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The name Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw Indian word of ‘Okla’ which means people and ‘Humma’ meaning red. The area has evidence of human occupation going back about 15,000 years. The first Europeans to arrive were the Spanish in the 16th century and during the 18th centuries the area was contested by the Spanish and the French. Oklahoma was given to the United States in 1803 by France as part of the Louisiana Purchase.

After 1812 the government of the United States decided to remove the many Indian tribes from their settled lands and move them west to the unsettled lands in Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. Oklahoma was reserved by Congress in 1828 and it was ceded to five southeastern tribes as Indian Territory. Many Cherokees refused to abandon their homes east of the Mississippi and so they were forced west by the army in what was to become known as the ‘Trail of Tears.’

After the American Civil War the territory was placed under military rule, cattlemen and new settlers began to covet the lands on which the tribes had been moved to and once the railroad arrived in the 1870’s illegal incursion into Indian Territory flourished. Many of these were later expelled but in 1889 two million acres of central Oklahoma was made available for white settlers. On April 22nd 1889 a single pistol shot started the claims for this new land, many had beaten the gun to stake their claim, they were tagged ‘sooners’ and this eventually became the States nickname. The next year the region was divided into Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory.

Oklahoma was admitted as a single state when the two territories combined in 1907, initially it prospered as an agricultural state but the 1930’s brought drought and much of the area was a dust bowl, many were forced west seeking better opportunities. Better years returned with some prosperity in the 1940’s and the onset of oil production in the 1970’s brought a major economic boom to the area.