Editing Cherokee Outlet (section)

==Cattle grazing==
[[File:Jessechisholm.jpg|thumb|upright|Jesse Chisholm, a mixed-blood Cherokee, pioneered cattle drives through the Cherokee Outlet.]]
[[File:Cattle-trails.jpg|thumb|upright|Most of the cattle drives going north from Texas passed through the Cherokee Outlet.]]

In 1865, mixed-blood Cherokee [[Jesse Chisholm]] laid out the [[Chisholm Trail]] from [[Texas]] to [[Kansas]], and the next year, the first large cattle herd was driven through the Cherokee Outlet from Texas to the railroad in [[Abilene, Kansas]]. The Chisholm Trail passed through the present city of Enid and entered Kansas near [[Caldwell, Kansas|Caldwell]]. [[Cattle drives in the United States|Cattle drives]] following the Chisholm Trail, and numerous side trails continued to pass through the outlet for the next 20 years.<ref>"Cattle drives started in earnest after the Civil War," ''Texas Almanac,''[https://texasalmanac.com/topics/agriculture/cattle-drives-started-earnest-after-civil-war], accessed 22 Nov 2018</ref> The Cherokees collected, but with difficulty, 10 cents per head of cattle passing through the outlet.<ref>Smith and Teague, p. 283</ref>

The Texans began to halt in the outlet to graze and winter their cattle. Ranchers in Kansas also began to use the outlet for grazing their herds. The Cherokees attempted to collect fees for grazing rights, which were confirmed by the  [[Senate of the United States|U.S. Senate]] in 1878, but collection of the fees was difficult. In 1880, cattlemen, mostly Kansans, formed the Cherokee Strip Livestock Association to manage a chaotic situation in the outlet. After the incorporation of the association in Kansas in 1883, the Cherokees negotiated a five-year lease of the outlet to the association for $100,000 per year. At the end of five years, the Cherokee [[Tribal Council]] put the lease up for bid, hoping to get a better price, and leased it again to the Cherokee Strip Livestock Association for $200,000 annually. The more than 100 members of the Livestock Association divided up the land, erecting fences and corrals and building ranch houses.<ref>Snodgrass, pp. 17–19</ref><ref name=clsa>{{cite book|author=Savage, William|title=The Cherokee Strip Live Stock Association: Federal Regulation and the Cattleman's Last Frontier|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press|year=1990|isbn=0-8061-2271-4}}</ref>

Also during the 1880s, Captain Bill McDonald, acting as deputy [[U.S. marshal]] for the Southern District of Kansas and the Northern District of Texas, cleared the Cherokee Outlet of cattle thieves and train robbers, who had taken to hiding out in what they thought was a kind of "no-man's land".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fmc43| title=Harold J. Weiss, Jr., and Rie Jarratt, 'McDonald, William Jesse'|publisher=tshaonline.org|access-date=March 9, 2010}}</ref>