History of Oklahoma

The history of Oklahoma refers to the history of the state of Oklahoma and the land that the state now occupies. Areas of Oklahoma east of its panhandle were acquired in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, while the Panhandle was not acquired until the U.S. land acquisitions following the Mexican–American War (1846–1848).

Most of Oklahoma was set aside as Indian Territory, with the general borders of the Indian Territory being formed in 1834 from the Indian Intercourse Act. It was opened for general settlement in 1889. The "Sooners" were settlers who arrived before this period of official authorization. From 1890 to 1907 Oklahoma split into two territories known as Oklahoma Territory in the west and Indian Territory in the east. Oklahoma became the 46th state to enter the union on November 16, 1907. Early on in Oklahoma's statehood, it was primarily a ranching and farming state, with oil being a major economic producer as well.

People have lived in what is now Oklahoma since at least the Last Ice Age. Archaeologists refer to the earliest cultures as Paleo-Indians. The Burnham site, near Freedom in Woods County, Oklahoma is a pre-Clovis site, that is, an archaeological site dating before 11,000 years ago. The earliest known painted object in North America, the Cooper Bison Skull, which dates between 10,900 and 10,200 radiocarbon years ago, was found at a Folsom tradition site in what is now Harper County, Oklahoma.

Between AD 800 and 1450, much of the midwestern and southeastern US (including the eastern part of what is now Oklahoma) was home to a group of dynamic cultural communities that are generally known as the Mississippian culture. These cultures were agrarian, their communities often built ceremonial platform and burial mounds, and trade between communities was based on river travel. There were multiple chiefdoms that never controlled large areas or lasted more than a few hundred years.

The Caddoan Mississippian culture appears to have emerged from earlier groups of Woodland period groups, the Fourche Maline and Mossy Grove culture peoples who were living in the area around 200 BC to 800 AD. By 800 AD early Caddoan society had begun to coalesce into one of the earlier Mississippian cultures. Some villages began to gain prominence as ritual centers, with elite residences and platform mound constructions. The mounds were arranged around open plazas, which were kept swept clean and used for ceremonial occasions. The Caddoan homeland was on the geographical and cultural edge of the Mississippian world and had similarities to both Mississippian culture and Plains traditions. The Caddoan communities were not as large as other eastern and southern Mississippian communities, they were not fortified, and they did not establish large, complex chiefdoms; with the possible exception of the Spiro Mounds on the Arkansas River. As complex religious and social ideas developed, some people and family lineages gained prominence over others. This hierarchical structure is marked in the archaeological record by the appearance of large tombs with exotic grave offerings of obvious symbols of authority and prestige, such as those found in the "Great Mortuary" at Spiro. The descendants of the Caddoan Mississippian culture continue to live in Oklahoma as part of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma primarily in Caddo County.

Archaeologists believe that ancestors of the Wichita and Affiliated tribes occupied the eastern Great Plains from the Red River north to Nebraska for at least 2,000 years. These early Wichita people were hunters and gatherers who gradually adopted agriculture. Southern Plains villagers flourished throughout central and western Oklahoma from 900 to 1400.

About AD 900, on terraces above the Washita and South Canadian Rivers in Oklahoma, farming villages began to appear. The inhabitants of these villages grew corn, beans, squash, marsh elder, and tobacco. They hunted deer, rabbit, turkey, and increasingly bison, and caught fish and collected mussels in the rivers. These villagers lived in rectangular thatched houses. They became numerous, with villages of up to 20 houses spaced every two or so miles along the rivers. The Wichita of southwestern Oklahoma appears to have had regular trade contact with tribes in current Texas and New Mexico. The Wichita people continue to live in Oklahoma as the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes (Wichita, Keechi, Waco and Tawakoni) primarily in Caddo County.

The Tonkawa people lived in the central Plains, 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. The tribe was later pushed south to the Red River by 1700 and later to Texas. The Tonkawa people would later be forcibly relocated from Texas back to Oklahoma. They continue to live in Oklahoma as the Tonkawa Tribe of Oklahoma.