Oklahoma’s Original Residents
Humans arrived in the area now known as Oklahoma an estimated 30,000 years ago and organized into agriculture-based settlements around 2,000 years ago. Historians can trace the Wichita and the Caddo back 2,000 years, and the Osage and Apachean-speaking people were likely in the area before Europeans arrived.
By the time Spanish explorers came to Oklahoma in the 1500s, the area was also home to the Pawnee, Quapaw and Osage. The Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes also raided the region and used its land.
The Wichitas, Caddos, Apaches and Quapaws are considered the area's Indigenous tribes. A total of 39 American Indian tribes are headquartered within Oklahoma.
European Exploration and American Settlement
A number of Spanish explorers living in Mexico first came to Oklahoma in the 1500s in search of the fabled seven golden cities. In 1539, Hernando de Soto traveled through Florida into Arkansas and potentially the eastern edge of Oklahoma searching for gold. Francisco Vásquez de Coronado journeyed from New Mexico through Texas and Oklahoma in 1541 before arriving at his destination of Kansas. Upon finding no gold, he returned to Mexico.
In the early 1700s, several French adventurers explored Oklahoma. The French established trading partnerships with the Wichita, Osage, Pawnee and other Native American tribes in the region and began vying with the Spanish for control of eastern Oklahoma and surrounding states. However, by the beginning of the 1800s, no Europeans had settled in the Oklahoma region.
Oklahoma only became part of the United States in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase, first as part of the Territory of Louisiana and later within the Territory of Arkansas. In signing the Louisiana Purchase, President Thomas Jefferson envisioned part of the land as a reservation for Native Americans east of the Mississippi River. By 1820, the federal government had chosen the area now known as Oklahoma as its so-called “Indian Territory.”
Indian Removal Act
Throughout the early 1800s, state governments had already begun to sign treaties that forced various Native American tribes to give up their homelands. On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson centralized and sped up the process by signing the Indian Removal Act. The act enabled the president to negotiate removal treaties with Native American tribes east of the Mississippi River, which forced them to give up their lands and move to “Indian Territory,” or present-day Oklahoma. The main groups impacted included the Cherokee, Muscogee, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole tribes. These groups lived on a coveted 25 million acres of strategic land holdings, mainly in the states of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and North Carolina.
The tribes initially resisted removal, sending delegations to Washington, D.C. and engaging in warfare. The United States military forcefully removed tribes that refused to relocate. By 1840, nearly 100,000 Indigenous people were evicted and nearly 15,000 died of disease, exposure to elements or malnutrition along the five to six-month journey to Indian Territory. Some tribes lost up to one-third of their members, often the elderly and children. This forced eviction became known as the “Trail of Tears,” which ultimately took around 28 years to complete.
By 1883, Oklahoma had established 25 reservations for 37 tribes. Tribes that had once been nomadic and those that had never met each other were forced to settle in close proximity in boundaries created by the government. At first, Indian Territory covered most of modern-day Oklahoma, and tribes were promised that they would continue to own this territory. But land runs, auctions and allotments that gave land to settlers and railroad companies soon chipped away at the space. Indian Territory diminished to the eastern half of the state, while the western half became Oklahoma Territory.
Of the many tribes in Indian Territory, the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole nations became recognized as the “Five Civilized Tribes.” They received this name as they began assimilating to European cultural standards, including adopting Christianity, centralized government, literacy and slaveholding (many of these elements existed in their societies well before their forced removal). On February 8, 1887, the Dawes Act created a federal commission that determined which individuals in the Five Civilized Tribes would be qualified to apply for citizenship and an assignment of tribal land from the federal government. Those who didn’t make the cut lost their land.
Oklahoma Land Rush and Statehood
Toward the end of the 19th century, a growing number of white farmers and cattle ranchers moved into Oklahoma, driven by the concept of “Manifest Destiny.” The Homestead Act, which promised private citizens up to 160 acres of unassigned public lands, was applied in Oklahoma starting in 1889. Around the same time, the Curtis Act of 1898 weakened and dissolved tribal governments, putting them under federal government control.
In March 1889, President William Henry Harrison issued a proclamation to settle unassigned lands in Indian Territory; This led to the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889, with land runs by new white settlers vying for Native American lands. Land auctions gave away more Native American land to settlers.
By 1905, all available Native American lands had been opened to settlement. Desperate to preserve their territory, representatives from the Five Civilized Tribes submitted a constitution for a separate Native American state called Sequoyah. Although a large majority of voters supported the petition in the November election, Congress refused to consider the request for statehood. President Theodore Roosevelt declared that the Oklahoma Territory could only enter the Union if it did so jointly with the Indian Territory. On November 16, 1907, the Indian and Oklahoma territories combined to form the state of Oklahoma, the 46th state admitted to the Union.
