white migrants to the West apparently preferred the West Coast to the places like Oklahoma back then. So, once the Cherokee, who were fairly similar to whites in terms of technical development, ended up in Oklahoma, would it have made sense for them to sneak away from reservation and go become assimilated settlers in the West Coast? Or was Oklahoma as good an agricultural area as any? Or were there legal rules in the West Coast preventing Native Americans from coming in as agricultural settlers the way whites were doing?
They weren’t US citizens and so couldn’t homestead.