An article (see below) in the Everett Northwest Worker of August 23rd challenges the usual portrayal of recent rebellion in southeastern Oklahoma as being merely a riot caused by “slackers” bent on evading the draft. The rebellion was swiftly crushed and and the rebels rounded up.
From the San Bernardino News of August 14, 1917:
Here is the first actual photograph received of the “draft rebellion” in southeast Oklahoma, where hundreds of Indians, negroes and white tenant farmers took to the hills and wilds in an effort to evade army service. Picture shows eight draft rioters just brought in from the scene of a battle near Holdenville. Note carefully the types of men among the prisoners-the men who are leading this organized effort to defy the military army of Uncle Sam. Note, too, the ready rifles in hands of the possemen.
