Oklahoma Admitted to the Union
Oklahoma was admitted to the United States as the 46th state on November 16, 1907, following significant historical developments involving the region's Indigenous peoples and European exploration. The name "Oklahoma" comes from the Choctaw words meaning "red people," reflecting the state's deep connections to Native American history. The area was inhabited by various tribes, including the Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, and others, long before European explorers like Francisco Vásquez de Coronado arrived in the 1540s. In the 19th century, the U.S. government established the Indian Territory, which became home to the so-called "Five Civilized Tribes," who were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands in the eastern United States.
As American settlers began to encroach on the region, the traditional lifestyles of Native tribes were disrupted, and their landholdings shrank significantly due to governmental policies aimed at assimilation and land division. The creation of Oklahoma Territory in 1890 marked a significant shift as settlers pushed for statehood, culminating in the drafting of a state constitution by representatives from both Oklahoma and Indian territories. After a series of votes and conventions, Oklahoma's admission to the Union symbolized a complex intersection of cultural identity, settlement, and the long history of Indigenous displacement. Today, Oklahoma's statehood is a reminder of the region's diverse heritage and the ongoing dialogue about Native American rights and history.
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Oklahoma Admitted to the Union
Oklahoma Admitted to the Union
On November 16, 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a proclamation admitting Oklahoma into the Union as the 46th state.
The history of Oklahoma from the early days of its discovery to 20th-century statehood is inextricably woven with the fate of the Native Americans who inhabited its territory. Oklahoma, fittingly enough, derives its name from the Choctaw words okla, “people” and homma, “red.” Native tribes are known to have inhabited the area of the state long before recorded history. About A.D. 1200 a pre-Columbian civilization, which closely resembled the highly developed Mayan culture of Mexico, flourished there. Apparently this region, a section of which has been described as a “cradle of civilization in North America,” witnessed the rise and disintegration of several advanced cultures before the first Europeans arrived in the area.
In the early 1540s, Captain-General Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, at the head of a military expedition of 1,500 men, probably crossed what is now Oklahoma in his quest for the supposed riches of the mythical kingdom of Quivira. He found no gold, but before returning to Mexico City in 1542 he claimed the vast region he had traversed, including Oklahoma, for Spain. Shortly before his death that year, another Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto may have journeyed up the Arkansas River into Oklahoma. At the beginning of the next century, Juan de Oñate, having established the first settlement in the area of New Mexico, went off in search of Quivira and led a party across Oklahoma into Kansas.
Although other Spanish explorers and traders visited the area in the early 17th century, permanent settlement was not attempted. In fact, Spain lost its claim to the French, who as a result of expeditions by Louis Joliet and René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle claimed all of the vast region called Louisiana in 1682. By the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau in 1762, the French ceded to Spain that part of Louisiana west of the Mississippi River. Within a half century, the Spanish returned this huge area to France in the secret treaty of San Ildefonso of 1800. On December 20, 1803, the United States gained possession of the region, including all of Oklahoma except the northwestern panhandle, in the Louisiana Purchase.
Oklahoma had been explored by various French traders and trappers, especially by the Chouteau family of St. Louis, Missouri. In 1796 Major Jean Pierre Chouteau selected the site of Salina as a suitable location for his thriving trade with the Osage tribe, thus establishing the first permanent European settlement in the state. However, colonization was slow, and the land continued to belong to the scattered Plains tribes. In addition to the Osage there were the Kiowa, Comanche, Apache and Wichita. During the early 19th century, the wild unsettled region was unknown to most people save for a few travelers, traders, and official explorers such as Stephen H. Long. In 1824 Colonel Matthew Arbuckle constructed Forts Towson and Gibson, the first military outposts in Oklahoma.
The Indian Territory was established by Congress in 1834 as the home for the Five Civilized Tribes: Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee, all victims of American expansion and settlement in the eastern United States. The territory originally comprised all of Oklahoma, with the exception of the panhandle. In the 1830s and 1840s, some 5,000 Choctaw of Mississippi and Louisiana and 4,000 Chickasaws of Mississippi were removed to that eastern section of the Indian Territory that lay south of the Canadian and Arkansas rivers. Some 16,000 Cherokee from North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee (about 4,000 of whom died of hardship on the march) were forced along what was later called the Trail of Tears to their new home in the Indian Territory. They settled the broad northern strip, except for a small block of land in the northeastern corner that had been set aside for the Quapaw Agency. Finally some 20,000 Creek of Georgia and Alabama and 3,000 Seminole of Florida were forced into the Indian Territory. They occupied the remaining middle section between the Cherokee on one side and the Choctaw and Chickasaw on the other.
