Few states can boast a motto more appropriate to its history than that of Oklahoma: Labor Omnia Vincit (Labor Conquers All Things). Situated in the southern midsection of the United States, the land has provided the environment for development by diverse inhabitants since before its discovery by Europeans in the sixteenth century. A diagonal line drawn across the panshaped state from northeast to southwest highlights the difference in geographic regions. The rolling hills of the south and east contain the Ouachita, Arbuckle, Wichita, and Kiamichi Mountains, with forests, substantial rainfall, and diversified agriculture. The drier prairie and plains of the higher elevations in the north and west support wheat production and livestock. Mammoth bones and Clovis culture spearheads uncovered near Anadarko, Oklahoma, predate the more sophisticated artifacts left in ceremonial burial sites by the Mound Builders, who established communities near Spiro, Oklahoma, in the thirteenth century. By the time of European contact, Caddo, Osage, Kiowa, Apache, and Comanche groups traversed the area.
The explorations of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and Hernando De Soto in 1541 established a Spanish claim to the vast expanse of Louisiana Territory, including what would become Oklahoma. France challenged Spain's control of the region based on the Mississippi River explorations of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, in 1682. The territory changed hands between these two colonial powers until the United States purchased it from
France in 1803. American exploration began almost immediately. Lieutenant James B. Wilkinson secured an alliance for the U.S. government with the Osage Indians and in 1805 to 1806 reported on the navigability of the Arkansas River through northeastern Oklahoma. The government trader George C. Sibley provided the first written description of the northwestern part of the state available to the American public, and promoted interest in the Oklahoma salt plains during his survey of the Santa Fe Trail in 1825 to 1826. The naturalist Thomas Nuttall and Major Stephen H. Long both reported unfavorably on the fertility of the region in similar journeys through the area in 1819 to 1820. Long's official army report labeled the Great Plains as a "Great American Desert," but provided a more comprehensive report of plant and animal life and a more accurate map than any available before. It also delineated the more productive lands in eastern Oklahoma.
Early Conflicts
From 1817 until 1842, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Creek Indians of the southeastern states faced increasing pressure by federal and state governments to voluntarily exchange their homelands for new tracts in Indian Territory encompassing all of present-day Oklahoma. Violence erupted both within the Indian groups over the issue of land cessions and between the Indians and white intruders. The Cherokee elite, led by Chief John Ross, with the aid of the missionary Samuel Austin Worcester fought removal through the U.S. court system. These actions resulted in two Supreme Court cases with decisions written by Chief Justice John Marshall: The Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and Worcester v. Georgia (1832). The latter case upheld the rights of the Cherokee Nation against the state of Georgia. The Indian Removal Act of 1830, however, gave President Andrew Jackson the authority to forcefully move the remaining Indian groups westward. The experiences of the Indians as they were marched overland horrified onlookers. Exposure, starvation, exhaustion, and disease caused a death toll estimated at one-fourth of their populations. For the Cherokees, these hardships became known as the "Trail of Tears."
Upon arrival in Indian Territory, the Five Tribes recreated themselves into autonomous nations. This period before 1860 has been called the "golden age" in Indian Territory. They formed governments patterned after the U.S. model with executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The Choctaws maintained their law enforcement unit, the Lighthorsemen. The Indians established public school systems for their children and invited American missionaries to build mission stations on their lands. The Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw nations operated male and female higher education institutions for their youth after 1845 that rivaled educational academies in most states at that time. The Cherokee Sequoyah developed an eighty-six-letter syllabary of the Cherokee language, which allowed the rapid achievement of literacy for the nation and enabled the publication of their newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix, in English and Cherokee. Holding their national land domains in common, Indians built successful stock farms, small service businesses, and cotton plantations. Some, like Robert Love and Joseph Vann, attained considerable wealth. Before removal, many of the Indian–white intermarried elite had adopted the cultural lifestyles of planters in the southern states. They owned slaves, who worked their lands in a variety of labor relationships. These slaves accompanied their Indian masters on the removal journey to Indian Territory and helped to rebuild the comfortable homes and farms of the elite. Prior to the Civil War (1861–1865), approximately10,000 slaves resided among the Indian people.
