The following is from an article about the IT in the New York Times 16 November 1895:

"While the tribal laws and courts intend to prevent crime and to punish criminals, yet the practical working of their crude and very indifferent methods of detecting criminals and of dealing with them after detection and apprehension have resulted in creating a very safe range in all this wild and unsettled country for every kind and degree of outlawry. The few settlers--white or otherwise--who would lend any assistance in running down and arresting criminals have long ago learned that for self-protection it is better for them to become the friends of and even confidents of the most noted outlaws. . . . And when Deputy Marshals are most active, and are starting on a periodical raid for filling the jails with prisoners and their pockets with fees, they are very particular as to the kind of criminal they hunt, as there are just as rich fees for running down and capturing a fellow selling a bottle of whiskey to some Indian and for hunting down and capturing a desperado who robs trains and who numbers his victims by the dozen.
Since the adjournment of Congress March 4, no less than 257 murders have been committed in the Indian Territory up to Oct. 3."

The following is a passage from a book of Fred Waite I'm working on. It might help you put into context why the New Times was interesting in broadcasting crime rates in Oklahoma.

In December, 1893, Governor W. M. Fishback of the State of Arkansas sent a widely published letter openly critical of the continued existence of an Indian Territory to President Grover Cleveland. Fishback’s primary point was that all the states of the Mississippi Valley were in chaos because of forces of constant menace in Indian Territory. Fishback also alleged the criminals finding refuge in the Territory were converting the area into a school of crime, demoralizing the tribes, and stirring up the younger Indian men to deeds of blood and theft. To support his conspiratorial argument, Fishback referred to a train robbery and murder at Olyphant, Arkansas, which netted a map from one of the perpetrators showing a route traced through Indian Territory to the scene of the robbery and on to a planned robbery near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Exaggerating his argument, Fishback declared he believed a large percentage of crimes committed west of the Alleghenies Mountains and east of the Rocky Mountains were organized and originated in the Indian Territory. The Governor further declared that in the preceding year, 61 requisitions for fugitives had been issued by states bordering the Indian Territory, and quoting a Muskogee paper, told the President that within the preceding year, Territorial murders had increased to 200. Fishback then stressed the time had arrived for the Federal Government to assert its right of eminent domain over the tribes, and that the Indian’s rights must give way to the public good and safety.
As Attorney General, it fell to Waite to respond to the Governor. In doing so, he took the opportunity, through his own open letter to the President which was picked by dozens of newspapers in surrounding states, to express the tribe’s position on the questions of the dissolution of the Chickasaw Nation, division of Chickasaw lands, and Statehood. The letter reads, in part:
“Mr. President,
I have the honor to address you on the subject of Governor Fishback’s letter, which is being thoroughly canvassed by bordering states and territory papers, seeking to destroy the Indian autonomy in the hope that it will destroy the title to a number of acres of fertile Indian lands...Governor Fishback is no more conversant with the real facts as to crimes committed in the Indian Territory than you or the Governor of New York. He has read a few sensational stories from the paid pen of land syndicates of which he has lately become a member and he can see no other road to justice that does not lead to the destruction of Indian governments that were sacredly promised by his forefathers to a defenseless nation forever...We...the aborigines, who met you at Plymouth Rock, and extended our hand of welcome... ask that we still be protected by the strong arm of the Federal Government yet awhile, until our children whom we are sparing no pains to foster into the right of true American citizens, will have reached the age of self protection.”
Other bordering state papers picked up the Fishback banner including the Wichita Eagle which editorialized: “The Indian who used to slam a paint shop on his face and sail out with a cheese knife to relieve people of their scalps no longer exists. They should no longer be given special treatment by the government. When an Indian can speak with a strong German accent and can rash the growler with a touch and delicacy of expression not equaled in Europe, it is time he was an American citizen. Congress had better drop its flapdoodle sentimentality about the American Indian and admit Oklahoma and the Indian Territory as a single state.” In less vulgar terms, the same position was taken by the Kansas City Times: “The Five Tribes can not go on forever as they are….The change must come, and this sentiment is gathering fast. It would be impossible for the tribes to manage separate statehood, at the present rate of advancement, for many years to come. With the intruder, or progressive element ousted it would never come…it is simply a question of equal, coordinate force in a single state of the two Territories now, or the Indian Territory tacked onto the state of Oklahoma later.”

And, we all know how that arguement ended.....

Thanks for a great response, Mike. It's a mystery to me from where the editorial writers and politicians of the time were able to come up with such precise-sounding figures. Were such numbers just simply invented? Given the patchwork of legal jurisdictions, the lack of any centralized crime data gathering capacities, the overlap oflaw enforcement agencies, and so forth, one must wonder about the accuracy of such numbers to the point where any resemblance between the reported numbers and the actual deeds is largely coincidental, if that.

--meursault

I frankly don't know where they got the numbers. Local editors could always go to the Court Clerk of the Federal Court, I assume that's where Fishback went, to the Clerk of the Western District of Arkansas. And, since the Federal Court system was a bureaucracy, they had to submit yearly figures to the budget and control people in Washington. I suppose if it was a slow news day, the New York Times could have its Washington correspondent run by and ask somebody. Or, the Judiciary may have submitted the figures to the Congressional appropriations people and the reporters got ahold of 'em. I don't believe there were that many murders but if they counted manslaughter, the popular charge to tag on the winner of self defense type shoot outs in the category, maybe there were that many incidents. But, my impression is that the use of such figures in these articles was as a hammer to make a point and the point maker was not too concerned with accuracy.