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Contributed by 
Joan Thurman Case - E-Mail: case@manti.com

In 1832, a treaty was signed in Washington by a Creek delegation ceding all the tribal land east of the Mississippi to the United States and providing for removal of the tribes to Indian Territory.

Archie Yahola, town chief of the Tulsa Lachapkas and a full-blood Creek Indian of the Five Civilized Tribes, in 1936, (1936?) led the first permanent residents to the territory now included in the incorporated City of Tulsa. And they named their town Tulsee (or Tulsey) town, a shortened pronunciation of Tallasi, a contraction of the Creek Tullahassee of Tallahassee, meaning Old Town. From that amity came a conception--Tulsee Town.

In the tradition of the Creeks, Yahola presided over the community, one of the 47 towns represented in the House of the Kings of the Creek national government. Together with earlier migrants to the Arkansas-Verdigris River Valley, the Creeks developed the area into a thriving farm and ranch community.

The first Tulsa "white house" was located at what is now 33rd and Rockford, just south of the first log cabin of George Perryman, a prominent Creek cattleman.

The first post office was established in 1879 at the Perryman ranch, with delivery by pony express.

Tulsa's first store was opened by George Bullette in 1880. A plaque at the corner of 2nd and Boulder marks the store's original site. The first election ballots were cast on the present grounds of the First Presbyterian Church at 7th and Boston.
The settlement of Tulsa was established in 1883 when the Frisco Railroad was extended from Vinita, Indian Territory, to Tulsa, allowing the transfer of cattle by rail.

Incorporation of the city was granted on January 18, 1898.

With the first townsite survey, in 1900, Tulsa's population was a mere 1390. But the "black gold" of the oil fields at Red Fork, discovered in 1901, and at Glen Pool, in 1905, brought in many people. And Tulsa's population gushed to 7298 by statehood in 1907.

I am a Perryman descendant and have a picture of the "White House" mentioned above plus the Perryman in town house.......

This is Tulsa before
all the new high rise buildings

20s 30s 40s

Tulsa Now

Tulsa can now add to its list of titles --Oil Capital of the Work, Space Capital of Oklahoma, Water Capital of the Southwest, American's Most Beautiful City --the Seaport City of the Seventies.
A community of over 330,000, Tulsa is the nation's 43rd city in population.