Part I: Summary of Annotated Bibliography

Introduction, Proposal

A modern local history of present-day Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in the United States begins 11,000 years ago with the now extinct pre-Clovis civilization of North America.  These peoples populated a large swath of the U.S. from the Great Plains to the Ozark Plateau in the Gulf of Mexico watershed.  Between 800 CE and 1450 CE a new cultural group arose known as the Caddoan Mississippian culture, who appear to have been an amalgam from these post-Covid groups known as the Fourche Maline and Mossy Grove cultures and developed dynamic cultures from 200 BCE to 800 CE.  Other groups that likely crossed the Great Plains and inhabited areas in the modern-day central U.S. include ancestors of the Wichita and affiliated tribes that stretched from the southern border of Oklahoma, the Red River into Nebraska.  By 900 CE terraced villages above the Washita and South Canadian rivers left evidence of advanced organization including that of villages and farming.  These groups encountered the Apache and Tonkawa people by 1500 CE and were recorded in 1601 living in what is now north-central Oklahoma near the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River and Medicine Lodge River. Their Tonkawa language is a linguistic isolate.  In 1682 French explorer René-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle claimed all this traditionally Native homeland for the French crown.  They would cede this territory to the British in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris that was made after the Seven Years’ War, and with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the United States became the de facto owner of all or part of 15 current U.S. states, including Oklahoma, then called Indian Territory, and a patch of two Canadian provinces.

Sources

This proposed paper is an attempt to contextualize the local history of Oklahoma City by using the stories and histories of Indian and Black Oklahomans to recount the horrors of forced removal of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes to Indian Territory and the roles these tribes and individuals play in Oklahoma City’s history today.  Additionally, it also aims to contextualize the enormous opportunity and innovation in post-Civil War available to white Oklahoma City residents and showcase the myriad contributions inhabitants of this frontier town made in the midwestern United States including in the sciences and arts, industry, and culture. 

Some highlights include the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, a bustling and wholly reimagined local residential and entertainment district known as Bricktown, and the pre-eminence of hydrocarbons in Oklahoma City economics, couched in a story about the rise of Chesapeake Energy Corporation.

A sunsetting hyper-conservative politics clashes with globalization in Oklahoma City today much like pioneers clashed with Indian peoples in the founding events that transformed the ‘Unassigned Lands’ into the bustling metropolis it is today.  On April 22. 1889, 10,000 homesteaders lined up across the unassigned lands at high noon and raced for apportionments in the Oklahoma Land Rush, displacing Creek and Seminole peoples to found a new frontier outpost that would serve as a vital gateway for other, new western States to come, delivering commerce that spurred their growth and the continued settlerism that would be a founding story for residents of Oklahoma City today, and indeed for all Americans.

The so-called Five Civilized Tribes are the Choctaw, Seminole, Creek, Cherokee, and the Chickasaw.  As plains Indians were systematically exterminated at the turn of the 19th century across Oklahoma Territory, efforts in other states aimed at forced removal saw the death and destruction that nearly destroyed whole civilizations. The Cherokee, for instance, on the ‘Trail of Tears’ experienced a forced removal from traditional homelands in Georgia to eastern Oklahoma, pushing the Creek and Seminole into neighboring tribes, with ripple effects on lifeways across the Great Plains.  By the modern era, only a skeleton remained of otherwise vibrant, advanced civilizations that were displaced into the outskirts of the new state of Oklahoma.  It would take two centuries for these tribes to reconstitute, rehabilitate, and begin participating in this global economy, a truly remarkable achievement.

Like the young United States at the turn of the century, Oklahoma City rises from a complicated past to present as a renewed place with diverse thought leaders contributing to the healing and reformation of Oklahoma City.  For example, the Cherokee Nation has organized with other tribes across the state and created 100,000 jobs and brought nearly $13B in economic contributions, developing emerging infrastructure for a modern, clean-energy economy. The tribes are helping Oklahoma City in its ongoing efforts at renewal in a novel energy economy that promises to transform energy consumption patterns across the United States.

