Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a landlocked state in the South Central and Southwestern region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northeast, Arkansas to the southeast, New Mexico to the west, and Colorado to the northwest. Partially in the western extreme of the Upland South, it is the 20th-most extensive and the 28th-most populous of the 50 United States. Its residents are known as Oklahomans and its capital and largest city is Oklahoma City.
The state's name is derived from the Choctaw words, 'people' and humma, which translates as 'red'. Oklahoma is also known informally by its nickname, "The Sooner State", in reference to the Sooners, American settlers who staked their claims in formerly American Indian-owned lands until the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889 authorized the Land Rush of 1889 opening the land to settlement.
With ancient mountain ranges, prairie, mesas, and eastern forests, most of Oklahoma lies in the Great Plains, Cross Timbers, and the U.S. Interior Highlands, all regions prone to severe weather. Oklahoma is at a confluence of three major American cultural regions. Historically, it served as a government-sanctioned territory for American Indians moved from east of the Mississippi River, a route for cattle drives from Texas and related regions, and a destination for Southern settlers. There are currently 25 Indigenous languages spoken in Oklahoma. According to the 2020 U.S. census, 14.2 percent of Oklahomans identify as American Indians, the highest Indigenous population by percentage in any state.
A major producer of natural gas, oil, and agricultural products, Oklahoma relies on an economic base of aviation, energy, telecommunications, and biotechnology. Oklahoma City and Tulsa serve as Oklahoma's primary economic anchors, with nearly two-thirds of Oklahomans living within their metropolitan statistical areas.
Etymology
The name Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw language phrase okla, 'people', and humma, translated as 'red'. Choctaw Nation Chief Allen Wright suggested the name in 1865 during treaty negotiations with the federal US government on the use of Indian Territory. He envisioned an all exclusive American Indian state controlled by the United States bureau of Indian Affairs. A painting of the 1865 Council now hangs in the Oklahoma Senate. Oklahoma later became the de facto name for Oklahoma Territory, and it was officially approved in 1890, two years after that area was opened to American settlers.History
Pre-Columbian
were present in what is now Oklahoma by the last ice age. Ancestors of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, Tonkawa, and Caddo lived in what is now Oklahoma. Southern Plains villagers lived in the central and west of the state, with a subgroup, the Panhandle culture people, living in the panhandle region. Caddoan Mississippian culture peoples lived in the eastern part of the state. Spiro Mounds, in what is now Spiro, Oklahoma, was a major Mississippian mound complex that flourished between AD 850 and 1450. Plains Apache people settled in the Southern Plains and in Oklahoma between 1300 and 1500.European exploration and colonization
The expedition of Spaniard Francisco Vázquez de Coronado traveled through the area in 1541, but French explorers claimed the area in the early 18th century. By the 18th century, Comanche and Kiowa entered the region from the west and Quapaw and Osage peoples moved into what is now eastern Oklahoma. French colonists claimed the region until 1803, when all the French territory west of the Mississippi River was acquired by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. The territory was a part of the Arkansas Territory from 1819 until 1828.19th century
During the 19th century, the U.S. federal government forcibly removed tens of thousands of American Indians from their ancestral homelands from across North America and transported them to the area including and surrounding present-day Oklahoma. The Choctaw was the first of the Five Civilized Tribes to be removed from the Southeastern United States. The phrase "Trail of Tears" originated from a description of the removal of the Choctaw Nation in 1831, although the term is usually used for the Cherokee removal.Seventeen thousand Cherokees and 2,000 of their black slaves were deported. The area, already occupied by Osage and Quapaw tribes, was called for the Choctaw Nation until revised Native American and then later American policy redefined the boundaries to include other Native Americans. By 1890, more than 30 Native American nations and tribes had been concentrated on land within Indian Territory or "Indian Country".
All Five Civilized Tribes signed treaties with the Confederate military during the American Civil War. The Cherokee Nation had an internal civil war. Slavery in Indian Territory was not abolished until 1866.
Between 1866 and 1899, cattle ranches in Texas strove to meet the demands for food in eastern cities and railroads in Kansas promised to deliver in a timely manner. Cattle trails and cattle ranches developed as cowboys either drove their product north or settled illegally in Indian Territory. In 1881, four of five major cattle trails on the western frontier traveled through Indian Territory.
As white settlers arrived in Indian Territory and demanded for land owned and guaranteed to Indian tribes by treaties, the U.S. government responded by enacting the Dawes Act in 1887 and the Curtis Act of 1898. The acts abolished tribal governments, eliminated tribal ownership of land, and allotted of land to each head of an Indian family. An objective of the acts was the forced assimilation of Indians into white society. Land not allotted to individual Indians was owned by the U.S. government and sold or distributed to settlers and railroads. The proceeds of the land sales were used to educate Indian children and advance the policy of assimilation. As a result of the two acts, about one-half of the land previously owned by Indian tribes was owned by whites by 1900. Moreover, much of the land allotted to individual Indian heads of families became white-owned. Allottees often sold or were fraudulently deprived of their land.
