Oklahoma

“ Joy for aye and aye!
Something Left.
There's joy in Oklahoma!
Let's go it good and strong;
There's sunshine on the prairies,
The land is glad with song;
What though the cotton tumbled,—
What if the wheat was short?
We've corn for hog and hominy
Of every blessed sort!
Charity not only covers a multitude of sins, but she also tucks the quilts in around the feet and gets up in the middle of the night to see if the blanket is on straight. ”

“ It was in Oklahoma, where my work as an American Indian ethnologist constantly takes me and where I had come upon some devilishly strange and disconcerting matters before. Make no mistake—Oklahoma is a lot more than a mere pioneers’ and promoters’ frontier. There are old, old tribes with old, old memories there; and when the tom-toms beat ceaselessly over brooding plains in the autumn the spirits of men are brought dangerously close to primal, whispered things. ”

“ When, at noon, April 22, the cavalrymen who patroled the borders fired their carbines as a signal that the settlers could move across the line, a great shout went up, and the race for claims began. Hundreds crowded the trains, thousands rode on fleet horses, many rode in buggies and buckboards, others in heavy farm wagons, and some even made the race on foot. In the morning Oklahoma was an uninhabited prairie, at midday it was a surging mass of earnest, excited humanity, in the evening it was a land of many people. ”

“ At precisely twelve o'clock noon, of that day, the blast of a bugle announced that Oklahoma was open to settlement. Instantly an avalanche of human beings rushed wildly across the line, each one eager to get the first chance. ”

“ As the Oklahoma steams nearer, the town blossoms into flags; a great murmur increases to a clamour; people come swarming down to the water-front, waving Union Jacks and Stars and Stripes as well——What does it all mean? A cannon booms, guns are fired, and as the Oklahoma swings into the bank a band begins to play; a cheer goes up from fifteen thousand throats: "Hurrah for the first steamer!" ”

“ Oklahoma.%—The eagerness of the "cattle kings" to get more land for these herds to graze over had much to do with the opening of Oklahoma for settlement. Originally it was part of Indian Territory, and was sold by the Seminole Indians with the express condition that none but Indians and freedmen should settle there. But the cattle kings, in defiance of the government, went in and inclosed immense tracts. Many were driven out, only to come in again. ”

“ Up to within a few years Oklahoma was a part of what was then the "Indian Territory." Now it has been separated from what may be described as its original parent, and is entirely distinct. It contains nearly 40,000 square miles, and has a population of about a quarter of a million, exclusive of about 18,000 Indians. It contains more than twice as many people to the square mile as many of the Western States and Territories, and is in a condition of thriving prosperity, which is extraordinary, when its extreme youth as a Territory is considered. ”

“ Many of the men who started the agitation to have Oklahoma opened for settlement by white citizens are still alive, and some of them have had their heart's desire fulfilled, and now occupy little homes they have built in some favorite nook and corner of their much loved, and at one time grievously coveted, country. ”

“ The intervening land is immensely varied. The South begins, at its western rim, in canyon country, red-walled, black-hilled; the bare and bony mountains stretch across the prairie like the skeletons of dinosaurs. This is hard country, burned by the sun and wrinkled by the unceasing wind; this is Texas, and almost everything men say of it is true. Oklahoma, to the north, is a pocket paper-back edition of its brawny southern neighbor. Both States offer moments of surpassing beauty and long stretches of surpassing dullness ”

“ What goes to Oklahoma is not the peasant play, but the cinema. And the objection to the cinema is not so much that it goes to Oklahoma as that it does not come from Oklahoma. In other words, these people have on the economic side a much closer approach than we have to economic freedom. It is not for us, who have allowed our land to be stolen by squires and then vulgarised by sham squires, to sneer at such colonists as merely crude and prosaic. They at least have really kept something of the simplicity and, therefore, the dignity of democracy ”

“ A mad race for the best lands and town sites ensued. Canvas towns were laid out and each began to lay plans to secure the capital. There was at once a vast influx of settlers, and the population increased at an extraordinary rate. Additional lands were laid open to settlement in 1891, 1893, and 1901; and the scenes of the original opening were repeated. There was no government in the Territory until Oklahoma Territory was created (March 2, 1890) . ”

“ Population. From 1890 to 1900 Oklahoma was a prominent centre for native-born American colonists. The great fertility of the land was an irresistible attraction to home-seekers. The population increased from 61,834 in 1890 to 398,331 (excluding Indians—13,873) in 1900, or 544 per cent. Kansas, Missouri, and Texas have been the largest contributors to the population. The opening of additional territory since the 1900 census was taken has resulted in a large increase to the total population. Naturally the urban population is small, only 5 per cent. ”

“ The rise of Oklahoma to statehood within so brief a period as 18 years, when it was a vast cattle-range and Indian hunting-ground, is phenomenal, and bodes well for a still greater and more prosperous future. ”

“ The territory, so young but so dauntless, was already agitating the question of statehood—not only so, but of single statehood, meaning thereby the prospective engulfment and assimilation of Indian Territory, that all the land from Texas to Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas might be called by the one name—Oklahoma; a name to stand forever as a symbol of the marvelously swift and permanent growth of a white people, in spite of its Choctaw significance—"Red People."
Although Wilfred had stayed close to his farm, near Oklahoma City, he had kept alive to the rush and swing of the western life ”

“ Within fifteen years Oklahoma had a population of over half a million; and Congress provided (1906) for the admission, in 1907, of a new forty-sixth state, including both Oklahoma and what was left of the old Indian Territory.
SUMMARY 1. One important result of the Civil War was a great industrial revolution.
2. Mining for precious metals, the Northern Pacific Railroad, and other causes led to the admission into the Union of Colorado (1876) , North and South Dakota, Montana, Washington (1889) , Idaho, Wyoming (1890) , Utah (1896) , and Oklahoma (1907) . ”

