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The northern most portion of the Dallas Metroplex is McKinney Texas - 60 miles from Durant. That is not a suburb. It's not even that close. It's like saying Paul's Valley is a suburb of OKC. I can also look at Google maps to see that these towns aren't even close to being connected. It may be closer to Dallas than OKC, but it is not part of the Dallas metroplex.
I grew up in Durant too but left in 1966 when I went to OSU. SE Ok was known then as little Dixie. Durant identified with that nickname. When we went to the city, it was Dallas 20-50 times for anytime we might go to Tulsa or Oklahoma City. In those days Denison and Sherman in Texas attracted a lot of businesses due to proximity to Dallas. You can see those businesses along 75, typically in Sherman not Denison area. In those years, Dallas was considered the city to travel to for city stuff but not really influencing Durant business much. I knew one guy who lived on a ranch near Durant but worked for TI in North Dallas in those times.
Now is a different picture. Durant is definately impacted by the northern push of Dallas and its proximity. Also Durant is growing and attracting businesses that look at Sherman and Denison. Durant has a very effective economic development leader and organization which is very successful. Cardinal Glass built a 5 acre plant under roof to produce glass for its customers. The texas cities offered to build a water tower dedicated to Cardinal's plant needs which are substantial. But they chose Durant even though it meant building their own water tower. The Choctaw nation has located much of its tribe business and activities to Durant as well as put the casino in which gets Durant's name mentioned daily on Dallas Tx etc. Durant is most definately more impacted by Dallas now than in most its history. With SE OSU, good jobs, the casino (Choctaw's have been very good neighbors to the community unlike many casino's nationally), good public schools, Lake Texoma nearby and the green hilly country side as well as the steady push of Dallas growth north toward Ok, Durant is growing yet retaining its good place to live attributes.
I still consider it part of SE oklahoma but it is getting a different identy as Dallas influence on its business grows. Its a good place to be from and to be now!
Southeastern Oklahoma is still called Little Dixie. Durant Oklahoma is also the hub for the Choctaw Nation. It's going to be hard for urban sprawl to make more of an impact than that.
Last edited by johnspecial; 03-21-2013 at 09:46 AM..
You didn’t even read the articles you posted, did you?
First off, the tribes had a great deal of animosity with the US Government due to relocation, sympathy with the south had nothing to do with their willingness to make deals with the south.
Second, they were abandoned by the US Army at the start of the war because the Army was worried about holding Kansas, much less Indian Territory. The tribes felt vulnerable.
Third, most of the tribes main goal in dealing with the south was to be left alone by both sides and the agreements made were intended to keep the south out as much as the north out.
Fourth, In particular most of the Creek tribe backed the north and that led to most of the real battles in Oklahoma. Your first article is all about the bloody war between the Lower and Upper Creek factions.
The most absurd thing you have posted is that the tribes “adopted” southern culture. The tribes did intermarry, but much more with Scottish immigrants than with white southerners. My wife who is nearly full blood is a little bit Scottish herself. Slavery in the tribes had no relationship with southern slavery, it was not a similar institution. The tribes kept their own culture pre-Dawes and work to do so to this day. In the decades after the Civil War post-Dawes Oklahoma saw massive immigration from across the nation and world so that the tribes that that made up the vast majority of the population pre civil war today make up less than 10% of the people in Oklahoma. The various Creek/Seminole and Cherokee tribes in central and eastern Oklahoma simply do not share southern culture and would be offended by the assertion that they are just like “white southerners”. The other tribes in eastern Oklahoma like the Ponca and Osage are mostly plains tribes with zero links to the south at all.
There is no memory of being part of the civil war south in Oklahoma. Oklahoma was not a state, the cities and towns we know today in Oklahoma did not exist until decades after the war, to most Oklahomans this is all pre-history of Oklahoma. Even among the people of the tribes there’s very little memory of the Civil War.
The northern most portion of the Dallas Metroplex is McKinney Texas - 60 miles from Durant. That is not a suburb. It's not even that close. It's like saying Paul's Valley is a suburb of OKC. I can also look at Google maps to see that these towns aren't even close to being connected. It may be closer to Dallas than OKC, but it is not part of the Dallas metroplex.
No, according the US Census, Durant is now part of the Dallas-Ft Worth CSA. That was just announced this month. You may not agree with the decision, but it is in fact, now part of the Dallas Metroplex.
No, according the US Census, Durant is now part of the Dallas-Ft Worth CSA. That was just announced this month. You may not agree with the decision, but it is in fact, now part of the Dallas Metroplex.
Uh no. It is classified as a distant suburb and it say so right on the page. Read what you posted.
Incorrect. I understand that you want to portray Oklahoma as some neutral land during the Civil War, and you want to erase the past by acting as if we had no involvement. Had Oklahoma been a state during the war, there is a 100 percent guarantee that we would have joined the Confederacy. There was only a small band of Cherokees that sided with the Union towards the end of the war. This was only because they felt it was the best way to avoid any conflict. The Creeks and Seminoles never sided with the Union. That is just flat out false. Union and Confederate Indians in the Civil War
All Five Civilized Tribes sided with the Confederacy and even sent representative to the Confederate Congress.
