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Monday April 22, 1889 was the day of the Oklahoma Land Rush. It was also one of the most amazing days in American history, when the town of Guthrie, OK, was literally started in a day. William Willard Howard wrote a fascinating first-hand description of the event for Harper's Weekly 33 (May 18, 1889). The link is as follows:
I am reminded of what has long been a mystery to me, and that is why the University of Oklahoma selected "Sooners" as their nickname. The original Oklahoma "sooners" were the land swindlers who snuck across the border ahead of time, hid out in the bushes, and then popped out and claimed the land before any of the legitimate land rushers could arrive. As the article mentioned, shamefully among the sooners were 50 US Marshalls who were entitled to be in the new territory in advance for the purposes of keeping order during the rush. By law they were prohibited from making any claims for themselves, but they simply did so anyway.
Why would a team wish to salute these cheaters with its nickname? The folks who started fairly from behind the line were called the "Boomers." Why not honor them?
One of the amazing things about this story is that most land disputes were settled amicably, even though there were plenty of guns in evidence. Some say it was the fact that alcohol was prohibited. However, I'm not sure how that was controlled. The downside was the terrible privation that some families went through to get there, only to find that much of the land had been claimed, or that the remaining land was almost worthless for farming.
I agree that it seems bizarre that Oklahoma U. would take such a tarnished name as "Sooners," According to the following account, OU did use the names Rough Riders or Boomers before taking the name Sooners in 1908.
The downside was the terrible privation that some families went through to get there, only to find that much of the land had been claimed, or that the remaining land was almost worthless for farming.
That was one downside, the other, which doesn't get much attention, was that these settlers were rushing onto lands which six decades earlier had been promised in perpetuity to the Indian tribes which had been evicted from their homes in the East and sent on the Trail of Tears to what was originally called "The Nations"...their "permanent" homeland. This promise was kept only so long as white America had no use for the lands.
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