Oklahoma Indians Paperback

Oklahoma is home to nearly forty American Indian tribes and includes the largest Native population of any state. As a result, many Americans think of the state as “Indian Country.” In 2009, Blue Clark, an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, produced an invaluable reference for information on the state’s Native peoples. Now, building on the success of the first edition, this revised guide offers an up-to-date survey of the diverse nations that make up Oklahoma’s Indian Country. Since publication of the first edition more than a decade ago, much has changed across Indian Country—and more is known about its history and culture. Drawing from both scholarly literature and Native oral sources, Clark incorporates the most recent archaeological and anthropological research to provide insights into each individual tribe dating back to prehistoric times. Today, the thirty-nine federally recognized tribes of Oklahoma continue to make advances in the areas of tribal governance, commerce, and all forms of arts and literature. This new edition encompasses the expansive range of tribal actions and interests in the state, including the rise of Native nation casino operations and nongaming industries, and the establishment of new museums and cultural attractions. In keeping with the user-friendly format of the original edition, this book provides readers with the unique story of each tribe, presented in alphabetical order, from the Alabama-Quassartes to the Yuchis. Each entry contains a complete statistical and narrative summary of the tribe, covering everything from origin tales to contemporary ceremonies and tribal businesses. The entries also include tribal websites, suggested readings, and photographs depicting visitor sites, events, and prominent tribal personages.

Outlines the lifestyle of the Indians in Oklahoma and their value system despite the white-man's encroachment of their land and widespread stereotyping.

Among the New Deal programs that transformed American life in the 1930s was legislation known as the Indian New Deal, whose centerpiece was the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934. Oddly, much of that law did not apply to Native residents of Oklahoma, even though a large percentage of the country’s Native American population resided there in the 1930s and no other state was home to so many different tribes. The Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act (OIWA), passed by Congress in 1936, brought Oklahoma Indians under all of the IRA’s provisions, but included other measures that applied only to Oklahoma’s tribal population. This first book-length history of the OIWA explains the law’s origins, enactment, implementation, and impact, and shows how the act played a unique role in the Indian New Deal. In the early decades of the twentieth century, white farmers, entrepreneurs, and lawyers used allotment policies and other legal means to gain control of thousands of acres of Indian land in Oklahoma. To counter the accumulated effects of this history, the OIWA specified how tribes could strengthen government by adopting new constitutions, and it enabled both tribes and individual Indians to obtain financial credit and land. Virulent opposition to the bill came from oil, timber, mining, farming, and ranching interests. Jon S. Blackman’s narrative of the legislative battle reveals the roles of bureaucrats, politicians, and tribal members in drafting and enacting the law. Although the OIWA encouraged tribes to organize for political and economic purposes, it yielded mixed results. It did not produce a significant increase in Indian land ownership in Oklahoma, and only a small percentage of Indian households applied for OIWA loans. Yet the act increased member participation in tribal affairs, enhanced Indian relations with non-Indian businesses and government, promoted greater Indian influence in government programs—and, as Blackman shows, became a springboard to the self-determination movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

The Color of the Land brings the histories of Creek Indians, African Americans, and whites in Oklahoma together into one story that explores the way races and nations were made and remade in conflicts over who would own land, who would farm it, and who would rule it. This story disrupts expected narratives of the American past, revealing how identities--race, nation, and class--took new forms in struggles over the creation of different systems of property. Conflicts were unleashed by a series of sweeping changes: the forced "removal" of the Creeks from their homeland to Oklahoma in the 1830s, the transformation of the Creeks' enslaved black population into landed black Creek citizens after the Civil War, the imposition of statehood and private landownership at the turn of the twentieth century, and the entrenchment of a sharecropping economy and white supremacy in the following decades. In struggles over land, wealth, and power, Oklahomans actively defined and redefined what it meant to be Native American, African American, or white. By telling this story, David Chang contributes to the history of racial construction and nationalism as well as to southern, western, and Native American history.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history, from the author of The Wager and The Lost City of Z, “one of the preeminent adventure and true-crime writers working today."—New York Magazine • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NOW A MARTIN SCORSESE PICTURE “A shocking whodunit…What more could fans of true-crime thrillers ask?”—USA Today “A masterful work of literary journalism crafted with the urgency of a mystery.” —The Boston Globe In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. Look for David Grann’s latest bestselling book, The Wager!

One of the most popular misconceptions about American Indians is that they are all the same-one homogenous group of people who look alike, speak the same language, and share the same customs and history. Nothing could be further from the truth! This book gives kids an A-Z look at the Native Americans that shaped their state's history. From tribe to tribe, there are large differences in clothing, housing, life-styles, and cultural practices. Help kids explore Native American history by starting with the Native Americans that might have been in their very own backyard! Some of the activities include crossword puzzles, fill in the blanks, and decipher the code.

"The Indians of Oklahoma," a survey of the sixty-seven tribes residing in the state, explains the colonizing process that populated Indian Territory (the future Oklahoma) with Native Americans from all parts of the United States during the nineteenth century and interprets the striking cultural diversity of the Indian communities thus formed. The author separates the Native American experience in Oklahoma into four periods. This book is one of a series entitled "Newcomers to a New Land" which analyzes the role of the major ethnic groups that have contributed to the history of Oklahoma.

A dead body discovered in an abandoned house on Southeast 29th Street in Oklahoma City. In a city and a state where crime and violence were common, it might have seemed routine. But death—especially murder—is never routine, and the investigation of this particular death led young Oklahoma City detective Walter Gage on a journey he could never have imagined. 1920's. Oklahoma. Oil. Boomtowns spring up almost overnight. Drillers, roughnecks, landmen—and gangsters, prostitutes, con-men, all following the money. And there was a lot. When the American government moved members of the Osage tribe into northern Oklahoma, it had no intention of making the Osage, as a group, the wealthiest people in the world. The land itself was wonderful for cattle, covered as it was with Big Bluegrass, Little Bluegrass, and Switchgrass, some growing to four or five feet in height and highly nutritious. But it wasn't what was on top of the land that made the Osage rich; it was what was beneath it: oil. Oklahoma, not long a state, was booming. Oil wells were popping up in many areas of the state. Towns that had existed only as small farming communities or had not existed at all were suddenly bustling cities. Many of the huge oil companies that were familiar names in America for most of the twentieth century got their starts in the Oklahoma oil fields. So lots of people got rich. The Osage tribe was in a rather special position. Their treaties with the United States government meant that royalties from oil taken from Osage land went, not to the landholder, but to the tribe as a whole. That royalty money was then distributed to all tribal members equally.That meant, in a way, that although a few landholders might have actually received less royalty money than they would have under the usual circumstances, it also meant that every adult member of the Osage tribe rather quickly became wealthy. Wealthy? Millionaires, each and every one. What did this mean to people who were, by American standards, scarcely “civilized”? In simple terms, it meant that they were prey. A Few Dead Indians is the story of the long delayed investigation into the murders of at least twenty members of the Osage tribe, the beginning of the Oklahoma Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, and the life and involvement of young agent Walter Gage.