Volume 10 , Issue 6

The First Statehood Bill

Territorial Delegate David A. Harvey presented the Memorial to congress and introduced a bill in the House of Representatives (H.R. 46290), January 25, 1892, authorizing the people of Oklahoma and Indian Territories to formulate and adopt a constitution and apply for admission into the Union as a state on an equality with the other states.

On April 14, 1892, delegate Harvey introduced another bill (HR 8154) providing for the allotment of all the lands in the several Indian reservations attached to the Quapaw Agency, the organization of the same into the county of Cayuga and the attachment of the same to the territory of Oklahoma.

During the last session of the 52nd Congress, on December 22, 1892, Senator Bishop W. Perkins, of Kansas, introduced a bill to provide for the admission of Oklahoma and the Indian Territory as a single state.

Beginning February 11, 1892, and continuing at frequent intervals for nearly a month, the house committee on territories held a series of hearings on the question of the proposed state to be composed by a union of the Indian Territory with Oklahoma. The principal arguments for the Harvey statehood bill were made by Sidney Clarke, of Oklahoma City, and by W. P. Hackney and Horace Speed, both of Guthrie, representing the single statehood executive committee.

The arguments in opposition were mostly advanced by Elias C. Boudinot (Cherokee), Roley McIntosh and A. P. McKellop (Creek) and Capt. J. S. Standley (Choctaw). E. C. Boudinot was a nephew of Col. E. C. Boudinot who was a long, prominent figure in Cherokee affairs and had died a year and a half before. -- Vol. 2, pg. 675, A Standard History of Oklahoma, by Joseph B. Thoburn
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