“ In 1900 the illiterate population amounted to 5.5 per cent. of the total population ten years of age and over. Almost from the first Oklahoma has provided facilities for primary education equal to those of the most advanced States. The first public structure in almost every community was a schoolhouse. Two sections in each township were reserved for the use and benefit of the common schools. The income from the rental of these lands has increased annually, and in 1890 amounted to $189,486. ”

“ With the exception of the Wichita Mountains in the south and the Chautauqua range near the center of the state, Oklahoma is a vast unbroken prairie plain, about 1,100 feet above the sea, the drainage being chiefly to the southeast by the Arkansas, Canadian and Red Rivers and their feeders. In the east and southeast there is some timber-land, but not much of the growth is merchantable. ”

“ More than a novel because far stranger than fiction, THE BLAZING HORIZON is an authentic account of the opening of Oklahoma, a swift and vivid recital of the struggle of thousands to gain a niche in the blazing horizon. ”

“ The Indian Territory became the State of Oklahoma in 1907; the story of the white man's peaceful invasion is one of absorbing interest; the human spectacle of to-day is complex, even kaleidoscopic. In the thirties and forties the government had established in the territory the five civilized Indian nations, the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles, each with its allotted boundaries, its native government, its legislatures, and its courts. ”

“ The Dawes bill released a fertile acreage to be distributed to the land hungry who had banked up around the borders of Kansas, Arkansas, and Texas. Oklahoma, as a territory, appeared in 1890, while in eighteen more years, swallowing up the whole Indian Country, it had taken its place as a member of the Union. Between the northern tier of states and Oklahoma, the middle West had grown as well. Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado, the last creating eleven new counties in its eastern third in 1889, had seen their population densify under the stimulus of easy transportation. ”

“ The Indian tribe has been supplanted by the American Government; and the school and church have taken the place of the chase and the feud. Where the wild flowers nodded far out on the lonely plain, vast fields of wheat and corn whisper the great name of Oklahoma.
At this writing the eastern band of Cherokee is about to be dissolved, their lands allotted, and in a few more decades the Cherokee will have passed, and the name will be presented only in old records and in the hearts of their descendants. ”

“ The State of Oklahoma will start with a population of fully a million and a half—about equal to that of California, and considerably above that of such commonwealths as Louisiana, South Carolina, or Maryland. If New Mexico and Arizona should be united, they will have about half a million inhabitants. In area they will form the second State in the Union, inferior only to Texas. ”

“ In the course of my journey I visited not only Little Rock and Pine Bluff, Ark., but Oklahoma City, Guthrie, Muskogee, South McAlester, and several other towns in Oklahoma, and I confess that I was surprised to note the enterprise which these coloured immigrants had shown and the progress they were making, particularly in material and business directions. I met successful farmers, who, 185having sold their farms in Texas or in Kansas at a considerable advance, had come out into this new country to re-invest their money. ”

“ Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
I was born September 1, 1842, in Bastrop, Texas, on Colorado River. My pappy was named Harvey Wheeler and my mammy was named Carolina Sims. My brothers and sisters was named Alex, Taylor, Mary, Cicero, Tennessee, Sarah, Jeff, Ella and Nora. We lived in cedar log houses with dirt floors and double chimneys, and doors hung on wooden hinges. One side of our beds was bored in the walls and had one leg on the other. Them white folks give each nigger family a blanket in winter. ”

“ Agriculture and Stock-raising.—For some time before the first opening to settlement by white men in 1899, the territory now embraced in Oklahoma was largely occupied by great herds of cattle driven in from Texas, and since then, although the opening was piecemeal, the agricultural development has been remarkably rapid. By 1900, 22,988,339 acres, or 52.1%, of the total land surface was included in farms, and 8,574,187 acres, or 37.7%, of the farm land was improved. ”

“ Oklahoma claims complete ownership of the entire bed of the river within that state, and in support of its claim contends that the river throughout its course in the state is navigable, and therefore that on the admission of the state into the Union, on November 16, 1907, the title to the river bed passed from the United States to the state in virtue of the constitutional rule of equality among the states whereby each new state becomes, as was each of the original states, the owner of the soil underlying the navigable waters within its borders. ”

“ Oklahoma has become a State, standing on a full equality with her elder sisters, and her future is assured by her great natural resources. The duty of the National Government to guard the personal and property rights of the Indians within her borders remains of course unchanged. ”

“ Oklahoma is not rising more quickly than the temporary buildings of the workmen's city, which includes 5,000 men at least, and who are mingling the sounds of hammers on the buildings they are putting up for their temporary accommodation, with the crash of the buildings they are tearing down. ”

“ Has Oklahoma been admitted upon an equal footing with the original states? If she has, she, by virtue of her jurisdictional sovereignty as such a state, may determine for her own people the proper location of the local seat of government. She is not equal in power to them if she cannot. ”

“ Others continue in office, escaping the wiles of the enemy, not through a miracle, but through the arousing of the public conscience. Today there are some 2,000,000 people in the State of Oklahoma, and as in every other State, the great majority of them are upright citizens. ”

“ Five million acres were quickly taken by 30,000 farmers.
The old proverb or adage, which states that the man who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is a public benefactor, would seem to proclaim that Oklahoma is peopled with philanthropists, for the sturdy pioneers who braved hardship and ridicule in order to obtain a foothold in this promised land, have, in five or six years, completely changed the appearance of the country. ”