Volume 13 , Issue 30

Beginnings of Indian Territory West of Mississippi

We found the following book online at books.google.com that give the formation of the state of Oklahoma (1803-1906), written by Roy Gittinger, Ph. D. (Professor of English history and Dean of Undergraduates in the University of Oklahoma), published back to 1917.

It states that the jurisdiction of the United States was first extended over Oklahoma in 1803, by the purchase of Louisiana from France. The southwestern limits of Louisiana were very indefinite, because the boundary between it and New Spain had never been established. President Jefferson included the following statement to Congress November 14, 1803, "The precise boundaries of Louisiana, westward of the Mississippi, though very extensive, are at present involved in some obscurity."

The agreement made with Spain some years later left all of the present state of Oklahoma in the possession of the United States except the narrow rectangle projecting west of the hundredth meridian, now known as the Oklahoma Panhandle.

The division of Louisiana into commonwealths of proper size began on March 26, 1804, when all of the new cession south of the thirty-third parallel was set off as the Territory of Orleans. All north of that parallel all north of the present state of Louisiana, became the District of Louisiana and was attached, for administrative purposes, to Indiana Territory. Through an act of March 3, 1805, the District of Louisiana was organized as the Territory of Louisiana. The Territory of Orleans took the name of Louisiana on its admission into the Union in April, 1812. Two months later Louisiana Territory became Missouri Territory.

In 1818 the inhabitants of a part of Missouri Territory began to ask for statehood. Because of the controversy growing out of this request was unsettled, Congress organized the Territory of Arkansas, in addition to the present state of Arkansas, all of Oklahoma south of the parallel of 36° 30'. this was done by an act of March 2, 1819. For the next 5 years Oklahoma south of a line drawn from the southwest corner of Missouri to the northeast corner of the Texas Panhandle was a part of Arkansas Territory.

The boundaries of this Territories touched the Spanish possessions were established by a treaty signed on February 22, 1819, ratified on February 19, 1821. The terms of this treaty drew a line between the United States and New Spain was drawn along the Red River to the 100th meridian, and thence extended north on that meridian into the present state of Kansas. The limits of the future state of Oklahoma on the south and west were being determined by treaty and the eastern border was beginning to take form. An Act of March 6, 1820, the western boundary of Missouri was established on a "meridian line passing through the middle of the mouth of the Kansas River."

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