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The ¤rst known Europeans to venture into this region encountered a village of Tawakoni Indians, a subgroup whose name is not a household word today. Let us investigate these people, assuming a broad perspective that focuses on general lifeways and origins. We will begin by describing seminal events in the formation of the modern state of Oklahoma, placing the Wichita into that historical scenario. Then we will consider the Wichita as they existed 280 years ago, ¤lling in their social landscape by describing their neighbors and the relationships of these people to the Wichita.1 ESTABLISHMENT OF PRESENT-DAY OK LAHOMA The discovery of the Americas by Europeans ushered in new modes of relationships for the Indians, though these modes were usually not immediately realized. Incursions of the Spanish and French onto Indian land, recounted in greater detail in the next chapter, continued sporadically throughout the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. By the time the Americans obtained the territory of the future Oklahoma as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Europeans had been in contact with the Indians of south-central North America for more than two and a half centuries. Having bought this immense parcel of land, the Americans under President Jefferson proceeded to explore it, initially establishing the Louisiana Territory with headquarters in St. Louis in 1805. Administration of the land that was to become Oklahoma was subsequently changed to Missouri Territory ; then, as Missouri became a state, most of Oklahoma reverted to Arkansaw Territory in 1819. The Lewis and Clark Expedition was immediately commissioned to explore land to the north, while other parties explored the south. These included the Red River Expedition under Capt. Richard Sparks and the Rocky Mountain Expedition under Capt. Zebulon Pike, both in 1806. They were followed by the Sibley and Long Expeditions in 1811 and 1819, and by the scienti¤c peregrinations of English botanist Thomas Nuttall, also in 1819. Well before these post-purchase expeditions, French coureurs de bois and 2 Who Were These Indians? Long-Knives, American trappers and traders from the East, had traveled throughout western North America living amongst the Indians. In the early nineteenth century, trading posts were established in eastern Oklahoma by Frenchmen Pierre Chouteau and Joseph Bogy and Kentuckian Nathaniel Pryor (Foreman 1942:6–7; Gibson 1981:28–35). By 1819 several families from the East had taken up residence in the Red River Valley near its con®uence with the Kiamichi and, according to Nuttall, were farming the land with considerable success (Nuttall 1980:178). American policy was keeping up with settlement, though just barely. Fort Smith was established on the Arkansas River in 1817 as an outpost to regulate and protect American occupation of the frontier. By 1824 settlement had progressed to the point that Fort Smith was joined by Forts Gibson and Towson, both in present-day Oklahoma, and the line between these two was considered the western boundary of Arkansas Territory. Camps Holmes and Washita were also built at this time, and ten years later Fort Coffee, west of Fort Smith, and Camp Arbuckle, at the mouth of the Cimarron River, were established to control contraband and protect settlers. In 1828 the American government essentially snatched the 40-mile-wide strip of what is now Oklahoma from Arkansas in an attempt to provide western land for Indians being relocated from the eastern United States (Gibson 1981:39–41, 110–111). Negotiations for the removal of eastern North American Indian tribes had been authorized by the United States government since 1804, and many tribal members had already moved to Indian Territory by the time of forced removal, known as the Trail of Tears. Eventually 60 tribes were relocated to Indian Territory, which for the Indians continued to shrink as portions of their land were made available for settlement to non-Indians. As their favored method of disposition, the government concocted the land run, the most famous of which occurred in 1889 (Foreman 1942:238; Gibson 1981:41–43). Land runs were chaotic affairs and ripe for abuse, which explains why one of the last land openings, that of the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Reservations in 1901, was not a run at all but a lottery. It appears to have been favorably received and generally perceived as fair—for those non-Indians who partook, of course (West 1982:31). The establishment of Indian Territory had a devastating effect on both the newcomers and the indigenous people. The most famous removal story concerns the...

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