Reflected national political discourse from a variety of partisans, Oklahoma City is an expert study of traditional political history clashing politely at the vanguard of transformation and innovation around new histories.  From the National Parks Service Oklahoma City National Memorial to the newly renamed National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, preservationists and interpreters and are reimagining public spaces with narratives from Indians and the Black community.  As already noted, the tribes contribute a great deal of money to the local economies such as in Oklahoma City where they have built infrastructure to support national and international business operating on behalf of the Tribe.  And black communities in Oklahoma City and Tulsa are seeing positive relative shifts in income and equity, and their direct ownership of new histories being told in such stories as the recently updated stories about death and redemption found in the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921.  These histories are even more prescient today, as the United States Supreme Court directly limits the sovereignty of Indian nationals in cases such as McGirt vs. Oklahoma and the ensuing legislation in Congress that disempowers Oklahoma Tribes in favor of state and local officials in prosecuting crimes on their traditional lands.

Conclusion

On offer is a fuller local and personalized history of Oklahoma City and an attempt to contribute to a conversation about political and cultural change that impacts Oklahoma City citizens today.  Local history today in Oklahoma City is energetic as it incorporates new and varied narratives that weave a larger web that constitutes new local histories.  These new local histories inform people in the future by helping them continue to create and expand upon a more fulsome history of us.

Part II: Annotated Bibliography

Allman-Baldwin, Lysa. "A Wealth of African American History in Oklahoma City." New York Amsterdam News. New York. 2009.

“A Wealth” is a short newspaper article that describes the “Deep Deuce”, a historically Black neighborhood with a rich tradition in survival and Midwestern BBQ, as experienced by the reporter.  The article reflects on the Black experience in Oklahoma City.  In the Deep Deuce  “nearly any night of the week folks could experience performances by Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaugh- an, Count Basie and, from their pride and joy, native sons the great jazz guitarist Charlie Christian and Jimmy Rushing, referred to by some as the world's greatest blues and jazz singer, just to name a few”  At a crossroads in America, Oklahoma City was a gateway to western states that hosted cities and cultures of their own.  For example, at the Cattleman’s restaurant at The Stockyards, the world’s largest, for over a hundred year’s Presidents had made this a destination, with the walls populated with pictures of them.

Anonymous. “The Territory of Oklahoma.” Scientific American. vol. 28, no. 5. 1873.

A note from 1873 in Scientific American. “The Territory of Oklahoma.  A bill is now before Congress for the organization of a new territory, under the above name, out of lands now pertaining to the Indian Country.”

Clark, C. B. “Stan Hoig, ‘The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889’ (Book Review).” Western Historical Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 4. Utah State University. 1985.

Hoig has produced a gripping reference book for some of the participants in the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889.  Arguments for John Alley, referenced earlier, are substantiated as the reviewer notes the prevalence of financiers and other characters acting as “Sooners,” people with pre-arranged agreements with the banking class to build a city-based economy in the newly opened ‘Indian Lands’.  This concept is crucial to understanding how Indian people, some of whom had occupied the land for thousands of years, were abruptly and unceremoniously relocated from these tribal lands far away from pioneer settlements.

Chang, David A. The Color of the Land: Race, Nation, and the Politics of Landownership in Oklahoma, 1832-1929. Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The University of North Carolina Press. 2010.

Land ownership, including the land in the nascent ‘Unassigned Lands’, soon to be Oklahoma City, was highly political at the end of the 19th century, and David Chang delves into this theme by examining how struggles over land, wealth, and power caused non-white Oklahomans to “actively define and redefine what it meant to be Native American, African American, or white,” as minorities found themselves redlined and outlawed away from city centers.  Some of these conflicts include the forced removal of Creek Indians from their traditional lands, “and the transformation of the Creeks' enslaved black population into landed black Creek citizens after the Civil War..”  These competing forces worked through the decades of Jim Crow to alienate minority populations into separate communities, but today there is a movement afoot coordinated by local, state, and federal government initiatives to integrate using an equity lens previously dispossessed and other minority peoples into economies and civil participation that is bearing fruit.

