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        CENSUS RECORDS

Oklahoma
(Statehood 1907) 

In 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase, the United States assumed control of the area that became Oklahoma. Indian people already inhabited the land. Wichita, Plains Apache (today's Apache Tribe), Quapaws, and Caddos were here during the Spanish and French colonial period. By the 1800s, Osage, Pawnees, Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, and Arapahos had also migrated into the region or visited. Some Delawares, Shawnees, Kickapoos, Chickasaws and Choctaws regularly came to hunt for Oklahoma's abundant bison, beaver, deer and bear.

In 1830 with the expansion of white settlement into the Trans-Appalachian West the Indian Removal Act was passed, forcing all Eastern Indians to move to new homelands west of the Mississippi River in the "Indian Territory." The Five Civilized Tribes purchased new lands in today's Oklahoma, but some relocated farther north.

The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 led to renewed white settlement in these territories, and the immigrant tribes located there were soon under pressure to move on. In 1859, Texas also forced out all remaining tribes. The Civil War temporarily ended the removals. Present Indian nations that received new homelands in today’s Oklahoma during 1830-1862 period were:

Absentee Shawnee
Alabama-Quassarte
Caddo
Cherokee
Chickasaw
Choctaw
Delaware
Eastern Shawnee
Kialegee
(Muscogee) Creek
 Ottawa
Quapaw
Seminole
Seneca-Cayuga
Thlopthlocco
Tonkawa
United Keetoowah
Wichita
Wyandotte 
Yuchi (Euchee)
Also see ITGenWeb

Another white surge of settlement into the West came at the end of the Civil War and again Indian tribes were pressured onto reservations. Many of the tribes living in Kansas and Nebraska received new reservations by the Omnibus Treaty in 1867 while the Plains Tribes accepted reservations by the Medicine Lodge Treaty. The last people to receive a reservation were Geronimo and his fellow Chiricahua prisoners of war. Tribes assigned to Oklahoma reservations during this period 1867-1892 were:

Apache
Arapaho
Cheyenne
Citizen Potawatomi
Comanche
Delaware
Ft. Sill Apache
Iowa
Kaw
Kickapoo		 Kiowa
Miami 
Modoc
Osage
Otoe-Missouria
Pawnee
Peoria 
Ponca
Sac and Fox
Shawnee
Also see ITGenWeb

Basically stated the eastern half of what became the state of Oklahoma was known as Indian Territory and the western half was known as Oklahoma Territory prior to statehood in 1907. See maps <http://www.okgenweb.net/maps/images/ok1900xp.gif> and <http://www.okgenweb.net/maps/itmap.htm>

Also see Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties

[Oklahoma Territory Census] [Indian Territory Census] [Oklahoma Census]

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Linda Simpson, State Coordinator
Mel Owings, Assistant Coordinator