Download History - TeacherWeb

OKLAHOMA HISTORY SUMMARY
The Native American Heritage
Oklahoma's Native American population is the largest in the nation—252,420 at the 1990 census.
Several indigenous cultures existed in the area before the first European visited in 1541. Francisco
Coronado almost certainly crossed Oklahoma in that year, and Hernando De Soto may have visited
E Oklahoma. Later Juan de Oñate passed through W Oklahoma, and some other Spanish explorers
and traders and French traders from Louisiana visited the region, but there was no development of
the area.
Tribes of the Plains cultures—Osage, Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache—dominated the west; the
Wichita and other relatively sedentary tribes lived farther east. It is asserted that the first European
trading post was established at Salina by the Chouteau family of St. Louis before the territory was
transferred to the United States by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, but the land remained in control
of the sparse and nomadic native population. For the most part only traders, official explorers (notably
Stephen H. Long), and scientific and curious travelers (among them Washington Irving and George
Catlin) came into the present-day state.
Indian Territory
In 1819 the Adams-Onís Treaty with Spain defined Oklahoma as the southwestern boundary of the
United States. After the War of 1812 the U.S. government invited the Cherokee of Georgia and
Tennessee to move into the area, and a few had come to settle.
Soon intense white pressure for their lands, with the approval of President Andrew Jackson, forced
the Cherokee and the others of the Five Civilized Tribes (the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Creek,
and the Seminole) to abandon their old homes east of the Mississippi and to take up residence in
what was to become the Indian Territory . Their tragic removal is known as the Trail of Tears. They
settled on the hills and little prairies of the eastern section and built separate organized states and
communities.
The Cherokee particularly had a highly Europeanized culture, with a written language, invented by
their great leader Sequoyah, and highly developed institutions. Some of the Cherokee were
slaveholders and ran their agricultural properties in the traditional Southern plantation pattern; others
were small farmers. The Five Civilized Tribes clashed briefly with the Plains Indians, particularly
the Osage, but they were for a time free from white interference, and they were able to establish a
civilization that strongly affected the whole history of the region.
The troubles of the whites did not, however, long escape them, and the Civil War was a major
disaster. Although no major battle of the war was fought in present-day Oklahoma, there were
numerous skirmishes. Most Native Americans allied themselves with the Confederacy, but Unionist
disaffection was widespread, and individual violence was so prevalent that many fled, leaving their
farms to desolation.
As a punishment for taking the Confederate side the Five Civilized Tribes lost the western part of
the Indian Territory, and the federal government began assigning lands there to such landless
eastern tribes as the Delaware and the Shawnee, as well as to nomadic Plains tribes, who put up
strong resistance before they were subdued and settled on reservations. The territory was plagued by
lawlessness and served as a hideout for white outlaws. After the establishment of a federal court at
Fort Smith, Isaac Parker became famous as the "hanging judge."
Cattle, Railroads, and Boomers
Immediately after the Civil War the long drives of cattle from Texas to the Kansas railroad head
began to cross Oklahoma, traveling over the cattle trails that became part of Western folklore. The
best known was the Chisholm Trail . The cattle were fattened on the virgin ranges of Oklahoma, and
cattlemen began to look on the grasslands with speculative and covetous eyes.
The first railroad to cross Oklahoma was built between 1870 and 1872, and thereafter it was not
possible to keep white settlers out. They came despite proscriptive laws and treaties with the
Native Americans, and by the 1880s there was a strong admixture of whites. In addition, ranches
were developed that were nominally owned by Native Americans, but actually controlled by white
cattlemen and their cowboys. The region quickly took on a tinge of the Old West of the cattle frontier,
a tinge that it has never wholly lost.
In the 1880s land-hungry frontier farmers, the boomers, agitated to obtain the "unassigned"
lands in the western section—the lands not given to any Native American tribe. The agitation
1889
succeeded, and a large strip was opened for settlement in
. Prospective settlers lined up on
the territorial border, and at high noon they were allowed to cross on a "run" to compete in finding
and claiming the best lands. Those who illegally entered ahead of the set time were the nicknamed
the "sooners." Later other strips of territory were opened, and settlers poured in from the
Midwest and the South.