The Civil War
The Civil War created the same divisions over slavery and sectional loyalties in Indian Territory as in the adjoining states. The Confederacy sent Commissioner Albert Pike to secure treaties of alliance with the governments of all of the Five Nations in 1861. The Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Cherokees immediately formed mounted rifle regiments. Factions favoring neutrality joined the Creek Chief Opothleyaholo as he led a retreat into Kansas under attack from Confederate Indian forces. The Confederate Cherokee Colonel Stand Watie led his regiment to victory at the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas in 1862. The most significant battle in Indian Territory took place in 1863 when Union troops, loyal Indians, and African American soldiers defeated the Confederate Indian forces at Honey Springs. This allowed the Union to control Fort Gibson and the Texas Road into Indian Territory. Stand Watie continued an effective guerilla campaign against Union supply lines in Indian Territory for the remainder of the war. Promoted to Brigadier General, Watie was the last Confederate general to surrender in 1865.
The Civil War battles, destruction of property, lawless pillaging, and foraging for supplies devastated Indian Territory. More than 10,000 died from wounds, exposure, and disease. Indian and black refugees in Kansas and Texas returned to find their homes, schools, and churches vandalized or destroyed. Fields were burned, fences were torn down, and thousands of livestock were stolen. The Indian governments were in disarray, and the federal government now held them accountable for their alliance with the Confederacy. Reconstruction treaties with each of the Five Nations in 1865 to 1866 exacted a high price that would eventually lead to the dissolution of Indian Territory. The government ordered the Indian nations to abolish slavery and to incorporate the Indian freedmen into their respective nations as citizens. The agreements also included acceptance of sizable land reductions, a railroad right-of-way through Indian Territory, and a future unified government for Indian Territory. The Choctaw leader Allen Wright suggested the Choctaw word Oklahoma, meaning "the land of the red people," for the name of the new territory.
The federal government used the large tracts of land in the western half of the territory taken from the Five Nations to create reservations for a variety of Plains Indian groups. Approximately 30,000 Plains Indians were militarily disarmed, stripped of their leaders and horse herds, and forcefully confined to lands designated for them. African American military units, the Ninth and Tenth Cavalries, commanded by Benjamin Grierson, earned the respect of the Plains Indians, who gave them the name "Buffalo Soldiers." These units built Fort Sill (Lawton, Oklahoma) and policed the boundaries of the Indian lands. Conditions on the reservations deteriorated when Congress decreased appropriations and failed to honor treaty obligations made to the Plains people. Out of desperation, raiding parties left the reservation lands. Frequent skirmishes, known as the Red River War, between the military and the Indians occurred in 1874 to 1875. The most violent encounter actually occurred some years before, in 1868 near Washita in western Oklahoma. There, General George A. Custer led an attack that resulted in the deaths of the peaceful Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle, a village of approximately one hundred men, women, and children, and several hundred ponies. The Apache leader Geronimo surrendered in 1886 and remained a prisoner of war at Fort Sill until his death. One by one, the Plains Indian groups settled on their lands. By statehood, Oklahoma had become the home of sixty-seven different Indian groups.
The Reconstruction treaty alterations in the sovereignty status of the Five Nations opened the territory for exploitation. The demand for beef on Indian reservations and in eastern cities led Texas ranchers to drive herds of cattle along the East and the West Shawnee Trails and the Chisholm Trail (near present Interstate Highway 35) through Indian Territory to Kansas railheads. African Americans fleeing the South joined white citizens illegally invading the territory to take advantage of the rich farmlands. Coal deposits in the Choctaw lands created a demand for workers with mining experience. White inter-married businessmen, such as J. J. McAlester, recruited immigrants from European countries in order to develop the mineral assets. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas, Friscoe, Rock Island, and Santa Fe Railroads hired construction crews to build lines that crisscrossed the territory connecting small communities. After the turn of the century, the discovery of substantial oil deposits created instant boomtowns. Large-scale producers, such as the Glen Pool wells, increased Indian Territory production between 1904 and 1907 from one million to approximately forty-five million barrels a year. This economic development acquainted thousands of non-Indians with the potential value of these Indian lands.
