Wait, what?

In which Jeff provides a history lesson that nobody asked for

It’s come to my attention that not all of you boners know what I’m talking about whenever I use the nickname The Sooner State.

What? You mean you guys don’t know the monikers of the southwestern US states? Geeze, read a book sometime, Tumblr.

To clear things up, I’ll give all you dear readers a quick breakdown of how my home state, Oklahoma, earned its byname so maybe you will all know what the hell I’m going on about when I try to use a little variety when I talk about where I’m from. Am I about to write a bunch of information that you could glean from 30 seconds of Wikipedia? Probably. But shut up.

First, some basic history: Oklahoma officially became a state after the culmination of the Oklahoma and Indian Territories on November 16, 1907, making it the 46th state to join this great union. A late bloomer, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean that a lot of stuff wasn’t going on in the territory prior to its statehood.

Following the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Trail of Tears forced Native American nations- including the Choctaw, Seminole, Creek, Chickasaw, and Cherokee tribes- to relocate from the southeast sections of the US, such as modern day Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, to “Indian Territory”, or the eastern section of modern day Oklahoma. The name Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw words okla and humma, meaning “red people”. Does what it says on the box, amirite?

Skip ahead 59 years to the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889 (99 years before I was born. Just sayin’). Signed by President Grover Cleveland after years of trying to open the Indian Territory, the Act proclaimed that the Unassigned Lands would be opened on April 22, 1889, at high noon for anyone who wanted to stake their claim on 160 acres of primo real estate, otherwise known as the giant clusterfuck that must have been the Land Run/Rush. You’ve got to hand it to those lawmakers- they did not mince words when it came to naming acts. The Unassigned Lands were comprised of modern day Logan, Oklahoma, Payne, Cleveland, Canadian and Kingfisher counties and were relinquished to the United States by the Creek (Muskogee) and Seminole tribes following the Civil War. For some reason, The central area of the territory was highly sought after. Being from a town that straddles Kingfisher and Canadian county, this bit of information bewilders me to this day.

ANYWAY. While most decent and hardworking land seekers- some 50,000 of them- were lined up at the border at 11:59 AM that April day, some jackholes decided to not play by the rules. Said jackholes were often deputy marshals, land surveyors, railroad employees, and others who could legally enter the territory prior to the Land Run without violating the “sooner clause” of the Act, which stated that anyone caught in the area before its official opening wouldn’t be allowed to stake their claim. These asshats would go in early, hide, and then jump out and grab their misbegotten land sometimes hours before anyone else even got there. These “Sooners” caused hundreds of legal contests over land, and just generally gummed up the works of a burgeoning state. With each successive land run, the Sooner ideology caught on more and more. In an 1895 land rush, as much as half of the available land was claimed by these shitdicks.

In 1908, just a year after statehood, the University of Oklahoma adopted the “Sooners” as their football team’s nickname. Some time after, Oklahoma’s official epithet became The Sooner State.

So there you have it: my home state is named after a bunch of dirty fucking cheaters. You now know our dark little secret.