Furthermore, the flags I posted earlier were the Choctaw and Cherokee Braves Confederate flags. The Rebel flag is the most common Civil War flag in Oklahoma still to this day. It is a display of southern pride.
Once again:
Choctaws and Chickasaws: Solidly confederate for the most part.
Creeks and Seminoles: McIntosh group- Confederate. Opothyleyahola- Union
Cherokee: Boudinot-Watie faction: Confederate. Ross group: Ultimately Union after wavering initially.
My greater point (which you missed completely), is that the war basically opened old wounds that were already existing amongst tribes prior to removal. For instance, the Ross group and the Boudinot/Watie group had literally been feuding because the Boudinot/Watie clan wanted to resist removal.
In the Creek faction Opothyleyahola was responsible for the assassination of a McIntosh in a struggle between the upper and lower Creeks prior to removal.
More specifically, I am curious as to how much of the picking of sides in the civil war had more to do with these issues than it actually did with the policies of the union and confederacy.
You didn’t even read the articles you posted, did you?
First off, the tribes had a great deal of animosity with the US Government due to relocation, sympathy with the south had nothing to do with their willingness to make deals with the south.
Second, they were abandoned by the US Army at the start of the war because the Army was worried about holding Kansas, much less Indian Territory. The tribes felt vulnerable.
Third, most of the tribes main goal in dealing with the south was to be left alone by both sides and the agreements made were intended to keep the south out as much as the north out.
Fourth, In particular most of the Creek tribe backed the north and that led to most of the real battles in Oklahoma. Your first article is all about the bloody war between the Lower and Upper Creek factions.
The most absurd thing you have posted is that the tribes “adopted” southern culture. The tribes did intermarry, but much more with Scottish immigrants than with white southerners. My wife who is nearly full blood is a little bit Scottish herself. Slavery in the tribes had no relationship with southern slavery, it was not a similar institution. The tribes kept their own culture pre-Dawes and work to do so to this day. In the decades after the Civil War post-Dawes Oklahoma saw massive immigration from across the nation and world so that the tribes that that made up the vast majority of the population pre civil war today make up less than 10% of the people in Oklahoma. The various Creek/Seminole and Cherokee tribes in central and eastern Oklahoma simply do not share southern culture and would be offended by the assertion that they are just like “white southerners”. The other tribes in eastern Oklahoma like the Ponca and Osage are mostly plains tribes with zero links to the south at all.
There is no memory of being part of the civil war south in Oklahoma. Oklahoma was not a state, the cities and towns we know today in Oklahoma did not exist until decades after the war, to most Oklahomans this is all pre-history of Oklahoma. Even among the people of the tribes there’s very little memory of the Civil War.
I cannot continue to have this debate with you if you insist on posting falsehoods. Your post is so laden with wrong statements, I don't even know where to begin. I can only suggest you take an Oklahoma history course. The Creek Indians were slaveholders and owned cotton plantations. This is also true of the Seminole, Choctaw and Cherokee. Sure each tribe had strays. But the tribal councils were represented in the Confederate Congress.
I don't know why you are bringing of the Osage and Ponca. Those tribes are not part of the Five Civilized tribes. The were hunter and gatherer tribes isolated along the Kansas and Missouri border.
Oklahoma was confederate territory during the Civil War and the number one destination for white and black southerners after reconstruction. Im sorry, but you are wrong. The tribes were not even close to being evenly split in Oklahoma territory and the FCT to this day refer to themselves as southrons.
Oklahoma, with its rich, fertile soil and undeveloped resources, was attractive to Southerners ruined by War and Reconstruction. They came in droves, hoping to better their lot. Many of them were Confederate veterans. Settled in 1887, Wynnewood, like most of the towns in Indian Territory, was populated nearly exclusively by people from the Old South states, and today the southeast quadrant of the state is still known as Little Dixie. http://www.okgenweb.org/~okgarvin/ve...nfederate.html
I might suggest you read a book called Southern By the Grace of God written by noted Oklahoman Michael Grissom.
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Noted Racist you mean?
From the Southern Poverty Law Center:
Quote:
Michael Andrew Grissom
Free-lance writer
WYNNEWOOD, Okla.
Although Michael Grissom holds only a master's degree from the University of Oklahoma, his books have become key texts of the neo-Confederate movement.
His first, Southern by the Grace of God, was published in 1988 and, Grissom claims, "is credited with starting the Southern resistance movement." The book actually lauds the role of Ku Klux Klan in rolling back Reconstruction, arguing, "Without it, we might never have shaken off the curse of the carpetbag/scalawag government which bound us hand and foot after the war." In a picture caption, he adds that the terrorist group "played a vital role in ridding the post-war South of brutal carpetbag rule."
In 1994, Grissom became a founding member of the neo-secessionist League of the South, and he would later become a board member of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens(which has described blacks as "a retrograde species of humanity").
Grissom has published books including When the South Was Southern, Can the South Survive?,The Southern Book of Quotes and The Last Rebel Yell. That last, published in 1994, argued, among other things, that "cultural and physiological difference[s]" between blacks and whites are "real."
