The collection includes assorted newspaper clippings, pamphlets, and government reports on the "Cherokee Neutral Lands" in southeast Kansas, an area so-called by the U.S. government created as a buffer zone in the mid-19th century between the Osage who had lived there and white settlers in Missouri.

The papers in the collection concern negotiations for settlement of a land sale in Oklahoma Territory for the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Crawford, along with Matt G. Reynolds of St. Louis, D. B. Dyer of Kansas City, and John D. Miles of Oklahoma, served as attorneys employed to prosecute a suit for the land by the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. The correspondence is primarily between the four attorneys concerning their actions on behalf of the two tribes.