History of Oklahoma_1908

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

Previous to November 16, 1907, forty-five states had entered the Union. More than two-thirds had been "admitted," joining the original thirteen with the consent and approval of those already within the confederation. At the time of admission, each of these states was a "western" state. When Kentucky came into the Union in 1792, it was on the frontier. Ohio, the first commonwealth to be taken from the Northwest Territory, in 1802 had a population that fringed the Ohio river and its tributaries, and most of its area was an unbroken wilderness. Indiana and Illinois were admitted while the frontiersmen's axes were making clearings in the forests for the first harvests of grains. Hardly a tithe of Missouri's great estate had been cultivated when the compromise bill stated the terms on which Missouri might relinquish its territorial government. In less than ten years after the beginning of the free-state movement, a state was created of Kansas. The first American colony was planted in Texas in 1821; in fifteen years that vast domain had become an independent republic, and ten years later surrendered nationality for a place among the American states. California had a territorial government hardly two years. In Utah, because of its peculiar politico-religious hierarchy, statehood was delayed a half century after its first settlement, and in this respect stands alone among the first forty-five states.
In all these states, Utah excepted, statehood followed close on the period of first settlement, so that many who broke the virgin sod and built the first schoolhouses, likewise helped to make the first state laws and held the first offices under them. Ohio, Illinois, Kansas and many others that might be named enjoyed state government for years before the first railroad was built within their borders. In this and many other respects, civilization had hardly made a beginning in the newly crated commonwealths. Many of the early congressmen from the western states had to begin their journey to Washington on horseback or by stagecoach, and when they appeared at the national capital they were easily marked by their crude western manner and dress.
The thirty states added to the Union during the nineteenth century had each their peculiar history. But a history of

each, brought down only to the admission into the Union, would cover a brief period of pioneer growth and political development which would be largely a repetition of the history of other territories. Notwithstanding local points of difference, the formation of western states has proceeded along similar lines, so that an examination of the various statehood enabling acts would show few changes necessary to adapt the provisions for state hood to apply to any territories.
It remained for the twentieth century to evolve a state with a history so unique, with political and economic conditions so contrasted to those prevailing during the territorial period of the other forty-five commonwealths, that Oklahoma, in addition to its distinction as a Twentieth Century State, has had a political development consisting of differences rather than resemblances as regards its sister states, and is sui generis in all the essential features of its history. Indeed, this country that is now Oklahoma has long been a subject of misconception among the majority of people. Schoolboys' minds have lingered over that map in their geographies that included "Indian Territory," and pictured it as a great menagerie of Indian life, which white men would peril their lives to enter. And the information of the average adult was hardly better. To many the phrase, Indian Territory, was included in the same category, politically, with Washington or any other territory. To say that Indian Territory was "an unorganized territory" was very indefinite. Neither the geographies nor the encyclopedias nor the many-tomed histories afforded any satisfying knowledge about this peculiar region that was the home of the Indians but also the home of whites, and that was a territory and yet not a territory. It was so utterly unlike any other part of America that men ceased to try to understand its conditions and were content with the fraction of truth conveyed by the words "Indian Territory."
The State of Oklahoma is unique. Behind the act of President Roosevelt signing the state hood proclamation, over a hundred years have recorded events and developments which have woven their effects into the Oklahoma of today. All the presidents from Washington down have given their consideration to the problems which were solved with the admission of Oklahoma. Jefferson planned an Indian commonwealth here; a century later, when the evolution was complete, Roosevelt proclaimed the result. In a single generation Ohio was settled, passed through its territorial stage, and became a state. Oklahoma emerged from its political dependency only after three generations had passed since its first inhabitants had settled here. Not one is living who took an individual part in the great migration of the thirties.
Nearly twenty years after statehood, Oklahoma and Indian Territory had surpassed, in population, in degree of agricultural development, in general advancement, any other territory at the time of its admission, with the possible exception of Utah. When Oklahoma became a state, it contained a million and a half of population, its railroad mileage comprised several through state lines, its agricultural products were divided among all the crops of the country, its mineral resources of coal, oil, marble, asphalt and other products, in their annual output, were exceeded in few other states of the Union; its business and commerce were equal in the character of stability and volume with that of many of the older states; while in education, culture, and the other standards by which civilization is judged, the average of

