From the United States Congress, an act to regulate trade and intercourse with the Indian

tribes and to preserve peace on the frontiers.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America,

in Congress assembled, that that part of the United States west of the Mississippi, and

not within the states of Missouri and Louisiana, or the territory of Arkansas, and also that

part of the United States east of the Mississippi River, and not within any state to which the

Indian title has not been extinguished, for the purposes of this act, be taken and deemed

to be the Indian country.

The Indian Intercourse Act of 1834, modified from the original Indian Intercourse Act of

1790.

In those words lies the origin of a portion of land that was known as Indian Territory,

from 1834 to 1890, and then Oklahoma Territory from 1890 to 1907, and then the state of

Oklahoma from 1907 until the present.

The territory was created as the new home for the Native American tribes from the area

that is now known as the southeastern United States.

The tribes were removed from their lands and forced to walk to Oklahoma during the tragedy

known as the Trail of Tears.

The survivors settled in Indian Territory, and then watched as that territory was systematically

reduced by the U.S. government over the coming decades.

In 1889, nearly 2 million acres of land that was set aside for Native Americans was offered

up to white settlers in a land rush, and so the eastern area of what is now Oklahoma

consisted of the last remnant of Indian Territory.

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