Not all immigrants to Indian Territory were lawabiding citizens. The closest district court administered law enforcement for Indian Territory from Fort Smith, Arkansas, through Judge Isaac C. Parker, known as the "Hanging Judge." The territory became a haven for drifters, con men, whiskey peddlers, and hardened criminals such as the Doolin Gang, the Daltons, Jesse James, the Younger clan, Ned Christie, and the most famous female outlaw, Belle Starr. The large area of land, rough terrain, and Indian–white confrontations made maintaining order and tracking criminals more difficult for the marshals, including Bill Tilghman, Heck Thomas, and the African American Bass Reeves, who served more than thirty years in Indian Territory.
Changes in Oklahoma
Interest group pressure increased in the 1870s through the 1880s for the opening of sizable tracts of land in Indian Territory that had not been specifically assigned to Indian groups. Charles C. Carpenter, David Payne, and William L. Couch led expeditions of homesteaders called "boomers" into the Indian lands to establish colonies, defy government regulations, and open the lands to white settlement. Congress attached the Springer Amendment to the Indian Appropriations Bill in 1889 providing for the opening of the Unassigned Lands. President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation that declared the lands available for settlement on 22 April 1889. On that date, approximately 50,000 people participated in the land run to secure quarter sections. Some home seekers sneaked onto the lands illegally prior to the opening and became known as "Sooners." The 1887 Dawes Act (or General Allotment Act) provided for the abolition of tribal governments, the survey of Indian lands, and the division of reservation land into 160-acre homesteads. Between 1891 and 1895, there were four more land runs for additional areas that were added to Oklahoma Territory, which had been created on 2 May 1890. Land run disputes proved so difficult that the last western lands were added by lottery and sealed auction bids. The area controlled by the Five Nations was originally exempt, and for seventeen years the twin territories, Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory, existed side by side. But the Curtis Act of 1898 ended the independence of the Five Nations, and in spite of rigorous opposition, they, too, were forced to enroll for allotments.
Economic development and increased population led to demands for statehood. The combined population of the twin territories around 1900 approached 750,000. African American promoters, among them E. P. McCabe, recruited black migrants from the South to establish all-black communities, such as Boley, Langston, and Clearview, where freedom from race discrimination and economic uplift could be enjoyed. Approximately twenty-seven such all-black towns developed in the twin territories, leading to the speculation that Oklahoma might be made into a state exclusively for African Americans. The Indian population in Indian Territory, now outnumbered four to one by whites, hoped for the creation of two states, while the white population lobbied for a combination of the territories into a single state. Between 1889 and 1906, Congress entertained thirty-one bills for either single or joint statehood. Congress rejected an Indian state to be called Sequoyah in 1905, and President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Oklahoma Enabling Act creating one state in 1906. A constitutional convention dominated by delegates from the Democratic Party met in Guthrie in 1906 to 1907 to complete a constitution. A coalition of reformers and business and agricultural interests led by William Murray, Pete Hanraty, Charles Haskell, and Kate Barnard produced a 250,000-word document that included major Progressive Era protective measures. On 16 November 1907, Roosevelt signed the proclamation bringing Oklahoma into the union as the forty-sixth state. Oklahoma comprises seventy-seven counties with a land area of 68,667 square miles. The capitol at Guthrie was relocated to Oklahoma City after a vote of the electorate in 1910.
As the territorial days waned, popular interest in the "old Wild West" increased across the nation. Three famous Wild West shows originated in Oklahoma and provided working experience for future Hollywood and rodeo cowboy stars. Zach Mulhall created a show from his ranch near Guthrie that toured from 1900 through 1915 showcasing the talents of his daughter, Lucille. President Theodore Roosevelt invited Lucille to ride in his inaugural parade, and her performances across the United States led to what is believed to be the first use of the word "cowgirl." Mulhall's show included a young trick roper from Claremore, Oklahoma, named Will Rogers, who became Oklahoma's favorite son and a nationally celebrated performer, comedian, and political commentator in the 1920s and 1930s. Gordon "Pawnee Bill" Lillie featured his wife, May Lillie, in his show, and the Miller Brothers' 101 Ranch near Ponca City, Oklahoma, produced a popular show that toured until the Great Depression. Famous cowboys from Oklahoma included Bill Pickett, Tom Mix, and Gene Autry. Informal local rodeo competitions testing a variety of cowboy skills developed into more than one hundred rodeos yearly in Oklahoma involving events at the high school, the intercollegiate, and the professional levels.
