Portal:History of Oklahoma
Portal maintenance status: (October 2018)
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Introduction
The history of Oklahoma refers to the history of the state of Oklahoma and the land that the state now occupies. Areas of Oklahoma east of its panhandle were acquired in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, while the Panhandle was not acquired until the U.S. land acquisitions following the Mexican–American War.
Most of Oklahoma was set aside as Indian Territory before the Civil War. It was opened for general settlement around 1890—the "Sooners" were settlers who jumped the gun. Statehood came to the poor ranching and farming state in Oklahoma, but soon oil was discovered and new wealth poured in.
Selected general articles
The Tulsa race riot, sometimes referred to as the Tulsa massacre, Tulsa pogrom, or Tulsa race riot of 1921, took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when a mob of white citizens attacked residents and businesses of the African-American community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the history of the United States. The attack, carried out on the ground and by air, destroyed more than 35 blocks of the district, at the time the wealthiest black community in the U.S.
More than 800 people were admitted to hospitals and more than 6,000 black residents were arrested and detained, many for several days. The Oklahoma Bureau of Vital Statistics officially recorded 36 dead, but the American Red Cross declined to provide an estimate. Read more...
The Osage Indian murders is a series of murders of Osage people in Osage County, Oklahoma in the early 1920s; newspapers described the increasing number of unsolved murders as the "Reign of Terror". Estimates are that 60 or more wealthy, full-blood Osage native Americans were killed from 1921 to 1925. The murders appear to have been committed by people intent on taking over the great wealth of the Osage, whose land was producing valuable oil, and who each had headrights that earned lucrative annual royalties. Investigation by law enforcement, including the predecessor to the FBI, also revealed extensive corruption among local officials involved in the Osage guardian program. Most of the murders were never prosecuted, but some men were convicted and sentenced.
Congress changed the law to prohibit non-Osage from inheriting headrights from Osage with half or more Native American ancestry. The US government continued to manage the leases and royalties from oil-producing lands, and the tribe became concerned about these assets. In 2000 the Osage Nation filed a suit against the Department of the Interior, alleging that it had not adequately managed the assets and paid people the royalties they were due. The suit was settled in 2011 for $380 million and commitments to improve program management. Read more...- The Cooper Bison Kill Site is an archaeological site near Fort Supply in Harper County, Oklahoma, United States. Located along the Beaver River, it was explored in 1993 and 1994 and found to contain artifacts of the Folsom tradition, including arrowheads. It is believed that these artifacts are the results of hunters killing bison in an arroyo. The hunters of this culture found the site continuously useful; the known artifacts are believed to be the results of three different hunts.
Archaeology in America described the Cooper Site as "...a gully feeding the North Canadian River," which contained evidence of three separate kills, with between twenty and thirty animals in each kill. All three kills occurred during late summer or early fall, and each kill contained the remains of cows, calves and young bulls. Tools found at the site consisted only of projectile points and large flake knives. Read more...
Comanches of West Texas in war regalia. Painting by Lino Sánchez y Tapia, circa 1830s
The Antelope Hills expedition was a campaign from January–May 1858 by the Texas Rangers and members of other allied Native American tribes against Comanche and Kiowa villages in the Comancheria. It began in western Texas and ended in a series of fights with the Comanche tribe on May 12, 1858, at a place called Antelope Hills by Little Robe Creek, a tributary of the Canadian River in what is now Oklahoma. The hills are also called the "South Canadians," as they surround the Canadian River. The fighting on May 12, 1858, is often called the Battle of Little Robe Creek. Read more...
Map of states and counties affected by the Dust Bowl between 1935 and 1938 originally prepared by the Soil Conservation Service. The most severely affected counties are colored .
