The official starter fired his pistol on Sept. 16, 1893, and thousands of land-hungry Americans, including a slew of eager Texans, were off and running for the Cherokee Outlet!

Seventy-four years earlier, the federal government initiated eviction proceedings against the Five Civilized Tribes from their ancestral grounds in the southeastern United States. For more than a century, the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks and Seminoles had coexisted with the white man and even assimilated much of his alien culture. But no matter what they did, the irresistible tide swept them westward.

Choosing relocation over confrontation, the Indians accepted their common fate and a one-way ticket to Oklahoma. Traveling the infamous “Trail of Tears,” along which many perished from hardship and abuse, they took on face value the solemn promise that the land was theirs “as long as grass shall grow and the rivers shall run.”

Temporary masters of all of modern-day Oklahoma except for the Paanhandle, the red exiles settled in the east, reserving the western range for buffalo hunting. Each tribe established their own sovereign nation complete with autonomous legislature, legal system and political capital. Acutely aware their brothers in less hospitable locales faced far worse conditions, the displaced Indians made the best of their new lives.