Oklahoma would vary in degree, but not suffer in comparison with the other forty-five states of the Union. Oklahomans have no frontier peculiarities such as distinguished, in the early years of our nation, the citizens of the new states. Moreover, Oklahoma was not carved from a new western country, but from the midst of a region that has been overspread by the institutions of American civilization for forty years. Years before, the wave of statehood had passed over all the surrounding region, leaving this territory to develop and maintain a corresponding progress while in a condition of political pupilage, and finally receive a belated reward of independent existence.
It is one of the prevalent fallacies, even among some Oklahomans, that the history of this state begins with the year 1889, when the Oklahoma country was opened to settlement. To try to understand the history of Oklahoma by studying the events since that year would be as arbitrary and as productive of sound historical understanding as to begin the history of the nation with the war for the overthrow of slavery. Each was an epochal event, and dated the beginning of a new era, but in a general consideration each stood midway in a vast scene where the background furnished the perspective by which to view the more immediate events. Oklahoma the state is the result of forces and influences that have been operative for a century. More than can be said to be true of any other state, Oklahoma is a product of evolution; was evolved from a train of causes and effects that make its history both tragic and extraordinary.
To say that the story of Oklahoma's evolution contains elements of tragedy may seem overstatement. Yet a close study of the past hundred years leaves a feeling akin to that with which one watches, in dramatic action, the struggles and plans of individuals finally made inoperative through a more dominating set of influences or more masterful personalities; however good the outcome, which we applaud, we express sorrow for the ineffectual battling of the weaker characters. Oklahoma's history presents such examples. Here, the statecraft and political wisdom of the nation's founders planned a community where barbarism would gradually redeem itself from the bondage of ignorance and superstition and emerge to equality with the American people. Jefferson looked forward to the time when the American Indian, with the blood of his race unmixed, would attain a degree of civilization and independence that would place him on a plane of political and industrial equality with his white neighbor. An Indian commonwealth was his dream. And yet all the sincerity of purpose and the political foresight of Jefferson and his immediate followers must be reckoned to have come to naught against the operation of stronger forces that in all their wisdom those statesman could neither foresee nor forestall. The history of Oklahoma presents the remarkable spectacle of a political community being guided in one direction and being hurried by the tide of circumstances quite in a different course and to another goal.
The Indian Territory was the largest undertaking of local government ever attempted by the federal power, and to judge of the results by the plans and hopes expressed at the beginning, it must be called a colossal failure. Yet for years public opinion and government action were directed to the great philanthropy of maintaining the integrity of the Indian race behind the boundaries placed around it. Such barriers proved powerless to restrain

the greed of individual whites, the commercial enterprise that took profit from Indians, and the criminal element that found refuge with barbarism, until finally, one after another, these barriers were thrown down and the superior race rushed in to occupy and assimilate and create a state that is magnificent in its wealth and activities.

As prefacing the chapters that follow, a brief outline will indicate the history of Oklahoma through the various stages of its evolution to statehood.
It was of no material consequence that Coronado and his army of conquest marched into the wild and scantily populated region now included in Oklahoma. That was in the sixteenth century. The grass and flowers trampled beneath the feet of these adventurers revived and bloomed again after their passage, and the only local traces of that romantic event were the fragmentary traditions that survived among some of the Indians who had gazed in wonder at the European invaders. During the seventeenth century the Oklahoma landscape flourished in its wildness as it had in centuries before the discovery of America. Interesting and valuable though the researches may be by which the archeologist seeks, with partial success, to restore to human records the life of these pre-historic ages, the scope of this work must pass them by as affording no light on the evolution of Oklahoma.
A paragraph will suffice to describe another phase of history introducing the main narrative. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the French established a powerful colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, and by their rivalry with Spain extended their commercial enterprise along the courses of the western rivers tributary to the Mississippi. Throughout that century the trappers, hunters and traders in French employ explored and carried their occupation up the Red and Arkansas rivers. Among other things they accustomed the wild tribes then living about those rivers to their first intercourse with civilization, but the only permanent result of their presence here may be noted in the French names that, often in corrupted form, still cling to the streams and some of the conspicuous spots in eastern Oklahoma. Poteau, Verdigris, Cavanol and other similar names recall the French forest rovers who first exploited the resources of this country.
With that historic forced sale known as the "Louisiana Purchase" the real history of Oklahoma begins in substantial form. With that vast territory at its disposal, the United States soon found a solution of its Indian problem. The greater part of this domain was unpeopled, and to Jefferson and his associates it seemed a wise and permanent provision to set aside a portion of the purchase as a refuge of barbarism. In one of the following chapters the subject of boundaries has been discussed to show the successive causes which fixed the outside limits of this state, and, as next in order, the process of the division, among the principal Indian tribes, of the country that once constituted the "Indian Territory." All this was preliminary to the removal of the Indians, which is the central event in the history of Indian Territory in the first half of the last century. With the collocation of the Indian tribes in their own country, their history, so far as it can be said to have a national aspect, begins. Coincident with the great Indian migration, Congress passed the intercourse laws by which the relations of the Indians with their neighbors would be governed.

