Farming in Oklahoma

About 900 A.D. Indians of Oklahoma grew beans, corn, and pumpkins. In the 1850's mixed-blood plantation owner Choctaw Robert M. Jones cultivated more than 5,000 acres and shipped his cotton to New Orleans on his own steam boats.

The Unassigned Lands

Did you know that when the government parcled out lands to the various Indian tribes, there was a section they forgot? It was right in the middle of what is now the state of Oklahoma. Elias C. Boudinot, a mixed-blood Cherokee lawyer discovered it and published a letter in 1879 urging the opening of the Unassigned Lands to non-Indians. He was thought to be working with the railroads and the boomers. He was called a traitor by his people. This was the land opened in 1889 for the first Oklahoma Land Run.