The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent the aeolian processes (wind erosion) caused the phenomenon. The drought came in three waves, 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the high plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years. With insufficient understanding of the ecology of the plains, farmers had conducted extensive deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains during the previous decade; this had displaced the native, deep-rooted grasses that normally trapped soil and moisture even during periods of drought and high winds. The rapid mechanization of farm equipment, especially small gasoline tractors, and widespread use of the combine harvester contributed to farmers' decisions to convert arid grassland (much of which received no more than 10 inches (~250 mm) of precipitation per year) to cultivated cropland.
During the drought of the 1930s, the unanchored soil turned to dust, which the prevailing winds blew away in huge clouds that sometimes blackened the sky. These choking billows of dust – named "black blizzards" or "black rollers" – traveled cross country, reaching as far as the East Coast and striking such cities as New York City and Washington, D.C. On the plains, they often reduced visibility to 3 feet (1 m) or less. Associated Press reporter Robert E. Geiger happened to be in Boise City, Oklahoma, to witness the "Black Sunday" black blizzards of April 14, 1935; Edward Stanley, Kansas City news editor of the Associated Press coined the term "Dust Bowl" while rewriting Geiger's news story. While the term "the Dust Bowl" was originally a reference to the geographical area affected by the dust, today it usually refers to the event itself (the term "Dirty Thirties" is also sometimes used). Read more...
The Green Corn Rebellion was an armed uprising that took place in rural Oklahoma on August 2 and 3, 1917. The uprising was a reaction by radicalized European-Americans, tenant farmers, Seminoles, Muscogee Creeks and African-Americans to an attempt to enforce the Selective Draft Act of 1917 and was so-called due to the purported plans of the rebels to march across the country, eating "green corn" on the way for sustenance. Betrayed by an informer in their midst, the country rebels met with a well-armed posse of townsmen, with whom shots were exchanged and three people killed. In the aftermath of the incident, scores of arrests were made and the Socialist Party of America, formerly strong in the region, was discredited in the public eye for allegedly having attempted to foment revolution. The incident was also used as a pretext for national reprisals against the Industrial Workers of the World and the Socialist Party of America. Read more...
Battle of Washita from Harper's Weekly, December 19, 1868
The Battle of Washita River (also called Battle of the Washita or the Washita Massacre) occurred on November 27, 1868 when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th U.S. Cavalry attacked Black Kettle’s Southern Cheyenne camp on the Washita River (near present-day Cheyenne, Oklahoma).
They were the most isolated band of a major winter encampment along the river of numerous Native American tribal bands, totaling thousands of people. But Custer's forces attacked their village because scouts had followed the trail of a party that had raided white settlers and passed through it. Black Kettle and his people had been at peace and were seeking peace. Custer's soldiers killed women and children in addition to warriors, although they also took many captive to serve as hostages and human shields. The number of Cheyenne killed in the attack has been disputed since the first reports. Read more...- The Bridge War, also called the Red River Bridge War or the Toll Bridge War, was a 1931 bloodless boundary conflict between the U.S. states of Oklahoma and Texas over an existing toll bridge and a new free bridge crossing the Red River.
The Red River Bridge Company, a private firm owned by Benjamin Colbert, had been operating a toll bridge between Durant, Oklahoma, and Denison, Texas, carrying U.S. Route 69 and U.S. Route 75. Texas and Oklahoma had jointly built a new, free span northwest of the existing toll bridge. Read more...
Oklahoma (/ˌoʊkləˈhoʊmə/ (
listen)) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, Texas on the south, New Mexico on the west, and Colorado on the northwest. It is the 20th-most extensive and the 28th-most populous of the fifty United States. The state's name is derived from the Choctaw words okla and humma, meaning "red people". It is also known informally by its nickname, "The Sooner State", in reference to the non-Native settlers who staked their claims on land before the official opening date of lands in the western Oklahoma Territory or before the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889, which dramatically increased European-American settlement in the eastern Indian Territory. Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory were merged into the State of Oklahoma when it became the 46th state to enter the union on November 16, 1907. Its residents are known as Oklahomans (or colloquially, "Okies"), and its capital and largest city is Oklahoma City.
