Lone Wolf (chief) - The Jerome Commission

The Jerome Commission

The Jerome Commission was one of fifteen commissions working throughout Indian Country to allot Indian lands and to open up the last part of the United States to white settlers. The Jerome Commission came to the Kiowa, Comanche, Plains Apache’s (commonly referred to as the KCA) Reservation in 1892 to gain Indian approval to change the Medicine Lodge Treaty assurances and Indian consent to the opening of the reserve to white settlers. The Indians of the KCA reserve unanimously opposed allotment as well as any further railroad rights of way through their lands; they wanted their lands to be left as they were. The commission worked to convince the KCA tribes that they only needed 500,000 acres of land to sustain their needs and the other 2.5 million acres should be opened up for sale. David Jerome assured them that living on the new allotments would not be any different than their current life on the reservation. Lone Wolf attended the first two days of meetings to hear what the commissioners had to say and responded for the Kiowas on September 28. Lone Wolf explained that the tribes were working to change the way they had lived their lives and had made progress. Lone Wolf emphasized that if forced to take allotments it would be detrimental to the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache tribes and that the tribes had decided they did not want to allot the lands currently in their possession on the reservation. They did not want to divert from the Medicine Lodge Treaty’s terms and accept allotment. After much debating on both sides the Jerome Commissioners left for Washington, D.C. confident they had obtained the necessary signatures of three-fourths of the adult male Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache residents of the reservation as agreed upon in the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty. Lone Wolf and the members of the KCA tribes believed the signatures needed had not been met and that many of the signatures obtained were falsified.