Cobb, Russell. The Great Oklahoma Swindle: Race, Religion, and Lies in America's Weirdest State. Bison Books. 2020.

Although not heavily discussed earlier in the introduction, Oklahoma City has been affected by racism and religious fervor throughout its history in its role as a frontier city on the western boundary of the U.S. South.  Cobb delves into these subjects, and describes Oklahoma as “gave birth to movements for an African American homeland, a vibrant Socialist Party, armed rebellions of radical farmers, and an insurrection by a man called Crazy Snake.”  These anecdotes serve to humanize a population in Oklahoma City of rugged individualist that are ’from the bootstrap’-imagined people on the outside but malleable on the inside.  The humor here is leveraged to describe the white population of Oklahoma and its cities and the sometimes-quirky way that politics and hot-button cultural issues animates it.

Colberg, Sonya. “Oklahoma Tribes Deliver Big Economic Lift to Oklahoma Communities.” The Oklahoman. April 2021.

Colberg’s “Oklahoma Tribes” is a newspaper article describing the enormous contributions of today’s Cherokee and other tribes in helping locales across American, including Oklahoma City deliver new industry and jobs across the state.  For a people ravaged by hostile foreigners, Indians in Oklahoma have rebounded and reclaimed their identities and rights over the past century.

Fowler, Thaddeus Mortimer. View, Oklahoma City, Indian Territory, Oklahoma. 1890.

This artist’s rendering of the ‘Unassigned Lands’ that would become Oklahoma City are an excellent example of period renderings and help the reader visualize what a frontier town like the city may have looked like in the 19th century.  Today, Oklahoma City is the second largest city in the nation by acreage.  The city is laid out in a grid, north to south and east to west. Surrounded by highways and tollways that circle the budding metropolis is ever-expanding across miles of the empty Great Plains’ arid farmland.

Grinde, Donald A., and Quintard Taylor. “Red vs Black: Conflict and Accommodation in the Post-Civil War Indian Territory, 1865-1907.” American Indian Quarterly. Vol. 8, no. 3. 1984.

Grinde and Taylor describes a tension that arose among Black and Indian people throughout the latter half of the 20th century, due primarily to the influx of white colonists into Oklahoma Territory that exacerbated an otherwise easy working relationship that Black and Indian people had before colonialism.  They trace the roots of this problem to the American Civil War, when the Five Civilized Tribes had their treaties with the federal government negatively impacted, and Black citizens newly freed came into conflict with Indians over their newfound rights.  These led to violence because these newly freed peoples did not have the right to vote.  This increased the value of tribal-only slaves instigating further discord in tribes across the Great Plains, culminating in likewise uneven gradient of rights for Black peoples, including Black Indians, and Indians alike.  The author contends that this friction between these abused and dispossessed people actually hastened in an era of white supremacy as Oklahoma City came into its own in the early 20th century.

Hurt, Douglas A. “1889: The Boomer Movement, the Land Run, and Early Oklahoma City by Michael J. Hightower (review).” The Journal of Southern History. Vol. 86, no. 1. 2020.

Another treatment of the Oklahoma Land Rush, Douglas Hurt’s “1889” expertly delves into the details of early Oklahoma City history that also backs up the thesis that structural racism and anti-Indian sentiment were pillars of colonist’s strategy for establishing segregated city-specific land use zoning that adversely impacted both Black and Indians access to vital resources for self-government and federal government support, and that even in the face of this adversity they have persevered to become a pre-eminent player in state and regional economics and politics.  Author Michael Hightower divides 1889 and the Oklahoma Land Rush into several parts, and describes matching strategies for excluding Indians and Black people from the land grab. In the first are the efforts on the part of rich interests to create special financial districts in collusion with speculators. Secondly, this collusion allowed for a head start for approximately 10,000 wealthy individuals that snapped up land already legally owned by the banks in central Oklahoma and incorporate them with racist intent.  Finally, using , their extraordinary power in affecting the direction of this endeavor, they quickly built city centers that were exclusive, and also forcibly relocated Indians to outer areas of Oklahoma Territory. The author bolsters the notion that systemic racism and violent tactics define the origins of Oklahoma City.  Hightower’s linkage of a vast trove of primary source photographs with places that exist today makes this a compelling exercise for fully exploring a more nuanced local history of Oklahoma City and adding to traditional historical narratives.

