The true story of mob vengeance on two innocent Native American teenagers in Oklahoma

First Published in 2002. This study explores how the five tribes of Oklahoma - Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles - strove to achieve political unity within their tribes during the first decades of the 20th century by forging a new sense of peoplehood around the idea of blood.

From the Seminole Wars to the Little Big Horn, the history of America's native peoples and their contacts with those seeking to settle or claim a new land has often been marked by violence. The sites of these conflicts, unlike many sites related to the American Revolution and the War Between the States, are often difficult to locate, and information on these battles is frequently sketchy or unclear. This reference work provides essential information on these sites. The arrangement is by state, with sections for Canada and Mexico. Each entry has information about how to find the site, tours, museums, and resources for further study. In addition, there is a chronological list of battles and other encounters between Indians and non-Indians, including dates, location in the text, and the larger conflict of which each battle was a part. There is an index of battle locations and an index of prominent people involved. The bibliography and site listings are cross-referenced for further research.

In this masterful biography, Robert L. Dorman traces the career of William H. “Alfalfa Bill” Murray from his hardscrabble childhood in post–Civil War Texas to his remarkable ascendancy as a nationally known political figure in the mid-twentieth century. The first comprehensive portrait of Murray to be published in fifty years, Alfalfa Bill is both the exploration of a larger-than-life personality and an illuminating account of the birth of political conservatism in Oklahoma. As Dorman reveals, no political label readily fit Murray. The core conservatism of his Texas years was caught up in the ferment of three major periods of American reform—the Populist uprising, the Progressive Era, and the New Deal. Over his long career, Murray strongly advocated for states’ rights, limited government, and strict constitutionalism, yet he was also a consistent foe of corporations and concentrated wealth. The society he sought was small-scale, decentralized, agrarian—and racially segregated. Although he claimed to represent high principles, Murray as a politician was an opportunist, loved a good fight, had a flair for the theatrical, and hungered for power. Dorman depicts Murray from his days as a political operative in the Chickasaw Nation to his leadership of the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention, and from the Speaker’s chair of the Oklahoma legislature to the halls of Congress. The book follows Murray’s quixotic attempt to found an agricultural colony in Bolivia, and chronicles his amazing Oklahoma comeback in the 1930 gubernatorial election. The final chapters detail Murray’s legendary term as state governor, his failed candidacy for president, and his emergence as a fierce critic of New Deal liberalism and racial desegregation. Unlike earlier biographies of Murray, Alfalfa Bill brings issues of race, class, and gender to the forefront, often in surprising ways. On the surface, the Murray saga was an American success story, yet his rise came at a price for Murray himself, his family, and the people of the state he helped to create. An indelible portrait emerges of an ambitious, domineering, relentless, and unapologetically racist figure whose tarnished legacy seems painfully relevant in America’s current political climate.

Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians Award of Excellence for a Book In Thatched Roofs and Open Sides, Carrie Dilley reveals the design, construction, history, and cultural significance of the chickee, the unique Seminole structure made of palmetto and cypress. Dilley illustrates how the multipurpose structure has developed over time to meet the changing needs of the Seminole Tribe.

This book offers an inside look at over 30 interesting and unusual episodes that shaped the history of the Sooner State. Read all about the Trail of Tears in Tahlequah. Find out why George W. McLaurin was denied admission to the University of Oklahoma in 1950. Try to solve the mystery of Karen Silkwood's suspicious death in 1974.

" ... chronicles the tale of Captain John Kinney--chief detective for the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas ("Katy") Railroad--and his confrontation with the Dalton gang" on July 14, 1892, at Adair, Indian Territory. Also includes material on his work as "the chief detective for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, a Texas Ranger, and a U.S. deputy marshal affiliated with "Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker's court."--Book description.

Unpapered is a collection of personal narratives by Indigenous writers exploring the meaning and limits of Native American identity beyond its legal margins. Native heritage is neither simple nor always clearly documented, and citizenship is a legal and political matter of sovereign nations determined by such criteria as blood quantum, tribal rolls, or community involvement. Those who claim a Native cultural identity often have family stories of tenuous ties dating back several generations. Given that tribal enrollment was part of a string of government programs and agreements calculated to quantify and dismiss Native populations, many writers who identify culturally and are recognized as Native Americans do not hold tribal citizenship. With essays by Trevino Brings Plenty, Deborah Miranda, Steve Russell, and Kimberly Wieser, among others, Unpapered charts how current exclusionary tactics began as a response to "pretendians"--non-indigenous people assuming a Native identity for job benefits--and have expanded to an intense patrolling of identity that divides Native communities and has resulted in attacks on peoples' professional, spiritual, emotional, and physical states. An essential addition to Native discourse, Unpapered shows how social and political ideologies have created barriers for Native people truthfully claiming identities while simultaneously upholding stereotypes.

Perhaps no other symbol has more resonance in African American history than that of "40 acres and a mule"—the lost promise of Black reparations for slavery after the Civil War. In I've Been Here All the While, we meet the Black people who actually received this mythic 40 acres, the American settlers who coveted this land, and the Native Americans whose holdings it originated from. In nineteenth-century Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), a story unfolds that ties African American and Native American history tightly together, revealing a western theatre of Civil War and Reconstruction, in which Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Indians, their Black slaves, and African Americans and whites from the eastern United States fought military and rhetorical battles to lay claim to land that had been taken from others. Through chapters that chart cycles of dispossession, land seizure, and settlement in Indian Territory, Alaina E. Roberts draws on archival research and family history to upend the traditional story of Reconstruction. She connects debates about Black freedom and Native American citizenship to westward expansion onto Native land. As Black, white, and Native people constructed ideas of race, belonging, and national identity, this part of the West became, for a short time, the last place where Black people could escape Jim Crow, finding land and exercising political rights, until Oklahoma statehood in 1907.