Oklahoma Land Run

Oklahoma Land Run 1889

Culture Shock Alert....we’re headed to Oklahoma.  After a week at the New York Public Library I was ready for a change so I made a big one and ended up in Guthrie, Oklahoma where the library is actually older than the state.  
Before we get to the library you have to know a little about Oklahoma’s, and Guthrie’s, quirky history (believe me, quirky is an understatement, I couldn’t even make this stuff up!).

After the Civil War the US was in a big hurry to get southern Indian tribes off their land so it could be used for farming and mining.  Not surprisingly the tribes (Chickasaw, Cherokee, Chocktaw, Creek and Seminole) weren’t that excited about leaving their ancestral homeland, so our government rounded them up and marched them off by force.  To make up for any bad feelings they promised the tribes that they would have their own territory  “for as long as the stars shall shine and the rivers may flow” (and sadly the Native Americans believed them - not like they had a lot of choices).  They were marched to the Indian Territory (later to be known as Oklahoma) because the administration figured that no one would ever want to settle way out in the middle of nowhere on land that was worthless.  (I guess they didn’t foresee the oil boom that would quickly lead to Oklahoma “becoming the largest oil producing entity in the world”.)
  
Before the government knew what was happening the country’s boundaries exploded and settlers were popping up across the nation, all the way to California.  Settlers were hungry for land, any land, and the chance to strike it rich.  Congress was starting to sweat under the pressure.  So they did what politicians do; they went back on their word and came up with a scheme to take the Indian Territory back from the Native Americans.  

Although the politics got pretty complicated, the short story is that the territory was divided into 160 acres land plots and each Indian “head of household” became a proud landowner of less land than they started with - once again the Native Americans were cheated and betrayed and all the “unassigned lands” that the government suddenly owned could be “improved” and paid for by eager settlers.

According to the National Park Service, before the Land Run of 1889, Guthrie was literally a railroad station and  a post office.  Guthrie sprang into existence in SIX hours on April 22,  when 10,000 new citizens swarmed into town, set up their tents and claimed their land, thanks to Benjamin Harrison.  A land run, to my amazement, was exactly that...50,000 settlers lined up on the border and at 12 noon, after the firing of a canon, they took off to stake their claim on land somewhere in the 2 million available acres of the territory - exactly like that terrifying moment when your toddler lines up at the beginning of an easter egg hunt surrounded by greedy hoards of big kids.  The runners ran into a lot of people that would later be called “sooners” who somehow had beaten them into the territory and already claimed choice parcels of land - which kept the local land offices very busy.

I know, there is no library in sight, I’m getting there, come back tomorrow and I’ll finish this unreal story.