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Oklahoma: The Forty-Sixth State
Source: "Belleville News Democrat" - November
22, 1907
Transcribed
and Contributed by:
Frances Cooley
Oklahoma,
"the land of Now", (embracing Oklahoma and
Indian Territories)
entered the union as a
state
on November 15
with
a population of about 1,600,000.
The
government census (four districts missing)
shows a population of
1,408,000. In addition
to the persons
residing
in the four
missing districts, a
number of Indians not
reached by the census takers are believed to
have been omitted
from
the government census
total.
The
Indian
is passing out of the life of Oklahoma
into its history. But he is
still as much in
evidence in Oklahoma
as the
Negro is in a number of northern states.
Records believed to be
ultra conservative show
that the new state
of
Oklahoma contains 72,000 Indians. Only about
10,000 of these,
however, are more than
three-quarters blood.
The wild Indians of Oklahoma exist only in
history. The Redman of
the present is
adjusting himself to the
white
man's
civilization.
"Oklahoma"
is a Comanche Indian word, signifying the
"Land of the Fair God".
Surely the fair
god could not select a more
comfortable place for a home. For instance,
everything good to eat
which that
distinguished
personage might desire
is obtainable from Oklahoma soil. Upon a
single Oklahoma farm can be
seen growing
simultaneously
the products that
grow in all the states from Maine to
California. Corn and cotton
thrive side by
side.
Amazing
Natural
Resources
Within
it borders Oklahoma is known to have vast
stretches of coal lands,
natural gas, also, is
abundant, while
the
state's resources in salt, asphalt, oil,
granite and marble,
building stone, zinc,
lead, copper, gold and timber,
place it among
the most desirable
sections of the country for
investors.
Eighteen
years ago this great new state was a cattle
range and Indian hunting
ground.
The
first
rush into Oklahoma was on Monday, April
22, 1889. On the morning of
that day Oklahoma
City the present
metropolis
of the state, then known as Oklahoma Station
consisted of half a
dozen small buildings. The
Santa Fe
station,
section
house, United States quartermaster's house, and a small
building used as a hotel. Between noon
and
sunset of that
day Oklahoma Station became a town of 5,000 people.
Within a month 1,160 buildings, many of
them
ugly, temporary
affairs, were erected.
And so
Oklahoma City has continued to grow until it
now claims a population
of 45,000, modern
schools educating
9.481
children this year, as against 7.375 last
year, buildings (including
ten story
skyscrapers) aggregating in
value
$15,000,000; banks having an aggregate capital
and surplus of
$1,060,834, and deposits
aggregating $6,519,000,
post office receipts in
1906
aggregating $141,509, and freight
tonnage, into and out of Oklahoma
City in
1906,
1,228,246,902 tons. Factories are
springing up Oklahoma City this year has 2,347
factory employees, a
gain of
531 over last year, and 1,176 jobbing
house employees, a gain of 220 for the
year.
State is
Democratic
Oklahoma
will probably be Democratic in politics for
some time to come. The
Governor elect, C. M.
Haskell, of
Muskogee,
received a majority of 27,000 votes. The state
will cast
approximately 250,000 votes, of
which
number
from 10,000
to 15,000 are by Negro
voters.
Gov.
Haskell is one of the newer residents of the
state, having gone
there from Ohio. Other
officers are: Lieutenant
Governor, George
Bellamy, of El
Reno; Secretary of State,
"Bill" Cross, of Oklahoma City, whose
friends
say he would not
be recognized if
referred to as "William
Cross;" Treasurer, J. B. Menefee, of
Anadarko;
Attorney
General, Charles West, of
Enid, and Chairman
of the Commissioners of Corporations, J. J.
McAllister.
The
state in primaries has selected to represent
here in the senate the
first blind man who has
ever sat in that
body.
Hoils T. P. Gore, who lost his sight when a
boy in Mississippi,
where he was born. He has
served in
the
territorial
legislature. Robert Lee Owen,
who will be
elected as the other senator, is a totally different
type.
Born in Virginia,
he is one-eighth
Cherokee Indian, and is
looked upon as an extreme conservative. He
distinguished
himself as
a lawyer by earning a
fee of $150,000 in a
single case. Both these men have been chosen by
the Democratic
primaries,
which is equivalent
to their election by the
legislature. Of the representatives Bird S.
McGuire for
some years
territorial delegate
from Oklahoma, in
congress, is the only Republican of the five
elected. Others
are C. L.
