Partly-printed patent granting Yancey Lewis a lot in South McAlester, Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory, for the sum of eighty-two dollars. Signed "Green McCurtain," by Greenwood MCCURTAIN, Principal Chief of the Choctaw Nation, 15 September 1903, and "P.S. Mosely," by Palmer S. MOSELY, Governor of the Chickasaw Nation," 1 December, 1903. 1p, 14 x 18 1/2 in. (creasing, light toning, pencil marks). With embossed seals of the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations.

The Curtis Act of 1898 was an amendment to the Dawes Act which resulted in the break-up of tribal governments and communal lands in Indian Territory of the Five Civilized Tribes (Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee, Cherokee, and Seminole), all of which had been initially exempted from the 1887 General Allotment Act. The 1900 US Federal Census locates a Yancey Lewis (b. 1854), husband of Laura Lewis and an attorney, living in South McAlester, Indian Territory.