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Sooner is the name first applied about six months after the Land Run of 1889 to people who entered the Oklahoma District (Unassigned Lands) before the designated time. The term derived from a section in the Indian Appropriation Act of March 2, 1889, which became known as the "sooner clause."
Oklahoma City, Edmond, and Guthrie were all so affected. Some who made the run sought to beat others to choice homesteads by entering early and hiding out until the legal time of entry. These people came to be known as "sooners."
The upper-left ray features symbols of the Cherokee Nation: a seven-pointed star surrounded by a wreath of oak leaves. In the background of the seal, surrounding the main star, are forty-five smaller stars, representing the forty-five states in the Union when Oklahoma became the forty-sixth state.
BOOMER MOVEMENT. After the Civil War, in 1866 the U.S. government undertook the making of new treaties with many of the nation's Indian tribes, some of whom had fought on the side of the Confederacy. Among these were the Creek and Seminole tribes of Indian Territory.
The greatest impetus for Oklahoma statehood began after the Land Run of 1889. Approximately fifty thousand non-Indian settlers made the run on April 22, 1889, into the Unassigned Lands (Oklahoma District). They began immediately to clamor for statehood in order to gain representation in Congress.
The OKIE program brought national and international attention to the Sooner State. Honorary Okie designations went to Pres. Richard M. Nixon, Prince Charles of Great Britain, and actor Andy Griffith. Oklahoma astronaut Thomas P. Stafford took OKIE pins on his Apollo mission.
Traveling within and across Oklahoma involved three modes of transportation: land, water, and air. Each of these means of moving people and goods from one place to another underwent an evolutionary process.
The first land run opened the Unassigned Lands in the center of Indian Territory. Surrounded by different tribal nations, this land had not been assigned to any tribes. While the rest of what would become the state of Oklahoma required the process of allotment and other legislation to open, this portion did not.
TWENTIETH-CENTURY OKLAHOMA. The dawn of the twentieth century found the region between Kansas and Texas in transition. Once set aside as a permanent home for indigenous and uprooted American Indians, almost two million acres of Indian Territory had been opened to settlement in 1889.
SOONER CATHOLIC. Since 1974 the official organ of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, the Sooner Catholic was preceded by a number of statewide Catholic publications. The first was the Indian Advocate, a quarterly published at Sacred Heart Abbey between 1890 and 1910.