Oklahoma Territory and Statehood
The western section of what is now the state of Oklahoma became the Oklahoma Territory in 1890; it
included the Panhandle, the narrow strip of territory that, taken from Texas by the Compromise of
1850, had become a no-man's-land where settlers came in undisturbed. In 1893 the Dawes
Commission was appointed to implement a policy of dividing the tribal lands into individual holdings;
the Native Americans resisted, but the policy was finally enforced in 1906. The wide lands of the
Indian Territory were thus made available to whites.
The Civilized Tribes made the best of a poor bargain, and the Indian Territory and Oklahoma
Territory were united in 1907 to form the state of Oklahoma, with a constitution that included
provision for initiative and referendum. Already the oil boom had reached major proportions, and the
young state was on the verge of great economic development. At the same time, cotton, wheat,
and corn were major money crops, and cattleland holdings, although shrinking, were still
enormous.
The Dust Bowl
In World War I the great demand for farm products brought an agricultural boom to the state, but in
the 1920s the state fell upon hard times. Recurrent drought burned the wheat in the fields, and
overplanting, overgrazing, and unscientific cropping aided the weather in making Oklahoma part
of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Farm tenancy increased in the 1920s, and in both the east and west
the farms tended more and more to be held by large interests and to be consolidated in large blocks.
A great number of tenant farmers were compelled to leave their dust-stricken farms and went west as
migrant laborers; the tragic plight of these "Okies" is the theme of John Steinbeck's novel The
Grapes of Wrath. With the return of rains, however, and with increasing care in selecting crops
and in conserving and utilizing water and soil resources, much of the Dust Bowl again became
productive farm land. The demand for food in World War II and federal price supports for agricultural
products after the war further aided farm prosperity.
Irrigation and an Oil Boom
Large state and federal programs for conserving river water and, at the same time, meeting irrigation
needs have resulted in such constructions as the reservoir impounded by the Kerr Dam on the
Arkansas River. For the most part, these programs resulted in improved agricultural conditions
and created new recreation areas. In 1971 the opening of the Oklahoma portion of the Arkansas
River Navigation System gave the cities of Muskogee and Tulsa (at its port Catoosa) direct access
to the sea.
Oklahoma experienced another boom during the 1970s when oil prices rose dramatically. In the
mid-1980s, however, Oklahoma's economy was hurt (as it had been in the 1930s) by dependence on
a single industry, as oil prices fell rapidly.
Oklahoma City: History
Land Run Leads to City's Founding
Inhabited by Plains tribes and sold to the United States by France as a part of the 1803 Louisiana
Purchase, much of what is now Oklahoma was subsequently designated as Indian Territory. As
such, it was intended to provide a new home for tribes forced by the federal government to abandon
their ancestral lands in the southeastern United States. Many of those forced to relocate in the 1830s
were from what were called the Five Civilized Tribes—Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and
Seminole—who soon set up independent nations in the new territory. After the Civil War, however,
the pressure of westward expansion brought railroads into the Indian Territory, where the U.S.
government began to declare some land available for white settlement. Prairie land surrounding a
Santa Fe railroad single-track boxcar station was designated as a townsite when presidential
proclamation opened the central portion of Indian Territory to claims stakers on noon of April 22,
1889. Thousands crossed the borders of the "unassigned lands" at high noon when a cannon was
fired. By sunset of that day the land run had produced a tent city of 10,000 people on the townsite,
which eventually became Oklahoma City.
The settlement attained official status in 1890, just a few weeks after the western half of Indian
Territory was redesignated Oklahoma Territory, named for a Choctaw phrase meaning "red man."
Incorporated as Oklahoma City on May 23, 1890, Oklahoma City swiftly became one of the new
territory's largest cities. More railroad connections to the city helped make it a center for trade, milling,
and meat packing. The Oklahoma and Indian territories merged and were admitted to the union as
the state of Oklahoma in 1907. Oklahoma City became the state capital in 1910.
