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Article: Oklahoma City: History
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- Cities of the United States
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Oklahoma City: History
Land Run Leads to City's Founding
Inhabited by Plains tribes and sold to the United States by France as a part of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, much of what is now Oklahoma was subsequently designated as Indian Territory. As such, it was intended to provide a new home for tribes forced by the federal government to abandon their ancestral lands in the southeastern United States. Many of those forced to relocate in the 1830s were from what were called the Five Civilized Tribes
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Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole
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who soon set up independent nations in the new territory. After the Civil War, however, the pressure of westward expansion ...