimed thousands of lives. This dark chapter of US history is known as the “Trail of Tears.” 

The Choctaw people were forcibly resettled in the southeastern corner of what is now Oklahoma. Before the creation of Oklahoma as a state in 1907, the Choctaw Nation had broader sovereignty over their land, government, and administration. However, as the US government and the Oklahoma territory prepared for Oklahoma’s statehood, they began to pass laws that whittled down Choctaw sovereignty. The Dawes Commission (1893) required that the nation assign land to individual members in allotments, rather than maintaining communal land ownership. This law opened some land to be sold primarily to white settlers. The government also established the practice of guardianship to control and administer the land allotments that were owned by anyone under 18. Because some of the land allotments provided access to valuable oil and timber resources, there was widespread abuse of the guardianship practice, and the events of Shelterwood are designed to depict such abuses.