Oh ye Noble Pioneer
April 22, 1889, Oklahoma was born with a shot and a race to claim land. 50,000 pioneers flooded into the Unassigned Lands to claim land and secure a future for themselves and their families. By nightfall all the claims would be taken and the men and women would begin to build lives in a new land. Building those lives would be hard. It would take grit and determination to make it in this new land. Grit accumulated over generations on the frontier and forged in the fires of Civil War, and a determination to build farms and towns out of nothing and live the American dream. Oklahoma would grow on the backs of these noble pioneers.
It’s a great story, but is that it? Is that all there is to the Land Run? Noble pioneers braving a new and hostile environment where only the strong survived and where we as the descendants of these brave people acquire some sense of nobility? Or have we over-simplified the experiences of a diverse group of people who for a myriad of reasons placed a bet on the Unassigned Lands?
The Land Run of 1889 is the climactic event of the “Boomer Movement.” It is the culmination of the work started by Elias C. Boudinot, who in 1879 wrote a letter to the Chicago Times stating that Unassigned Lands are Public Domain and should be open to settlement. Boudinot, a Cherokee favored the opening of Indian Territory to settlement by whites. That’s a long story and I will address it at a later date. The work carried on by men like David L. Payne, William L. Couch, and Charles C. Carpenter led Boomer colonies into the Unassigned Lands to force the opening. They would be opposed by the Range-Cattle Industry who controlled most of the land of the Indian Territory and the United States Army who protected the “Cash Cow.” Payne asked “If the cattlemen can stay in the territory, Why not the Settler?”
The Land Run attracted a wide array of people from around the United States mainly from the states of the central plains and Mid-West; Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, and Texas. Most were veterans of the Union Army or their descendants. They were also people crushed by economic collapses, a lack of hard cash in the south and west, and usurious interest rates on credit.
Eight percent of the people in Oklahoma Territory in 1890 were born in Europe; the majority immigrated to the United States between twenty and forty years prior to the land run. Economic and environmental forces pushed many out of their homes and onboard ships bound for America. Political and religious persecution put others to flight. The act of separating yourself from family, friends, and familiar surroundings to start fresh in another country is an amazing leap of faith.
African-Americans made up another eight percent of the 1890 population. With the end of reconstruction and the rise of “Jim Crow,” ex-slaves and their families left the south for industrial cities in the north and to homestead on the Great Plains. Squeezed by the same economic and environmental forces as the Boomers they too looked to Oklahoma as a promised land. They sought homes and businesses, social and political freedom, and safety and security.
We are working to peel away the layers of a complex set of events, that is not just an Oklahoma event but a National event. An event built upon the issues of the day; Land use, Government for the People or the Corporations, a fair and equitable monetary system, and Universal Suffrage. We are striving to tell a complete story of people who triumphed and failed, people who invested in the future and those who just looking to make a quick buck. We continue to answer questions about the Land Run and the events leading up to it but we have more to learn, as each answer leads us to a hundred new questions.
