Rutus Sarlls (1848–1913) was a late 19th Century Euro-American settler of South McAlester, Indian Territory, and was a prominent attorney, businessman, inventor, and political candidate.
He led the path to provide for non Native American property ownership in the Indian Territory (which later became part of the new State of Oklahoma), and is most notable for having prevailed in a United States Supreme Court case where his conviction for selling liquor to Native Americans was overturned.
Sarlls was characterized as "the standard bearer for the wide open people, which is chiefly composed of the gamblers and whiskey peddlers.
One of the earliest challenges was when the Choctaw Sheriff of Tobucksy County, citing tribal law, tried to sell a three-story brick building Sarlls erected in town; he secured a Federal injunction preventing the sale on the basis that this taking violated his Equal Protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
[9] Sarlls was a proponent for of the Atoka Agreement (about which he conferred with Choctaw Chief Green McCurtain and lobbied in Washington, D.C.),[9] and later the Curtis Act, which disbanded communal lands and provided for the ability of non-Native Americans to own property, both of which set the stage for Oklahoma statehood.
The Court looked further for guidance at section 3244, Revised Statutes, which provided for separate and distinct definitions and treatments of spiritous versus malt liquors, and noted a recent Congressional amendment to prior law which added ale and beer to the list of intoxicating items prohibited for sale in Indian Territory.