The acquisition of tribal lands by the U.S. government led to land runs, also called land rushes, from 1887 and 1895. Major land runs, including the Land Rush of 1889, opened up millions of acres of formerly tribal lands to white settlement. The rushes began at a precise times as each prospective settler literally raced with other prospective settlers to claim ownership of of land under the Homestead Act of 1862. Usually land was claimed by settlers on a first come, first served basis. Those who broke the rules by crossing the border into the territory before the official opening time were said to have been crossing the border sooner, leading to the term sooners, which eventually became the state's official nickname. George Washington Steele was appointed the first governor of the territory of Oklahoma in 1890.
20th century
Attempts to create an all-Indian state named Oklahoma and a later attempt to create an all-Indian state named Sequoyah failed but the Sequoyah Statehood Convention of 1905 eventually laid the groundwork for the Oklahoma Statehood Convention, which took place two years later. On June 16, 1906, Congress enacted a statute authorizing the people of the Oklahoma and Indian Territories to form a constitution and state government in order to be admitted as a state. On November 16, 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt issued Presidential Proclamation no. 780, establishing Oklahoma as the 46th state in the Union.The new state became a focal point for the emerging oil industry, as discoveries of oil pools prompted towns to grow rapidly in population and wealth. Tulsa eventually became known as the "Oil Capital of the World" for most of the 20th century and oil investments fueled much of the state's early economy. In 1927, Oklahoman businessman Cyrus Avery, known as the "Father of Route 66", began the campaign to create U.S. Route 66. Using a stretch of highway from Amarillo, Texas to Tulsa, Oklahoma to form the original portion of Highway 66, Avery spearheaded the creation of the U.S. Highway 66 Association to oversee the planning of Route 66, based in his hometown of Tulsa.
In late September 1918, the first cases of the Spanish flu appeared in Oklahoma. Although public health authorities statewide had some early indication that the disease being reported on the East coast had traveled westward, the turmoil caused by the rapid increase in cases in Oklahoma quickly overwhelmed both health workers and local governing bodies. In Oklahoma City, shortages of both supplies and personnel were mitigated, in part, by the mobilization of the American Red Cross. Rough estimates based on contemporary reports indicate that approximately 100,000 people fell ill with the disease before the pandemic ebbed in 1919. Of those 100,000 cases, it is estimated that around 7,500 proved fatal, placing total mortality rates for the state at roughly 7.5%.
Oklahoma also has a rich African-American history. Many Black towns, founded by the Freedmen of the Five Tribes during Reconstruction, thrived in the early 20th century with the arrival of Black Exodusters who migrated from neighboring states, especially Kansas. The politician Edward P. McCabe encouraged Black settlers to come to what was then Indian Territory. McCabe discussed with President Theodore Roosevelt the possibility of making Oklahoma a majority-Black state.
By the early 20th century, the Greenwood district of Tulsa was one of the most prosperous African-American communities in the United States. Jim Crow laws had established racial segregation since before the start of the 20th century, but Tulsa's Black residents had created a thriving area.
Social tensions were exacerbated by the revival of the Ku Klux Klan after 1915. The Tulsa race massacre occurred in 1921, with White mobs attacking Black people and carrying out a pogrom in Greenwood. In one of the costliest episodes of racist violence in American history, sixteen hours of rioting resulted in the destruction of 35 city blocks, $1.8 million in property damage, and an estimated death toll of between 75 and 300 people. By the late 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan had declined to negligible influence within the state.
During the 1930s, parts of the state began to suffer from the consequences of poor farming practices. This period was known as the Dust Bowl, throughout which areas of Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, and northwestern Oklahoma were hampered by long periods of little rainfall, strong winds, abnormally high temperatures, and most notably, severe dust storms sending thousands of farmers into poverty and forcing them to relocate to more fertile areas of the western United States. Over a twenty-year period ending in 1950, the state saw its only historical decline in population, dropping 6.9 percent as impoverished families migrated out of the state after the Dust Bowl.
Soil and water conservation projects markedly changed practices in the state, leading to the construction of massive flood control systems and dams to supply water for domestic needs and agricultural irrigation. As of 2024, Oklahoma had more than 4,700 dams, about 20% of all dams in the U.S.
In 1995, Oklahoma City was the site of the most destructive act of domestic terrorism in American history. The Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995, in which Timothy McVeigh detonated a large, crude explosive device outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killed 168 people, including 19 children. For his crime, McVeigh was executed by the federal government on June 11, 2001. His accomplice, Terry Nichols, is serving life in prison without parole for helping plan the attack and prepare the explosive.