Red Wheat Allotment

SW 1/4, S18, T12N, R16W

In 1869 President U.S. Grant amended the Treaty of Medicine Lodge Creek to establish a reservation in western Oklahoma south of the Cherokee Outlet for the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. In 1887 Congress passed the General Allotment Act. Which called for the division of the reservation into one-square-mile sections. These were subdivided into 160-acre quarter-sections for allotment to individuals. A Cheyenne woman whose name was recorded as "Red Wheat" was allotted this quarter section prior to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Land Run of April 19, 1892. Red Wheat is not of the Cheyenne culture but is associated with Mennonite immigrants from Russia who introduced Red Turkey Winter Wheat to Oklahoma. Mennonite were among the first to do educational work with the Cheyenne and Arapaho people. Red Wheat, although a mistranslation of an Indian woman's name, is meaningful to two distinct peoples who lived and interacted with each other during the reservation period and through Oklahoma statehood after 1907.

Oklahoma Historical Society #234-1998