Actually, they didn’t knowingly “sell” their land. The government gave a small amount of acreage to each family. The problem was, “agents”, white men, usually lawyers, were hired by the government to “manage” the interests of the recipients. They then proceeded to steal the allotments, getting unknowlegable Indians, to sign away rights, then told them, “I’m sorry. There’s no land left. I had to sell it as payment for me managing your allotment”. Which of course, was a lie -— the Indians weren’t required to pay for them to manage their affairs; the agents were paid a fee by the government. But Indians didn’t know that. And some of the recipients were just outright killed for their allotments. One of our town’s former oil magnates, became one of the wealthiest men in our area, by stealing land, which had oil on it, this way. He’s still touted as a great man, and his mansion is open for viewing at Christmastime. Same thing happened to the Osage.
It was a terrible thing that was done to most Indians around here. Until oil was discovered, nobody cared about land around here. It was given to Indians for reparations. But once oil was discovered, those greedy white men had to have it! I had an elderly patient, whose grandfather was told, “ I’m sorry. The value of your land had to be sold to pay my fees, and almost nothing is left, but I’ve brought you a brand new wood stove, that I managed to buy with what was left.”
Having said all that, there’s really no fair way to return the land to the Indians, since a lot of it was purchased by unsuspecting whites over the last 120 years, or so. But there are still vast stretches of land, including huge ranches, held by descendants of those thieves.
So should the descendants be forced to pay for things their ancestors did? Would you want to be responsible for your ancestors? The fact is all we have now is stories, the people involved have long died. Maybe x swindled y out of their land and maybe not. People make bad decisions all the time, often from ignorance. People also do decide to sell land. I wish I had all the land my ancestors owned too but pretty sure that is not going to happen. Too much time has passed to try to sort it out now. Those descendants of people you claim were thieves have paid taxes on that land, have operated businesses on that land for many years and have followed the laws to keep that land. So you just want to take it from them and give it to other people who may or may not have actually had the land taken from an ancestor by an ancestor of theirs?