Fulton, a brother of
Senator Fulton, of
Oregon, Second District; James S. Davenport,
Third District;
Charles
D. Carter, Fourth
District, and Scott Falins,
Fifth
District.
Metropolis
of New State
The
largest city on the Oklahoma side is Oklahoma
City, with a
population of 80,000 and 10 miles
of asphalt pavements.
Muskogee, in the Indian
Territory
has a population of 21,000, which
represents a growth from 3,500
people in 1900.
The new state will have 700
banks, of which 275 are national, the latter
with deposits of
$50,000,000, 23 cottonseed
oil mills, more than
a hundred flour mills, 50 daily papers and
more than 400 issued
weekly.
Oklahoma
alone had in 1906 86,908 families, of which
more than 60,000 owned
their homes, and of
these 50,000 were
free from
mortgages. The average price for Oklahoma land
in 1906 was $18.25
per acre, an increase of
$325 from
the previous
year. The new state has thousands of acres of
un-appropriated public
domain, coal lands of
wonderful
capacity, oil
wells, asphalt beds of great worth and all of
these practically
undeveloped, to say nothing
of the
vastness of
her
opportunities to the tiller of the
soil.
The story
of the rise of two dozen other Oklahoma cities
with populations
exceeding 10,000 is almost
synonymous
with that
of
the rise of the metropolis. Such cities as Guthrie (the state
capital), with 25,000 population.
Tulsa (in
the center of
the oil fields), with 20,000 population. Muskogee,
Ardmore, Lawton, Shawnee, Enid, South
McMosier,
Vinta and
El Reno are battling enthusiastically for commercial
supremacy, and present indications are
that all
these cities
will grown and proper, each supported mainly by those
farm lands for which it is the natural
outlet
to market.
The casual reader may wonder how so many large cities can
be supported by mere farms. The fact
is that
Oklahoma has
250,000 farms; most of them worked by their owners for
hundreds of thousands of Americans
have
invested
their small savings in Oklahoma land and are getting rich
with the state by tilling the soil. Six
out of
every ten
farmers in Oklahoma own their own homes. Most of them live
upon the land they homesteaded. Landlords
are
idle in
Oklahoma.
Drawn
from All
States
Probably
not more than 200,000 of Oklahoma's 1,500,000
residents are native
Oklahomans. This new
state is not
typical of
any particular section of the United States so
far as its population
is concerned.
Northerners,
southerners,
easterners
and westerners mingle
harmoniously there, all
growing prosperous together. Every state in
the union
is represented
by at least 500
natives.
A
substantial evidence of the intellectual worth
of Oklahomans
generally is the number of
modern daily newspapers
which they support.
Furthermore,
they have good schools, libraries
and
churches.
Oklahoma
has a modern public school system supported by
the income from a
$35,000,000 public school
fund and
local
taxation.
The "35,000,000 fund" consists
of 3,100,875
acres of land, valued at #30,000,000, the income
from the rental of which amounts to
about $600,000 per year, and $5,000,000 paid
into the school fund by
Indian
Territory in lieu
of land, all of the
3,100,875 acres being in
the former Oklahoma territory. The original
act
opening Oklahoma
territory to settlement
reserved in all that
section of the territory then thrown open
sections
16 and 36 in
every township for the
benefit of the public
schools of the future state. Each successive
act provided
for similar
reservations and the
statehood enabling act
made additional institutions, resulting in
the
big total
above named. The state will
decide whether the school lands shall be sold.
All proceeds from
sale of the school
lands must be turned into
the school fund and forever remain
intact.
Fine
State
University
The
head of the public school system of Oklahoma
is the state
university, located at Norman,
open to female as
well as male students, and
comprising a
college of arts and sciences, a
school of medicine, a school of
applied
science, a school
of pharmacy, a school
of mines, a school of
fine arts, and a preparatory school. The
campus
consisting of 60
acres lies at a slight
elevation, overlooking
the South Canadian River. University hall was
built
five years ago at a
cost of $70,000.
Science hall is a new
building, 63 x 125 feet, of gray processed
brick.
The university is
also provided with a
library building given by
Andrew Carnegie, and a gymnasium, 55 by
100
feet.
There are four buildings, two of
wood, devoted to engineering work, and two
devoted to the anatomical
laboratory.
