Oklahoma’s colourful past has been celebrated in fiction. John Stienbeck’s novel Grapes of Wrath (1939) recounted the sad years of the Dust Ball, when the land had suffered terrible draught, and many “Okies” left their stake to seek a better life in California. In 1943 Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein brought to the Broadway stage the very successful musical comedy of Oklahoma! Which made the state’s name a household word. The sometimes larger than life image of Oklahoma was also the basis for much of the humour of actor and comedian Will Rogers, who was probably the state’s most famous son.
The People of Oklahoma
The original inhabits of Oklahoma were Plain Indians, members of the Caddo, Wichita, Pawnee, Osage, Comanche, Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. The Apache and Kiowa arrived later in the 19th centaury. In the 1830s, the “Five Civilised Tribes” from the East (Cherakee, Choctaw Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole) were forced to move to what was then intended to be a permanent Indian tertiary.
After the territory was opened to settlement in 1889, homesteaders came from every ethnic group then in the US. There were a number of settelers from China. By the 1980s Oklahomans represented a fairly typical Midwestern society.
Facts and Firgures of Oklahoma
AREA: 181, 185, square kilometres (69,956 square miles)
POPULATION: 3,305,000 (1968)
RIVERS: Washita, Arkansas, Cimarron, Wichita, North Canadian, Red River of the South, and Canadian.
CITIES: Oklahoma City, 443,172; Tulsa, 374,535; Lawton, 80,020, Norman, 68,020; Enid, 50,363; Muskogee, 40,011.
Education
The first school law was enacted by the Cherokee in 1832. In 1890 the territorial legislature provide for public (state) schools. The largest of the state institutions of higher education is the University of Oklahoma at Norman, considered one of the finest Universities in the United States.
OkLAhOMa