Republican Party appointees dominated territorial politics in Oklahoma, with only a single Democratic governor, William C. Renfrow (1893–1897). The opposite has been true since statehood. Only three Republicans have been elected governor of the state. The first, Henry Bellmon, served from 1963 to 1967 and again from 1987 to 1991. Oklahoma politics since the 1950s, however, has followed a pattern of Democrat leadership in the state, but support for Republican national presidential candidates. Lyndon Johnson, in 1964, was the only Democrat to win Oklahoma's presidential vote in the last third of the twentieth century. From 1968 through the end of the twentieth century, a majority of U.S. Senate seats also went to the Republicans. Following the reports from the year 2000 census, Oklahoma dropped from six seats in the House of Representatives to five. A dome and a statue of a Native American titled "The Guardian" for the capitol building were completed in 2002. The dome had been planned for the state capitol building, originally completed in 1917, but had been abandoned because of financial commitments during World War I (1914–1918).
Oklahoma's economic development most often followed cycles of boom and bust. The state benefited from the national demands for increased production of oil and agricultural products during World War I, but the 1920s and 1930s proved to be economically and politically challenging. Two governors in the 1920s, John Walton and Henry Johnston, were impeached and removed from office. Longstanding racial tensions erupted into a race riot in Tulsa in 1921 that left the African American section of the city a burned ruin and hundreds dead or missing. Ku Klux Klan activity and smoldering Oklahoma Socialist Party discontent underscored worsening economic conditions. By the 1930s, the majority of Oklahoma farms were operated by tenant farmers, and western Oklahoma experienced the devastation of the Dust Bowl. The state treasury had a $5 million deficit, the oil market was depressed, and mass unemployment, bank failures, and fore-closures threatened the state. Thousands of impoverished Oklahomans, referred to negatively as "Okies," joined migrants from other states making their way west in search of work. The census reported a decline in the state population between 1930 and 1940 by approximately 60,000.
Boom and bust continued to mark the state's economic progress through the 1980s. World War II (1939–1945) demands for petroleum, coal, food, and cotton, as well as substantial government spending for military installations, brought a return of prosperity to the state. Following the war, Oklahoma ranked fourth in the nation in the production of petroleum and natural gas, and continued to rely on this industry and cattle and agriculture for economic growth. The Arab oil embargo and grain sales to the Soviet Union in the 1970s pushed per capita income to national levels. The 1980s produced a massive readjustment as oil prices plummeted from a high of $42 per barrel to just over $10. Wheat prices declined dramatically as well. This major downturn in primary business investments affected every sector of the state's economy and led to a determined effort to diversify economic activities through recruitment of manufacturing and technology. Trade, services, public administration, and manufacturing top the list as largest employers in the state. Cooperative planning efforts between state government and Oklahoma's forty-three colleges and universities led to innovations such as the National Weather Center. State per capita personal income increased 46 percent from 1990 to 2000.
Oklahoma, its history, and its people gained renewed national interest following the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995 by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. A national memorial now stands at the site of the tragedy, which killed 168 people. The state's population grew by 9.7 percent between 1990 and 2000 to reach 3,450,654. In 2000 Oklahoma had a larger Native American population, 273,230, than any other state in the union. The Hispanic population was the fastest growing group in the state, more than doubling in size from 86,160 in 1990 to 179,304 in 2000. Since 1950, more Oklahomans have lived in the cities than in rural areas. At the beginning of the twenty-first century Oklahoma City (506,132) ranked first in size, followed by Tulsa (393,049) and Norman (95,694).
Bibliography
Baird, W. David, and Danney Goble. The Story of Oklahoma. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.
Gibson, Arrell Morgan. Oklahoma, A History of Five Centuries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965.
Joyce, Davis D., ed. An Oklahoma I Had Never Seen Before: Alternative Views of Oklahoma History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.
Morgan, David R., Robert E. England, and George G. Humphreys. Oklahoma Politics and Policies: Governing the Sooner State. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.
Reese, Linda Williams. Women of Oklahoma, 1890–1920. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
Stein, Howard F., and Robert F. Hill, eds. The Culture of Oklahoma. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993.
Thompson, John. Closing the Frontier: Radical Response in Oklahoma, 1889–1923. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.
Wickett, Murray R. Contested Territory: Whites, Native Americans and African Americans in Oklahoma, 1865–1907. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000.