A major producer of natural gas, oil, and agricultural products, Oklahoma relies on an economic base of aviation, energy, telecommunications, and biotechnology. Both Oklahoma City and Tulsa serve as Oklahoma's primary economic anchors, with nearly two thirds of Oklahomans living within their metropolitan statistical areas. Read more...- During the American Civil War, most of what is now the U.S. state of Oklahoma was designated as the Indian Territory. It served as an unorganized region that had been set aside specifically for Native American tribes and was occupied mostly by tribes which had been removed from their ancestral lands in the Southeastern United States following the Indian Removal Act of 1830. As part of the Trans-Mississippi Theater, the Indian Territory was the scene of numerous skirmishes and seven officially recognized battles involving both Native American units allied with the Confederate States of America and Native Americans loyal to the United States government, as well as other Union and Confederate troops.
A total of 7,860 Native Americans participated in the Confederate Army, as both officers and enlisted men; most came from the Five Civilized Tribes: the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole nations. The Union organized several regiments of the Indian Home Guard to serve in the Indian Territory and occasionally in adjacent areas of Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas. Read more...
The 2005 University of Oklahoma bombing occurred on October 1, 2005 at approximately 7:30 p.m. CDT, when a bomb went off near the George Lynn Cross Hall on Van Vleet Oval on the University of Oklahoma (OU) main campus. The blast took place less than 200 yards west of Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, where 84,501 spectators were attending a football game. The bomber, OU student Joel "Joe" Henry Hinrichs III, was killed in the explosion; no one else was killed.
After the incident, speculation began immediately about Hinrichs' motivation and the number of accomplices, if any. An off-duty police officer noted a discussion Hinrichs had with a local feed store owner about ammonium nitrate and had begun an investigation, one heightened by innuendo regarding the Pakistani heritage of the bomber's roommate. Terrorism-related speculation further erupted when the explosive agent was found to be TATP, an explosive of similar manufacture, though separate makeup, to the compound used in the July 2005 London bombings, as well as in an attempt to destroy a transatlantic flight by igniting a shoe and by Hamas in clandestine devices intended for detonation by suicide bombers. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and local authorities concluded in 2006 that Hinrichs was alone and had no assistance from other groups, but could not prove or disprove allegations that Hinrichs intended to enter the packed stadium and kill football fans along with himself. Read more...
The Comanche–Mexico Wars was the Mexican theater of the Comanche Wars, a series of conflicts from 1821 to 1870s which consisted of large-scale raids into northern Mexico by Comanches and their Kiowa allies which left thousands of people dead. The Comanche raids were sparked by the declining military capability of Mexico in the turbulent years after it gained independence in 1821, plus a large and growing market in the United States for stolen Mexican horses and cattle.
By the time the United States army invaded northern Mexico in 1846 during the Mexican–American War the region was devastated. Comanche raids into Mexico continued until 1870. The Comanche were finally defeated by the U.S. in 1875 and forced onto a reservation. Read more...- The Cutthroat Gap massacre occurred in 1833, "The Year the Stars Fell" in Oklahoma. A group of Osage warriors charged into a Kiowa camp and brutally slaughtered the women, children and elderly there. Most of the warriors of this group of Kiowas, headed by Chief A'date (IPA: [ɔ́ːtɔ́ːtè]) or "Islandman" had left to raid a band of Utes or had gone buffalo hunting. The camp was left mainly unguarded and when the Osage came, the Kiowas had no choice but to flee. The Osage killed approximately 150 Kiowa people and took their sacred Tai-me (IPA: [thã́jmẽ́]) medicine bundle and two children captive. Read more...
Spiro Mounds (34 LF 40) is a major Northern Caddoan Mississippian archaeological site located in present-day Eastern Oklahoma. The 80-acre site lies near the Arkansas River in Fort Coffee, seven miles north of the town of Spiro.
Between the 9th and 15th centuries, the local indigenous people created a powerful religious and political center, culturally linked to the Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere (MIIS). Spiro was a major western outpost of Mississippian culture, which dominated the Mississippi Valley and its tributaries for centuries. Spiro Mounds is under the protection of the Oklahoma Historical Society and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Read more...