Those tribes who settled the rolling wooded hills and prairies of the eastern part of the Indian Territory adapted well to the new conditions. Making great advances in agriculture, livestock breeding, and flour milling, the prosperous tribes were soon skillfully managing their own affairs. They each formed a separate “Indian republic,” developing sophisticated political organizations. Only the Seminole failed to draw up a written constitution and establish laws.
Although the Five Civilized Tribes fought briefly with the Plains tribes, especially the Osage, they settled down peacefully to raise corn and cotton. However, the Civil War greatly affected the tribes, even though no large-scale conflict was waged on Indian Territory soil. The issue of slavery sharply divided the Five Tribes. Most of their members, as slaveholders of southern background, sided with the Confederacy, while the remainder clung to the Union. Minor but violent internal civil wars tore the Indian Territory asunder. Confederate General Stand Watie, a Cherokee, did not surrender to the federals stationed at Fort Towson until June 23, 1865, thus gaining fame as the last rebel commander to put down arms.
Following the Civil War, the United States government acted promptly to negotiate new treaties with the Five Civilized Tribes. Partly as punishment for southern supporters and partly on the grounds that the extensive tribal holdings should be shared with freed slaves and other tribes, the original Indian Territory was divided. The Cherokee reluctantly granted the United States permission to assign what had approximately been the western half of their territory to new tribes. The Seminole, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw concluded similar agreements.
From 1866 to 1883 the federal government made a number of small grants from the vast new land. Displaced tribes such as the Delaware and Shawnee and nomadic Plains tribes such as the Osage, Kansas, Wichita, Iowa, and Kickapoo were resettled onto these grants. Moreover, the United States Army rounded up other Plains tribes-Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho-and gave them land in the southwestern quarter of Oklahoma. Of the portion of Indian Territory that had been ceded to the United States, there soon remained only one major unassigned land block. It was a choice area of approximately two million acres situated near the center of the Indian Territory. The unoccupied region came to be known as the Unassigned Lands, Oklahoma District, or Old Oklahoma.
As the great tide of westward expansion gained momentum after the Civil War, the Indian Territory, once thought worthless and best “given to the Indians,” became attractive to settlers. The homesteading process, involving approximately 17 million acres, was completed at the beginning of the 20th century. The chaotic influx of settlers, besides pushing the tribes into ever-diminishing reservations, also caused serious disruptions in the traditional tribal ways of life.
In 1890 the Oklahoma Territory was created out of that part of the Indian Territory situated south of the Cherokee Outlet and west of the eastern area still occupied by the Five Civilized Tribes. It also included the panhandle, the 34-mile-wide and 167-mile -long strip taken from Texas in 1850 and which since then had remained outside the boundaries of any legally constituted state or territory. Much to Congress's embarrassment, it had simply been overlooked. Known as No Man's Land or Public Land Strip on maps, it had attracted some squatters and many outlaws. Its residents had even attempted to seek independent statehood for the area, which was larger than Connecticut, under the name Cimarron Territory.
At first, the Five Civilized Tribes were allowed to maintain their own governments independently of the Oklahoma Territory, provided that they retained their tribal structure. However, the many American settlers who had penetrated the area demanded the abolition of both the tribal governmental structure and the tribal landholding system. In 1893 the United States Congress appointed the Dawes Commission to persuade the tribes to accept the dissolution of their tribal government in favor of government from Washington, D.C., and to implement the policy of breaking up the tribal lands into individual tracts. It was a disaster for the tribes: of the 30 million acres that had originally been granted to them in 1834, less than two million were in native hands on the eve of statehood.
A bid for statehood began as early as 1891 in the Oklahoma Territory, with frequent conventions being held in successive years in Oklahoma City, El Reno, Purcell, Kingfisher, Shawnee, and finally Guthrie. In the Indian Territory, agitation for statehood started on a large scale only in 1905. After the tribal land divisions had been implemented and native “assimilation” hastened, Congress empowered the “twin territories” to apply for admission to the Union as a single state. Two Osage and 55 other delegates from each of the two territories formulated the state constitution at a convention that met at Guthrie on November 20, 1906. The document was completed on April 22, 1907, and its approval was voted by the people of the region on September 17. On November 16, 1907, Oklahoma, with a population of 1.5 million, became the 46th state.