The status of the Indian country, established after the removal of the tribes, for a period of years continued unchanged except by the progress and improvement of the various nations. The antagonisms within each nation (the Cherokee in particular) were gradually composed, and besides an increasing degree of national prosperity, it may be noted that there were evidences of greater friendliness and even indications of political cohesion among the tribes that dwelt side by side in the Indian country. From 1846 until 1860 was an era of general peace and material prosperity.
The Civil war brought to a close the period of history of which the "Indian country" is the central theme. The war, in addition to dividing the Indians among themselves and desolating their country, brought in its train attendant results that gave a new direction to the destiny of the Indians as a peculiar people. Up to that time the old policy of isolating the Indians had been fairly well adhered to, not so much because it was a policy of recognized wisdom, but because no untoward circumstances had made a different policy imperative. But the close of the war brought the Indian problem once more into economic relations with the American people. Rather than maintain the old system under which the Indians were scattered over vast areas, which they only partly occupied and utilized, the government quickly determined that the territory once grated in perpetuity to the five civilized tribes was sufficient to accommodate nearly all the Indians in the United States. The result was that within a few years a complete rearrangement of boundaries was effected in the Indian Territory, and many tribes that had formerly lived in Kansas, Texas and elsewhere were removed to this country. But still the old theory of isolation, though modified, was respected, and in collocating the Indians it was believed that the ultimate outcome would be an Indian state.
But it was foreseen, even before this plan was put in execution, that certain forces were working steadily for the disintegration of the Indian country. While some men supported with enthusiasm the project to make the isolation of the Indians complete, others were directing their influence to the end that the Indian Territory might be utilized to the full extent of its resources as a productive territory in the American sense. Still others understood that the Indians stood at the parting of ways. Either the federal power must enact and enforce stricter measures to preserve these people in their seclusion, or the Indians would have to surrender their segregate existence and accept their proper place in the nation of which they were a territorial part, at the same time assuming new responsibilities and opening their country to a freer intercourse with surrounding peoples.
"The forces of disintegration," which are successively reviewed in the third part of this history, were: 1. Those that developed as a result of the westward expansion of the American people. 2. The cattle industry, which, reaching enormous proportions soon after the war, extended its operations to the fertile ranges of Indian Territory and, partly under the protection of the Indians themselves, flourished until its power became a menace to its protectors and was regarded with increasing jealousy on the part of land-hungry white settlers who found themselves shut out from the enjoyment of a country where "cattle barons" grew rich. 3. The numerous class of whites known as "intruders," including both the cattlemen mentioned above and an increasing number of individuals who gained permission, in various ways, to live

among the Indians, and, by reason of their superior intelligence and enterprise, possessed themselves of a large part of the productive resources of the country and seemed likely to gain a dominating control in all tribal affairs. 4. The railroads, which, once having penetrated the forbidden land, brought civilized institutions and methods, and made inevitable the final absorption of the Indian country in the rest of the Union. 5. And finally, a reversal on the part of the government itself, as a result of which the Indians were no longer to be treated with as a sovereign people, but, so far as consistent with previous guarantees, would be dealt with accordingly as a beneficent government might see fit.
The inevitable tendency of these forces, thus generalized, was an overthrow of the system of Indian isolation; that country could not remain an obstacle to American civilization, but must open its gateways to free commerce and intercourse with the rest of the nation, and its people had the alternative either to take advantage of the opportunities of a greater civilization or, continuing in their former condition, to permit a superior race to possess the country and establish its supremacy in government and all material affairs.
The rest of the story is familiar. The first prize sought by the invading whites was the "Oklahoma country," consisting of the lands ceded by the Creeks for the occupancy of friendly tribes. Instead of Indian Territory gradually filling up with an ifiltration of whites, an organized invasion was started, and the more or less unsuccessful and Quixotic incursions of Payne and his associates were the superficial show of well laid plans that had their source in the higher spheres of political and business life. Congress finally yielded to the persistent pleadings of the "boomers," and in 1889 the heart of the old Indian Territory was given to the thousands who on an eventful day in April gathered to receive their share of the surplus lands that this nation has from time to time bestowed upon its citizens.
After the opening of Oklahoma, there followed the organiztion of a territorial government, and at different intervals, the opening of other lands to settlement. As a territory Oklahoma continued its existence seventeen years. In the meantime the five civilized tribes had experienced a complete transformation in methods of holding land, and the federal government had been successfully working to a final dissolution of all tribal governments. In part five, the history of this movement is told, and with the close of the principal work of the Dawes Commission, both the Indian Territory and Oklahoma were prepared for the final issue of statehood.
Beginning with the organization of Oklahoma Territory in 1890, the two territories lead a nominally separate existence for seventeen years. It is necessary to describe the working out of the peculiar problems of the eastern half of the state separately from the development and growth of Oklahoma Territory during these years. But many interests of the tow territories were indentical, and from the first there was a strong influence for a final union of the two territories. Statehood came to Oklahoma only after many years of waiting, and the history of the establishment of a state government requires a review of political and economic conditions from time to time during the past sixteen years. This history of Oklahoma, as elsewhere stated, comes to a close with the statehood movement. Its purpose is to trace the gradual evolution of an American state. In many ways Oklahoma

is the last fruit of American expansion, and has developed from the most peculiar conditions ever existent on any portion of American soil. Oklahoma as a state has a history which may be studied with profit by all who claim the state as a home and by those whose interest has at various times been attracted to this remarkable country of the southwest.