Oklahoma was subject to 7 land rushes between the years 1889 and 1895, a crazy phenomenon, which involved people literally racing to get hold of a section of land.
Revision notes:
- Indian territory was the territory the government set aside for Plains Indians who lived east of the Mississippi River, and had been forcibly relocated there after the 1830, Indian Removal Act
- The Indian territory was divided into different sections for different tribes, with a section in the middle which was not officially allocated to a particular tribe
- White settlers had been trying to move into the middle section since the start of the 1880s
- The US army had moved them off as the Indian Territory was not open for white settlement
- 1887, the Dawes Act meant that individual Indian families each received 160 acres
- All the land left over after this was put up for general sale
- Many Plains Indians sold their lands too as they did not want to become farmers
- Plains Indians were often cheated into selling their land at a very cheap price by white land speculators
- 1889, the US government decided to open up the middle section of Indian Territory for white settlement
- Government surveyors divided the land up into 160-acre sections
- It was announced that as 12 noon on the 22nd of April 1889, the area would be open for claims
- Thousands of hopeful settlers waited on the boundary of the unopened territory
- Once a signal was given, everyone rushed over the boundary to reach a section and claim it theirs
- This process was called a land rush
- There were 7 land rushes in Oklahoma, in total
- The 1889 land rush was the first, with two million acres of former Indian Territory up for grabs
- The last happened in 1895 (88 000 acres)
- The largest land rush was in 1893, with 8 million acres being opened