Saying he had learned much about "negro character," the book also defended the break-up of slave families: "I suspect that such family separations did not really trouble them as much as I once supposed. The old-fashioned plantation negroes did not take much trouble to themselves about anything."
Grissom has also attacked the Brown vs. Board of Education decision that ended segregated schools, complaining it "forc[ed] the white Southerner to send his children into a school, the traditional institution that produces boyfriend-girlfriend relationships, now burdened with the added complication of the black factor."
With the help of the Council of Conservative Citizens and other groups, Grissom is now raising money for a pro-Confederate statue in his hometown of Wynnewood.
A pro-succession White Power author huh? That makes sense, racism was a core part of the old southern culture.
And you claim to be Cherokee? not thinking that would be too popular in Mr Grissom's crowd. It might explain why you are trying so hard to make natives be white.
My wife is Native American, she's not white and she's never called herself southern. She's Muscogee and her mother's family are all fluent speakers. I spend a huge amount of time with people from many tribes and I have never heard of any kind of southern pride or civil war memories. The Choctaw don't take pride in their role in the civil war, they are proud of the WWII code talkers. I am proud to have known one of them. Natives are invariably very pro US military. The US flag and military veterans are treated incredibly reverentially in Native culture. Mr Grissom's successionist writings would be very offensive.
This explains why I have never, ever, seen a native person flying the rebel flag. There's usually one flying at the cheesy t-shirt booth with the fake dream catchers made in china and the offensively bad Indian Dolls that seems to be at almost every pow-wow, but those are all run by some slimy white guy and he's only selling to the tourists.
The Five Tribes are southern tribes as in they were relocated from the south. That does not mean that they share a culture with white southerners. You don't see a lot of Eagle feathers, pow-wows, stomp dances, Native American Church meetings, stick ball, wild onion dinners or frybread in white southern culture do you?
The Five Tribes are southern tribes as in they were relocated from the south. That does not mean that they share a culture with white southerners. You don't see a lot of Eagle feathers, pow-wows, stomp dances, Native American Church meetings, stick ball, wild onion dinners or frybread in white southern culture do you?
For the most part I agree with your post although this part here is a little off base... First of all, powwows would not have been part of southeastern Native American cultures until after Removal to Oklahoma. They certainly had dances and ceremonies, but powwows as we think of them today were first practiced by the tribes which originated in the Great Plains and the first official intertribal powwow wasn't held until 1879. Fry bread was supposedly invented during the Trail of Tears. Likewise, there are many other traditions which southeastern cultures didn't adopt until after Removal. So it would be impossible for white Southerners outside of OK to adopt those practices which means you can't honestly use the lack thereof as proof for your statement. If we're talking about purely southeastern tribal cultures prior to Removal... Then, yes, there has been a LOT of cultural exchanges, but we need to qualify that by remembering it is common for interacting cultures to pick and choose what traditions they keep and what they don't. My family picked up some Vietnamese culture because of my sister-in-law, but that doesn't mean we abandoned our previous traditions and became Vietnamese. Similarly, white and Native Southerners sometimes picked up habits or adopted one another's cultures if they saw something they liked and then made it their own. Certainly the person you were talking with is making some huge generalizations and overstating some things, but let's not combat incorrect statements with more incorrect statements.
For the most part I agree with your post although this part here is a little off base... First of all, powwows would not have been part of southeastern Native American cultures until after Removal to Oklahoma. They certainly had dances and ceremonies, but powwows as we think of them today were first practiced by the tribes which originated in the Great Plains and the first official intertribal powwow wasn't held until 1879. Fry bread was supposedly invented during the Trail of Tears. Likewise, there are many other traditions which southeastern cultures didn't adopt until after Removal. So it would be impossible for white Southerners outside of OK to adopt those practices which means you can't honestly use the lack thereof as proof for your statement. If we're talking about purely southeastern tribal cultures prior to Removal... Then, yes, there has been a LOT of cultural exchanges, but we need to qualify that by remembering it is common for interacting cultures to pick and choose what traditions they keep and what they don't. My family picked up some Vietnamese culture because of my sister-in-law, but that doesn't mean we abandoned our previous traditions and became Vietnamese. Similarly, white and Native Southerners sometimes picked up habits or adopted one another's cultures if they saw something they liked and then made it their own. Certainly the person you were talking with is making some huge generalizations and overstating some things, but let's not combat incorrect statements with more incorrect statements.
No, now wait. He’s talking about the culture today. He claims that Indians in eastern and central Oklahoma, in fact the tribes themselves have adopted southern culture, look like and are in fact just like white southerners, today. Pow-wows, frybread etc even though they are more modern are today huge parts of native culture in Oklahoma and they do not exist in the south, except among local Natives. These are important points of differentiation from southern culture as it exists today. Natives today in eastern and central Oklahoma do not see themselves, as he claims, as southerners, but instead as Native Americans with all the cultural elements that includes today. To Natives Oklahoma isn’t Southern, it’s Indian Country.
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