Oklahoma
From Wikipedia encyclopedia.
Admission to the Union on November 16, 1907
46th State
State bird: Scissortail flycatcher
State flower: Oklahoma Rose
Evidence exists that native peoples traveled through Oklahoma as early as the last ice age, but the state's first permanent inhabitants settled in communities accentuated with mound-like structures near the Arkansas border between 850 and 1450 AD. Spaniard Francisco Vásquez de Coronado traveled through the state in 1541, but French explorers claimed the area in the 1700s and it remained under French rule until 1803, when all the French territory west of the Mississippi River was purchased by the United States in the Louisiana Purchase.
Cowboys drove cattle across the state in the late 19th century.Thousands of Native Americans, including those making up the "Five Civilized Tribes", were removed from their lands in Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee and transported to Oklahoma in the 1830s on the Trail of Tears. The area, already occupied by Osage and Quapaw tribes, was designated Indian Territory by the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834. Fifteen tribes were given land within the territory in 1830, but by 1890, more than 30 tribes had been allocated federal land.