Tribal Ownership History
The Arkansas River follows a course nearly 1,400 miles long, from its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains near Leadville, Colorado, to Memphis, Tennessee, where it spills into the Mississippi River. In between, it crosses through Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
Meandering across northeastern Oklahoma, the Arkansas River traverses the Cherokee Nation and forms part of the boundary between the Cherokee Nation, on the north, and the Choctaw Nation, on the south for a total of 96 miles.
Tribal ownership of the river dates to the Cherokee Treaty of New Echota, in 1835, and the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek between the U.S. and the Choctaw Nation in 1830. Chickasaw participation in ownership dates to the Treaty of January 17, 1837.
Because the river was a navigable stream the land under it was not allotted, that is to say it was not conveyed to individual owners when the Tribes were forced to break up their land bases in preparation for Oklahoma statehood.
Because ownership of the the land over which the river flows was not conveyed the tribes retain ownership pursuant to their original treaties. However, the State of Oklahoma claimed ownership and for many years the tribes were without resources to pursue their rights.
During the 1960s, as the federal government began work on the McClellan-Kerr Navigation Project, the Cherokees, Choctaws and Chickasaws sued the State of Oklahoma to reclaim their ownership rights. After losing two lower court decisions, the tribes appealed their case to the United States Supreme Court. In a historic 1970 decision on the eve of completion of the inland waterway, in Choctaw Nation v. Oklahoma, 397 U.S. 620 (1970) the high court confirmed the tribes' ownership of the riverbed.
This decision furnishes a great deal of detail about the legal history of the Tribal ownership of this 96 mile section of the Arkansas River, between the confluence of the Arkansas, Grand and Verdigris rivers - the "Three Forks" area near Muskogee - and the Oklahoma-Arkansas boundary, near the Garrison Ave. Bridge between the Cherokee Nation and Fort Smith, Ark.
The Cherokee Nation has a 100 percent interest in the riverbed and banks between Three Forks and the confluence with the Canadian River below Webbers Falls. Between the mouth of the Canadian River and the Arkansas/Oklahoma state line, the interest in the riverbed is divided between the Cherokee Nation and the Choctaw Nation. The Cherokee Nation owns a one-half interest in the bed and banks in this" lower" stretch of the river. The other half interest is split between the Choctaws, with a three-eighths interest, and the Chickasaw, with a one-eighth ownership interest. See Riverbed Ownership for more information
After years of negotiation following the Supreme Court ruling, the tribes were able to reach a settlement agreement with the United States government over the use of the riverbed. Late in 2002 the Congress passed the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Nations Claims Settlement Act whereby the Tribes received payment for past damages and for the value of dry-bed claim areas in the lower reach of the river in exchange for a relinquishment of all claims to there dry bed claim areas.
Presently, the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, are completing plats representing the ordinary high water mark (OHWM) of the 2003 left and right bank of the Arkansas River, as digitized from aerial photography, (identifying said riverbed as instructed by the Settlement Act Public Law No. 107-331, enacted December 13, 2002). The Tribes will continue to own the wet bed of the river from bank to bank as well as small amounts of dry-bed lands .
