On this day in 1907, Oklahoma joined the Union when President Theodore Roosevelt signed legislation making it the 46th state.
In 1890, the region had been divided into the Indian Territory and the Oklahoma Territory; Congress then sought to admit them both as a single state. In response, legislators in both territories drafted a joint constitution. It was approved by their respective voters on Sept. 17, 1907, paving the way for Oklahoma’s accession to statehood two months later.
After the War of 1812, the federal government sought to remove Indian tribes from the Eastern United States and to resettle them in what is now Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. In 1828, Congress reserved Oklahoma for Indians, ceding the territory to five Southeastern tribes. After many Cherokees refused to abandon their land, the U.S. Army moved them westward in a forced march known as the Trail of Tears. The uprooted tribes joined Plains Indians who had long lived there. New Indian “nations,” each with a separate government, were created.
During the Civil War, most of these tribes backed the South. With the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, the Oklahoma Territory came under U.S. military rule. Cattlemen and settlers coveted its virgin ranges. With the arrival of the railroad in the 1870s, illegal white incursions into the Indian Territory became more commonplace. While many such “boomers” were initially expelled, pressure mounted until the U.S. government agreed in 1889 to make 2 million acres in central Oklahoma available for white settlement.
At noon on April 22, 1889, a pistol shot signaled the opening of the new lands. Tens of thousands of people rushed in to stake their claims. Those who had already illegally entered to beat the starting gun were called “sooners” — now the mascot of the University of Oklahoma football team.