Bolich, D. W.

Chromolithographed map (18 x 15 3/4 in.; 459 x 404 mm), large vignette of the seal of the proposed state in the upper left. Accompanied by a first edition of the Constitution of the State of Sequoyah (Muskogee: Phoenix Printing Co., 1905), with which the map was issued (second issue with union bug replacing the page number 68 on the last page).

Map handsomely framed and glazed with UVIII Plexiglass. Constitution stapled as issued; first and last two leaves detached, first leaf torn and chipped, last leaf lacking portion of lower margin, both without loss of text.

Hargrett 221 (first issue); Rader 2011; Streeter sale 1:605

Sequoyah was a proposed state to be established from the Indian Territory in the eastern part of present-day Oklahoma. In 1905 a constitutional convention held by delegates from the "Five Civilized Tribes"—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole peoples—drafted a state constitution that was approved overwhelmingly by the territory's voters. When Congress voted against the proposal, President Theodore Roosevelt suggested a compromise that would allow the Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory to join the Union as a single state; under the name Oklahoma, the two territories became the forty-sixth state on 16 November 1907. "The map is of great interest" (Streeter), dividing the proposed state into forty-eight counties. The names, if not the boundaries, of twenty of the Sequoyah counties are preserved in Oklahoma.