Oil Brings Prosperity
The capital city was flourishing as a financial and manufacturing center when in 1928 an oil field
beneath the city proved to be what was then the largest oil strike ever made. Oklahoma City joined
neighboring regions in the petroleum industry with vast economic benefits. A gigantic deposit at the
Mary Sudik well in Oklahoma City gushed wildly for 11 days in 1930, spewing 10,000 barrels of oil
each day in a great geyser and spreading an oily cloud that deposited petroleum as far away as 15
miles. By the time it was closed down, the Mary Sudik well had produced a total of one million barrels
of oil.
Future Points Toward Diversity
The end of the oil boom dealt the city a severe blow. During its height in the early 1980s, developers
added 5.2 million square feet of office space downtown. When the boom went bust, so did the real
estate market. By the 1990s, downtown Oklahoma City was in a decline, with few shopping areas and
too much empty office space. While the petroleum industry continues to be a solid part of Oklahoma
City's economy in the early 21st century, the region has also been involved in the development of the
state's other natural resources, such as coal and metals. In addition, the city supports such industries
as livestock, agriculture, energy, aviation, and manufacturing.
Oklahoma City made international headlines on April 19, 1995, when a Ryder truck fitted with a
homemade oil-and-fertilizer bomb exploded in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168
men, women, and children, and injuring more than 400 others. In December 1996, the Wall Street
Journal reported: "Twenty months after the bombing that vaulted it on to front pages around the
world, this gutsy city is hoping a rapidly growing economy and a $300 million public-works program
will revive one of the nation's sickest downtowns." Feelings of optimism were running high that a
dramatic comeback for the city was in the works.
In April 2000 Oklahoma City unveiled its monument to the victims of the bombing. The main
component of the memorial is 168 bronze-and-glass chairs, one for each victim, positioned in rows
that correspond to the floors of the building where the victims were when the bomb exploded. It is a
potent symbol in a city that still continues to grieve a tragedy even as it rebuilds and tries to
modernize its image.
21st century
As the 21st century dawns, many of the city's efforts at revitalization and moving forward appear to be
paying off. With up to $1 billion in new downtown investment, Oklahoma City was named one of the
"Best Places to Live in North America" by Places Rated Almanac. The city continues an economic
revitalization that has seen it move prominently into the areas of medicine, aviation, high technology,
and diversified energy resources.
Historical Information: Oklahoma Historical Society, Historical Building, 2100 North Lincoln
Boulevard, Oklahoma City, OK 73118; telephone (405)522-5209
Bibliography
See V. E. Harlow, Oklahoma History (5th ed. 1967); E. C. McReynolds, Oklahoma: A History of the
Sooner State (rev. ed. 1971); A. Marriott and C. K. Rachlin, Oklahoma (1973); A. H. Morgan and H.
W. Morgan, Oklahoma (1982); A. M. Gibson, Oklahoma: A History of Five Centuries (1984); J. S.
Morris et al., Historical Atlas of Oklahoma (3d ed. 1986).
May 3-6, 1999 tornadoes
A look back at the deadly outbreak
A slow-moving storm brought several days of severe weather to much of the South from May 3-6, 1999. The
deadliest tornadoes in decades ripped across Oklahoma late Monday the 3rd, killing at least 44 people while
demolishing entire neighborhoods. Tornadoes also killed 5 people in Kansas. The tornado that tore through
the Oklahoma City area was classified as an F-5, the strongest category, on the Fujita scale. Monday's
tornadoes also caused at least $500 million in damage to homes and businesses. Severe weather from the same
storm system also killed 1 person in Texas on Tuesday and 4 more people in Tennessee late Wednesday and
early Thursday. Experts say that the early warning system saved many lives by giving people enough time to
take cover before the storms hit. Click on the stories and links for more details about the deadly May 3-6, 1999
tornado outbreak.
Toll from May 3-6,1999 storms
DEATHS: At least 44 in Okla., five in Kan. on May 3; one
in Texas on May 4; four in Tenn. on May 5.
INJURIES: 748 in Okla., nearly 150 in Kan., more than 12
in Texas.
PROPERTY DAMAGE: More than 10,500 homes and 47
businesses destroyed in Okla.; 1,500 buildings destroyed in
Kan. Two dozen homes and a church damaged or destroyed in
Ark.; about seven blocks of DeKalb, Texas, are demolished
and 150 homes damaged.