The
other advanced public educational institutions
of Oklahoma are an
agricultural and mechanical
college,
three
state
normal schools, a university, and a
school at
Chilicco, on a reservation containing 8,900 acres of
agricultural
land, for
the education of Indian
boys and girls in the
higher branches of learning.
Color
Line Drawn
The
supervision of instruction is vested in a
board of education, of
which the state
superintendent of public instruction
is
president and the governor,
secretary of state
and attorney general are members on officio. A
color line is
drawn on
Negroes in Oklahoma,
separate schools being
provided for Negro children, but with the
same
accommodations
as the schools for the
white children. Education is
compulsory.
The
Chilicco Indian School is one of the most
interesting educational
institutions in
Oklahoma. About 3,000 of
its
8,960 acres are in cultivation, the rest being
in meadow or pasture
land. This school has 700
to 800 students,
70
instructors, more than 40 buildings and is
known as the best
institution in the Indian
service for imparting
practical agricultural
knowledge in
Indians. In addition to
agriculture stock raising, dairying, etc.,
all
other
lines of industry are taught at
Chilicco.
Oklahoma
has more than 1,200 manufacturing plants,
representing investments
aggregating
$25,000,000, and giving
employment
to 10,000 wage earners. These plants include
flour mills, oil mills,
cotton gins, broom
factories,
brick and tile
works, salt works, cement factories,
woodenware and carriage
works.
Oil
Fields
Are Rich
Some of
the richest oil fields in America are in
Oklahoma. The Glenn Pool
oil district, south
of Tulsa, between
Red Path
and Mounds, has between 450 and 500 producing
oil wells, with a
total capacity of 100,000
barrels a day.
The
first
of these wells was sunk in December 1905. Pipe lines have been
constructed for the transportation of
this oil
to the Texas
seaboard and to the refineries at Whiting, Ind. More
than $10,000,000 has been invested
in tanks,
pumping stations, and pipe lines in Tulsa
County.
Eastern
Oklahoma
which is not so uniformly even as the
western portion of the state,
produces more
than 3,000,000
tons of coal a
year, for which its mines receive about
$6,000,000. The coal field
extends from the
vicinity of
Tulsa on the north
to the Texas line on the south and is more
than 100 miles broad. The
state contains about
160
coal mines, employing
about 10,000 operators.
The
principal rivers of Oklahoma all of which flow
toward the south
east, are, naming them from
north to
south,
Arkansas,
Salt Pork, Clarion, North
Canadian, South
Canadian, Wachita and
Red.
The
government acquired what is now Oklahoma more
than a century ago
under the terms of the
Louisiana Purchase.
Early in the century the government set this
land apart for the
segregation of the various
Indian tribes,
then
being
driven most by the advance of white
settlers.
Hence, while, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado
and
other Louisiana
Purchase states were being
populated Oklahoma
remained for 80 years a wild Indian camping
ground.
Passing
of the Indian
As
recently as 35 years ago the American people
generally knew of
Oklahoma only as a haunt of
Indians and a hunting
ground for the same.
Early in the
eights white settlers, who had
over run Kansas and the new middle
west states
began to investigate Oklahoma. They
found the new territory rich and appealed to
the government for the
opening
of it to
settlement. The government did
not readily set
upon the request, and many of those whites, becoming
impatient,
entered the
reservation forcibly and
set up their homes.
They were driven out, but repeatedly renewed
their efforts
and many
clashes with soldiers
occurred.
But
these pioneers, then looked upon by the
government as outlaws,
finally persuaded
congress to open Oklahoma
to
settlement. Hence, the names of these same
"outlaws" have been
immortalized in Oklahoma
history.
At the
same time of the opening all of Oklahoma,
except that portion taken
from Texas in the
Greer county boundary
dispute
and the narrow strip between Kansas and Texas,
extending to the
Colorado and New Mexico
lines, was included
in
the Indian Territory. Oklahoma territory which
was held by the
government for the use of the
Indians, but
had
never
been assigned to any tribe,
consequently
consisted in those days of only about 2,000,000 acres.
There occurred
the first
great rush for homes,
which brought into
existence Oklahoma City. From time to time the
government
transferred
other portions of land
from the Indian Territory to Oklahoma
territory for settlement by
whites, until,
when the
Oklahoma Indian
Territory statehood bill passed, all that
remained of Indian
Territory were the
reservations of
the Choctaw,
Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, Seminole and
Quapaw tribes.
Source: "Belleville
News Democrat" - November 22,
1907
Transcribed
and Contributed by: Frances Cooley
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