The Territory of Arkansas, initially organized as the Territory of Arkansaw, was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 2, 1819 until June 15, 1836, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Arkansas. Read more...
The Territory of Oklahoma was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 2, 1890, until November 16, 1907, when it was joined with the Indian Territory under a new constitution and admitted to the Union as the State of Oklahoma.
The 1890 Oklahoma Organic Act organized the western half of Indian Territory and a strip of country known as No Man's Land into Oklahoma Territory. Reservations in the new territory were then opened to settlement in land runs later that year and in 1891 and 1893. Read more...
The Louisiana Purchase (French: Vente de la Louisiane "Sale of Louisiana") was the acquisition of the Louisiana territory (828,000 sq mi (2,140,000 km2; 530,000,000 acres)) by the United States from France in 1803. The U.S. paid fifty million francs ($11,250,000) and a cancellation of debts worth eighteen million francs ($3,750,000) for a total of sixty-eight million francs ($15 million, equivalent to about $302 million in 2016). The Louisiana territory included land from fifteen present U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The territory contained land that forms Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; the portion of Minnesota west of the Mississippi River; a large portion of North Dakota; a large portion of South Dakota; the northeastern section of New Mexico; the northern portion of Texas; the area of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide; Louisiana west of the Mississippi River (plus New Orleans); and small portions of land within the present Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Its non-native population was around 60,000 inhabitants, of whom half were African slaves.
The Kingdom of France controlled the Louisiana territory from 1699 until it was ceded to Spain in 1762. In 1800, Napoleon, then the First Consul of the French Republic, hoping to re-establish an empire in North America, regained ownership of Louisiana. However, France's failure to put down the revolt in Saint-Domingue, coupled with the prospect of renewed warfare with the United Kingdom, prompted Napoleon to sell Louisiana to the United States to fund his military. The Americans originally sought to purchase only the port city of New Orleans and its adjacent coastal lands, but quickly accepted the bargain. The Louisiana Purchase occurred during the term of the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Before the purchase was finalized, the decision faced Federalist Party opposition; they argued that it was unconstitutional to acquire any territory. Jefferson agreed that the U.S. Constitution did not contain explicit provisions for acquiring territory, but he asserted that his constitutional power to negotiate treaties was sufficient. Read more...
Indian removal was a forced migration in the 19th century whereby Native Americans were forced by the United States government to leave their ancestral homelands in the eastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River, specifically to a designated Indian Territory (roughly, modern Oklahoma). The Indian Removal Act was signed by Andrew Jackson, who took a hard line on Indian removal, but it was put into effect primarily under the Martin van Buren administration.
Indian removal was a consequence of actions first by European settlers to North America in the colonial period, then by the United States government and its citizens until the mid-20th century. The policy traced its direct origins to the administration of James Monroe, though it addressed conflicts between European Americans and Native Americans that had been occurring since the 17th century, and were escalating into the early 19th century as white settlers were continually pushing westward. The Indian Removal Act was the key law that forced the removal of the Indians, and was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson on May 28, 1830. Read more...
The State of Sequoyah was a proposed state to be established from the Indian Territory in the eastern part of present-day Oklahoma. In 1905, with the end of tribal governments looming (as prescribed by the Curtis Act of 1898), Native Americans of the Five Civilized Tribes—the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole—in Indian Territory proposed to create a state as a means to retain control of their lands. Their intention was to have a state under Native American constitution and governance. The proposed state was to be named in honor of Sequoyah, the Cherokee who created a writing system in 1825 for the Cherokee language. Read more...
As general terms, Indian Territory, the Indian Territories, or Indian country describe an evolving land area set aside by the United States Government for the relocation of Native Americans who held aboriginal title to their land. In general, the tribes ceded land they occupied in exchange for land grants in 1803. The concept of an Indian Territory was an outcome of the 18th- and 19th-century policy of Indian removal. After the Civil War (1861–1865), the policy of the government was one of assimilation.
