Volume 13 , Issue 14

Iowa, Sac & Fox, Pottawatomie, & Kickappoo Lands

The first lands attached to the new Oklahoma Territory under the Organic Act came from the small reservations assigned to the Iowa, Sac and Fox, and Pottawatomie Tribes.

In September 1891, 20,000 home seekers gathered for chances on seven thousand homesteads. It was 1895 before the Kickappoos agreed to divide roughly a tenth of their lands as individual allotments and make the rest a available to homesteaders.

Chronology and geography collaborated to make these some of the roughest, rawest, and wildest regions in the new territory. They were no longer subject to the strict anti-liquor laws that the federal government applied to Indian lands. Former reservations were governed under statutes hastily adopted by the territory's first legislature.

Obsessed with claiming permanent government-subsidized booty for their hometowns (including a university for Norman, a land grant college for Stillwater and a teacher-training school for Edmond), the untested lawmakers waited until their session's final day before approving any substantive bills. They ended up directing county commissioners to grant retail liquor licenses to anyone who applied, provided only that the applicant pay a $200 annual license free and be a man of respectable character.

Lexington was almost perfectly situated boor the purpose of entrepreneurs eager to sell liquor within a stone's throw of Indian reservations. Lexington was no city at all. It did rest on the bank of the Canadian River directly across from Purcell. Purcell was second only to Ardmore as the largest city in the "bonedry" Chickasaw Nation.

Lexington had 13 saloons that opened by the year's end. At least two more saloons opened on a sandbar, both accessible by a rickety wooden bridge. There was also a floating saloon moored to the river's north bank.

More notorious among the so-called whiskey towns were those towns in the new Pottawatomie County. They were bordered on the east by the Creek and Seminole nations and on the south by the Chickasaw Nation. The county opened its first saloon at Keokuk Falls in its first year of existence in 1891.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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