Rose, John. “Western History Stays Alive on Oklahoma City Hilltop: At the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.” Wild West. Leesburg, Virginia. Vol. 20, no. 3.

The newly renamed Oklahoma National Cowboy Hall of Fame is an extraordinary look at the history of Oklahoma City and the state told from a traditional and stylized depiction of the city’s history.  Replete with paintings and statuary that pays homage to colonizers and their ideations of Indian culture in their time are peppered with Indian artifacts used to tell a benevolent story about predominantly white colonizers and whitewash the carefully researched and curated new histories emerging in Oklahoma City today. “Western History (that) Stays Alive,” claims John Rose in Wild West. It’s proposed use is to demonstrate that while forward thinking and modern history continues to take root in Oklahoma City, there is an interest in the traditional ‘big men’ narratives and important moments in American (and local and state) histories as orthodoxy.

Kjelgaard, Jim. We Were There at the Oklahoma Land Run. The Project Gutenberg.

This interesting project is a near-primary source that in slapstick humor describes the experience of settlers at the Oklahoma Land run in 1889, setting the stage for a local history about the enthusiasm and possibility the event represented.  Then, and even now, it is a cultural event for Oklahoma City schoolchildren that informs them but is also open to new ideations or otherwise unheard voices from the past.

Medley, Robert. "Downtown Library Collection Shows Oklahoma City History Depicted in Art, Artifacts." The Oklahoman.

This is a representation of history in Art at the Downtown Library in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma demonstrating for visitors the power of constantly evolving art with new perspectives on history.

Saunt, Claudio. "Creek Indians." New Georgia Encyclopedia. August 2002.

This encyclopedia article gives a concise and relevant overview of the Creek Indian nation as it was dispossessed of lands previously and already under stress from the relocation efforts instigated by Andrew Jackson in the late 19th century.

Schwartz, Mainon. “This Land Is Whose Land? The McGirt vs. Oklahoma Decision and Considerations for Congress (LSB10527).” July 2020.

This short explainer describes the decision in McGirt vs. Oklahoma in detail and links it with current, more strident efforts to erode the sovereign rights of native peoples everywhere.

Bayrd, “City Beginnings in Oklahoma Territory by John Alley.” Review. The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. Vol. 27, no. 3. December 1940.

Baird presents primary source information about the evolution of the Indian Territory, current day Oklahoma including Oklahoma City, and the propensity for new pioneers to collude with one another, favoring a city-based economy for the territory in the years leading up to the Oklahoma Land Rush, giving them the notorious nickname of “Sooners.”  Their impacts were broad and effective, however, and townships, including the future Oklahoma City, adopted city-based economies that organized agricultural zoning away from cities, contrary to The Homestead Act in some cases, into areas that ultimately had fewer resources and suffered political disconnection as a result.

Wilson, Linda D. “Oklahoma City.” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture.  Oklahoma History.

An informative encyclopedia which provides information on the history of Oklahoma City and links to more information about pre-history and other topics.

Wikimedia Commons. Map of Indian Territory and Oklahoma. October 2020.

This map depicts the whole Oklahoma Territory and shows the lands allocated to tribe’s post-relocation.  It may help a reader orient themselves in a sea of changing peoples discussed in the proposed paper.

References

Linda D. Wilson, “Oklahoma City,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture.