Edward Everett Dale has written nine books in the fields of western history, among the best known of which are The Range Cattle Industry, A History of Oklahoma, and Frontier Trails. His interest in the American Indian is of long standing. Aside from his study of Indian history, particularly that of the Five Civilized Tribes, he spent a year in field work among the tribes of the United States as a member of the Indian Survey Staff of the Brookings Institution. Mr. Dale is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, and his A.M. and Ph.D. degrees are from Harvard, where he studied under Frederick Jackson Turner. He is now professor and head of the Department of History in the University of Oklahoma.

Gaston Litton was educated at the University of Southern California and at the Library School of the University of Oklahoma. He has also done graduate work in history in the letters institution. He is at present a member of the staff of the National Archives in Washington, D.C., attached to the Archives of the Office of Indian Affairs.

James W. Parins (1939-2013) was a Professor of English and Associate Director of the Sequoyah National Research Center at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Among numerous articles and books about American Indians, he is the coeditor of the Encyclopedia of Indian Removal and author of Elias Cornelius Boudinot: A Life on the Cherokee Border.