The term Indian Reserve describes lands the British government set aside for indigenous tribes between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River in the time before the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783). Read more...
The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist truck bombing on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States on April 19, 1995. Perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the bombing happened at 9:02am and killed at least 168 people, injured more than 680 others, and destroyed one-third of the building. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings within a 16-block radius, shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings, and destroyed or burned 86 cars, causing an estimated $652 million worth of damage. Extensive rescue efforts were undertaken by local, state, federal, and worldwide agencies in the wake of the bombing, and substantial donations were received from across the country. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) activated 11 of its Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces, consisting of 665 rescue workers who assisted in rescue and recovery operations. Until the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Oklahoma City bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of the United States, and remains the deadliest incident of domestic terrorism in the country's history.
Within 90 minutes of the explosion, McVeigh was stopped by Oklahoma Highway Patrolman Charlie Hanger for driving without a license plate and arrested for illegal weapons possession. Forensic evidence quickly linked McVeigh and Nichols to the attack; Nichols was arrested, and within days, both were charged. Michael and Lori Fortier were later identified as accomplices. McVeigh, a veteran of the Gulf War and a U.S. militia movement sympathizer, had detonated a Ryder rental truck full of explosives parked in front of the building. His co-conspirator, Nichols, had assisted with the bomb's preparation. Motivated by his dislike for the U.S. federal government and unhappy about its handling of the Ruby Ridge incident in 1992 and the Waco siege in 1993, McVeigh timed his attack to coincide with the second anniversary of the deadly fire that ended the siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. Read more...
The Crazy Snake Rebellion, also known as the Smoked Meat Rebellion or Crazy Snake's War, was an incident in 1909 that at times was viewed as a war between the Creek people and American settlers. It should not be confused with an earlier, bloodless, conflict in 1901 involving much of the same people. The conflict consisted of only two minor skirmishes, and the first was actually a struggle between a group of marginalized African Americans and a posse formed to punish the alleged robbery of a piece of smoked meat. Read more...- After years of raids—led by the leaders of the Boomers activist movement such as David L. Payne—into the central area of what would become the U.S. state of Oklahoma, Congress finally agreed to open what was dubbed the Unassigned Lands. Seven land runs in all took place in Oklahoma, beginning with the initial and most famous Land Rush of April 22, 1889, which gave rise to the terms "Eighty-Niner" (a veteran of that run) and "Sooner." That area led to today's Canadian, Cleveland, Kingfisher, Logan, Oklahoma, and Payne counties of Oklahoma.
The nearly two million acres of land opened up to white settlement was located in Indian Territory, a large area that once encompassed much of modern-day Oklahoma. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 eventually led to the Trail of Tears. Creek and Seminole tribes were granted area known before the Land Run as the Unassigned Lands. Some American Indian tribes signed a treaty of alliance with the Confederacy in 1861. Initially considered unsuitable for white colonization, Indian Territory was thought to be an ideal place to relocate Native Americans who were removed from their traditional lands to make way for white settlement. The relocations began in 1817, and by the 1880s, Indian Territory was a new home to a variety of tribes, including the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, Cheyenne, Commanche, and Apache. Read more...
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Selected images
Apachean tribes ca. 18th century: WA – Western Apache, N – Navajo, Ch – Chiricahua, M – Mescalero, J – Jicarilla, L – Lipan, Pl – Plains Apache
Gushers brought in many of Oklahoma's early oil fields—this one on February 21, 1922, near Okemah.
Cartoonist's rendering of Theodore Roosevelt's initial reaction to the Oklahoma Constitution.
Routes to Indian Territory taken by the Five Civilized Tribes, often known as the Trail of Tears.
Map showing British territorial gains following the Treaty of Paris in pink, and Spanish territorial gains after the Treaty of Fontainebleau in yellow.
Poor mother and children during the Great Depression. Elm Grove, Oklahoma
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