The land that is now Oklahoma City and what is referred to as Central Oklahoma was once part of the original reservations of the Creek and Seminole tribes. The Creeks ceded all claims to land east of the Mississippi River in exchange for land in Indian Territory in 1832. The boundary of this new land was a strip between the Canadian River on the south and the Cherokee land on the north and extending from near Ft. Gibson in the east to what is now Texas in the west. Remember at this time the land we think of as Texas today was Mexico at this time. Indian Territory was on the southern border of the United States.

The new land was unsurveyed at the time it was designated for use by the tribe and little was known of the vast area known as the Cross Timbers - a thick 5 to 30 mile wide strip of scrub oak trees which traverses the middle of the state on a north-south line and was a major hinderance to early travelers and explorers in the region. In October, 1832, the great writer Washington Irving accompanied a government expedition to explore the land between the Arkansas, Cimarron and North Canadian Rivers. As official secretary for the expedition, Irving kept detailed notes of the journey through the Cross Timbers:

After crossing the river, we had to force our way&...through a thick canebrake, which, at first sight, appeared to be a mass of reeds and brambles. It was a hard struggle; our horses were often to the saddlegirths in mire and water, and both horse and horseman harrassed and torn by bush and brier&...the twigs and branches [were] black and hard, so as to tear the flesh of man and horse&...It was like struggling through forests of cast iron.

After exiting the forest, Irving and his party ascended a ridge and estimated the Cross Timbers as 40 miles in breadth "as far as the eye could reach". But on the opposite side of the forest, they viewed "a beautiful, open country" and "a prairie&...extending in a clear blue line along the horizon. It was like looking from among rocks and breakers upon a distant tract of tranquil ocean." As best as we can determine, the expedition visited the area near what is now Arcadia Lake on 23 October 1832 and traveled through eastern Oklahoma County near what is now Jones and Spencer over the next few days. As a result of their discoveries, the expedition convinced the federal government to discourage Indian settlement beyond the Cross Timbers.

Regardless of Irving´s discouraging report, the Creeks and (after 1840) Seminoles were unlikely to settle in the area beyond the Cross Timbers for some time due to the lack of population density and because the land in eastern Oklahoma was much more similar to their former homeland in the woodlands of the Southeast and tribe members were not eager to tame the open prairie. So it remained for the next thirty years that the area that would become Oklahoma County, bisected by the Cross Timbers in the east and the beginning of the Great Plains in the west, would be little used by man, though migrating herds of Buffalo would occasionally stomp through.

By the 1850s Texas had become a state and the plains tribes of the southwest began to feel the pressure of white settlement there. Tribes such as the Wichita, Caddo, Comanche and Kiowa had always hunted throughout western Indian Territory, but they increasingly came to reside in the southwestern corner of the Territory. In 1858, Jesse Chisholm established a trading post along the North Canadian River just south of where the Overholser Dam is today in far west Oklahoma City. He was aware that the plains tribes did not like the area later known as Oklahoma County and some even feared the imposing Cross Timbers. Likewise the Civilized Tribes feared the wilder tribes that lived west beyond the forest. Chisholm, himself part Cherokee, was a savvy trader and was known as as a square dealer "with a straight tongue" who would give a fair price. He would bring coffee, sugar, cloth, etc. from the east and trade for hides of otter, elk, buffalo, etc. He selected the area known as Council Grove for his store because it was a thick grove of cottonwoods on the otherwise treeless plain and provided plenty of shade, fuel and building materials. The Council Grove was an area about three miles square and extended from present day Northwest Tenth Street on the south to Northwest Thirty-Ninth on the north and between the North Canadian on the west and North MacArthur on the east. Tribes would come from all over the southwest to meet in council with each other and with government agents. Chisholm abandoned this post from 1861-1865 because of the Civil War, but he was back in business by 1866.

That year, 1866, was a watershed year for Indian Territory as the federal government renegotiated its treaties with the Five Civilized Tribes, buying back millions of acres to relocate tribes from Kansas and Nebraska and all over the Great Plains. The Creek and Seminole land was for "such other civilized Indians as the United States may choose to settle thereon." Soon reservations were established for the Cheyenne and Arapaho; the Comanche, Kiowa and Apache; and the Wichita and Caddo in the west. East of the Cross Timbers the Iowa; Sac and Fox; Kickapoo; and Pottawatomie and Shawnee reservations were established. Once all of these lands were set aside, though, a rough triangle of nearly two million acres known as the Unassigned Lands left a gaping whole in the middle of the Territory. Although assigned to no Indian tribe, it was not open to settlement by whites per the agreement of the treaties of 1866. In these treaties, the tribes also agreed to allow two railroads - on north-south, one east-west - across Indian Territory.

Immediately ranchers from Kansas and Texas began to make arrangements with the various tribes to drive their cattle across their lands to the railheads in Kansas. Before his death in 1868, Jesse Chisholm blazed a trail which went from Texas, by his trading post, and on north through the Unassigned Lands and up to Wichita, Kansas. All too often, though, the cattlemen lingered and even set up ranches in the west. One such rancher was Montford T. Johnson -- a mixed-blood Chickasaw who won the approval of the Chickasaw Nation to establish a ranch just south of Silver City near present day Minco. Johnson´s ranch grew quite large and in 1873 he built a log ranch house on the edge of Council Grove at what is now Northwest Tenth and MacArthur. The three Chickasaws Johnson hired to operate this part of his ranch, Vicey Harmon, Long Gray and Frank Dyes, may have been the first permanent residents on land that would become Oklahoma City.

By 1879, pressure to open the Unassigned Lands to white settlement began to build from all sides. The railroads began to lobby Congress to allow a second north-south route from Kansas to Texas through the center of Indian Territory (the one allowed by the 1866 treaty had already been constructed in the eastern part of the Territory). They stood to profit considerably from opening the cattle markets of both states; by providing the Great Plains access to the seaport at Galveston, Texas; and by developing settlements in Oklahoma along their rail lines opening up even more markets. Indian leaders in eastern Indian Territory, especially the Cherokee, were also pushing for an opening of the Unassigned Lands in hopes that it would decrease the pressure to open their lands. And, finally, farmers and other white settlers from Kansas, Texas and beyond were looking for free agricultural land as other states began to fill up. It was about this time that the name "Oklahoma" was first used, borrowing the term from the Choctaw language even though the Choctaw themselves never referred to the area as Oklahoma. It was basically a term latched onto by proponents of opening the land for easy reference.

In 1880 settlers from Kansas, known as Boomers because they loudly pushed for opening, attempted to settle in Oklahoma land. Led by David L. Payne and William Couch, the Boomers arrived at land near what is now west of Trosper Park and tried to begin farming, but they were arrested by soldiers from Fort Reno and sent back to Kansas. They made many more attempts to settle: once near what is now Stiles Park; once they laid out a townsite called Ewing (Ewing Cemetery is still on Northeast 63rd Street); and they even tried to settle near Council Grove in 1885 and killed some of Montford Johnson´s hogs and cows! Each time they were run out of "Oklahoma City" by the 9th and 10th Cavalry (Buffalo Soldiers) from Fort Reno.