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Explanation:
Boomers is the name given to settlers in the Southern United States who attempted to enter the Unassigned Lands in what is now the state of Oklahoma in 1879, prior to President Grover Cleveland opening them to settlement by signing the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889 on March 2, 1889.
The Sooners, settlers who entered the Unassigned Lands just prior to the April 22, 1889 official opening, were preceded by Boomers by a decade.
The term "Boomer," in relation to Oklahoma, refers to participants in the "Boomer Movement." These participants were white settlers who believed the Unassigned Lands were public property and open to anyone for settlement, not just Indian tribes.
Some Boomers entered the Unassigned Lands and were removed more than once by the United States Army. Charles C. Carpenter was the earliest leader of the Boomer movement, but was eventually succeeded by David L. Payne. Payne helped grow the movement by founding the Southwestern Colonization Company, which served to organize the movement. After his death, Payne was succeeded by William L. Couch.
Buffalo soldiers were African American soldiers who mainly served on the Western frontier following the American Civil War. In 1866, six all-black cavalry and infantry regiments were created after Congress passed the Army Organization Act. Their main tasks were to help control the Native Americans of the Plains, capture cattle rustlers and thieves and protect settlers, stagecoaches, wagon trains and railroad crews along the Western front.
Who Were the Buffalo Soldiers?
No one knows for certain why, but the soldiers of the all-black 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments were dubbed “buffalo soldiers” by the Native Americans they encountered.
One theory claims the nickname arose because the soldiers’ dark, curly hair resembled the fur of a buffalo. Another assumption is the soldiers fought so valiantly and fiercely that the Indians revered them as they did the mighty buffalo.
Whatever the reason, the name stuck, and African American regiments formed in 1866, including the 24th and 25th Infantry (which were consolidated from four regiments) became known as buffalo soldiers.
UNASSIGNED LANDS.
The term "Unassigned Lands" was commonly used in the 1880s when people referred to the last parcel of land in the Indian Territory not "assigned" to one of the many Indian tribes that had been removed to the future state of Oklahoma. Another common, though equally unofficial, name used interchangeably was "the Oklahoma country."
The first popular usage of the term "Unassigned Lands" started in 1879 when mixed-blood Cherokee Elias C. Boudinot published an article in the Chicago Times describing lands in the central part of the Indian Territory that could, and in his opinion, should be settled by white people. The boundaries of his so-called "Unassigned Lands" had been established externally through a series of treaties with Indian tribes. The border on the north was the Cherokee Outlet, created by treaty in 1828. To the south was the Chickasaw Nation, established in 1837. To the west was the Cheyenne and Arapaho Reservation, established in 1867. To the east were the reservations of the Potawatomi (1867), Shawnee (1867), Sac and Fox (1867), Pawnee (1881), and Iowa (1883). Altogether, the Unassigned Lands covered 1, 887,796.47 acres, or approximately 2,950 square miles.
Geographically, the Unassigned Lands were crossed by five rivers: the Canadian, the North Canadian, the Cimarron, the Deep Fork, and the Little. Each river valley provided rich bottomland, and the uplands between each river basin offered thinner topsoil good for grazing. Timber was plentiful along the watercourses, but on the uplands it varied from the nearly impenetrable undergrowth of the rolling Cross Timbers on the east to the flat plains and grasslands on the west. It was this transition zone from timber to prairie that attracted the engineers of the Santa Fe Railway Company when they laid their north-south tracks through the Unassigned Lands in 1886.
OKLAHOMA COLONY.
Generally, the term Oklahoma Colony referred collectively to groups of land seekers in Kansas and Texas organized by David L. Payne to settle the unoccupied public lands known as the Unassigned Lands. Payne hoped to establish a town to serve as a capital as well as provide homesteads for farmers. Beginning in February 1880 he and others formed the Southwest Colony Town and Mining Company and another association called the Southwest Colonization Society. Memberships in the organizations were sold at two dollars for the right to a quarter section of land and twenty-five dollars for a town lot. Eventually, after several name changes the colonization group became known simply as Payne's Oklahoma Colony.
