Chapter 3 | Section 1
US Exploration
Shortly after Congress approved the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, President Jefferson ordered numerous expeditions to chart the vast new territory. The land known as the Louisiana Territory was quickly carved into separate, smaller territories and eventually states. Present-day Oklahoma, for example, was part of several territories over time, some for a very short period. Oklahoma went from being part of the Louisiana Territory to being part of the Arkansas Territory to becoming Indian Territory and then the twin territories of Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory, and finally the state of Oklahoma. It is important to remember that the boundaries that define present-day Oklahoma were very much in flux during much of the nineteenth century. This uncertainty was especially problematic for expeditions prior to 1819. The southern border between Louisiana Purchase land and Spanish-controlled areas, including present-day Texas, was in dispute. Much of the land along the Oklahoma-Texas border was not yet fully mapped by the Spanish, French, or Americans, which made efforts to agree on boundaries even more difficult. Indigenous knowledge about the land and environment went largely untapped as this process unfolded.
During the first two decades of the nineteenth century, several expeditions traveled through what would become Oklahoma. In the first expedition in 1806, US army captain Richard Sparks, along with a group of infantrymen and local guides, encountered many obstacles along the Red River and in the Wichita villages on either side of the river. However, Spanish forces brought an end to the Sparks Expedition almost before it started by claiming that the group was trespassing on Spanish land. That same year a second expedition also set its sights on the area that would become Oklahoma. The Pike-Wilkinson Expedition eventually split into two groups, with James Wilkinson leading men into Oklahoma while Zebulon Pike’s group ventured farther west. Wilkinson and his men encountered Osages and noted the region’s potential resources, including waterways and the Great Salt Plains, as the site would later be called. Despite struggling with freezing temperatures and hazardous conditions, Wilkinson expressed optimism in the reports he wrote about the newly purchased land.
European and US explorers, 1806–1822. This map includes the routes taken by George Sibley, Thomas Nuttall, Stephen Long, and John Bell.
Courtesy of Brad Watkins, PhD.
Wilkinson’s findings led to another expedition whose purpose was specifically to study the salt plains. In 1811, George Sibley visited the vast salt flats in the present-day counties of Woods and Alfalfa. Sibley wrote enthusiastically about both the high quality and quantity of salt. In addition to finding salt in Woods and Alfalfa counties, explorers found it in several other counties in the northwestern part of present-day Oklahoma, including Harmon, Beckham, and Woodward. These were significant discoveries because the salt could easily be transported after it was collected. Oklahoma stood well poised, it seemed, to become important to the US national economy, due to its rich natural resources, including rivers that served as a useful means of travel and transporting goods.
George Sibley led expeditions to present-day Woods and Alfalfa counties in northwestern Oklahoma to examine the Great Salt Plains in 1811 and later to survey the Santa Fe Trail. The Sibley expedition to the Great Salt Plains, called the Grand Saline at the time, was led by an Osage man named Sans Orielle. Sibley described the salt-producing region as “resembling a large pond of water covered with rough ice,” or white salt. You can visit the Great Salt Plains from April 1 to October 15 to “dig for diamonds,” or selenite crystals.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Both the Wilkinson and Sibley expeditions took place in the more northern portions of present-day Oklahoma, and so their members did not have to worry about disputed borders in the Spanish-controlled territories to the south. Pike’s portion of the expedition did have cause for worry, though. As Pike and his men headed west toward present-day Colorado, they were captured by Spanish soldiers and imprisoned for several months before they were released.
In 1819, the United States and Spain signed the Adams-Onís Treaty. Among other things, this treaty defined the southern border of the Louisiana Purchase and established the Red River as the border between present-day Oklahoma and present-day Texas. Some dispute remained for another one hundred years because existing maps of the Red River were incomplete at the time the two countries signed the agreement. The treaty did, however, result in fewer conflicts between US explorers and Spanish forces. After the signing of the treaty, more expeditions took place, including two especially significant ones. One of those expeditions was led by the scientist Thomas Nuttall.
English botanist Thomas Nuttall joined a military expedition to the Red River in May and June 1819, when he collected floral specimens and kept extensive journals. On May 16, he wrote the following journal entry: “This morning I left Fort Smith with major Bradford and a company of soldiers, in order to proceed across the wilderness, to the confluence of the Kiamesha and Red river. The object of the major was to execute the orders of government, by removing all the resident whites out of the territory of the Osages; the Kiamesha river being now chosen as the line of demarkation.” Two years later Nuttall published A Journal of Travels into the Arkansa[s] Territory During the Year 1819, which is still an excellent source for information concerning the flora, fauna, and inhabitants of the future Oklahoma region.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
It is perhaps impossible to overestimate the importance of Thomas Nuttall to Oklahoma. He was a botanist, a person who studies plants, who traveled in 1819 from England to what would become Oklahoma to lead a private expedition. Nuttall spent months collecting samples and recording his observations on a range of topics. He traveled extensively in present-day eastern Oklahoma, which at the time was part of Arkansas Territory, carefully taking notes on the trees, plants, animals, and the larger environment he encountered. He published many of his findings and made several presentations about the rich plant and wildlife of Oklahoma. In one presentation, he referenced some 550 species of plants and animals. Much of this information was considered to be new and original, the result of exploration and encounters. However, it is important to keep in mind that Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) had existed for thousands of years and was passed along orally (rather than in written form) from one generation to the other by Indigenous people—the people who inhabited the region Nuttall was now surveying. Nevertheless, Nuttall’s descriptive writings provide important insights into the time period. He wrote about encountering Osage people. He noted the presence of non-Indigenous squatters (people living on land that did not belong to them and where they did not have permission to live). In his published works, Nuttall described well over two hundred different types of plants in Oklahoma. There are thirteen native plant species named after him with the scientific identifier of nuttallii or nuttallana.
The second noteworthy expedition during this time was led by US Army Major Stephen Long and US Army captain John R. Bell. Despite multiple favorable descriptions from Nuttall and other explorers, the Long-Bell Expedition, which took place during the summer of 1820, reached very different conclusions. As it happened, the expedition involved a series of unfortunate experiences, none more so than encountering a very hot and very dry Oklahoma summer. When the voyagers reached the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, the expedition split into two groups. Major Long took his men south looking for the source of the Arkansas River and Captain Bell headed back east with his men along the Arkansas River. The heat became nearly unbearable for both groups. The hot, dry conditions made it difficult to find enough food. As Long’s men ventured into present-day Oklahoma, he called the area the “great desert” on the map he drew. The label would stick, and Oklahoma would become known for many years as the Great American Desert.
With conditions worsening, it was very hard for Long to protect his men and their animals from heat exhaustion. As if that was not bad enough, the group had a terrible time with seed ticks, as recorded by one of Long’s men, a botanist named Edwin James. James described the extreme discomfort caused by “the almost invisible seed ticks.” He wrote that the tiny but insistent parasites “excite such intolerable itching that the sufferer cannot avoid aggravating the evil by his efforts to relieve himself of the offending cause.” James had more positive things to say about the wildlife they encountered, but the heat and lack of rainfall had a decidedly negative impact on how Bell and Long viewed Oklahoma. To make matters worse, Long’s group mistook the Canadian River for the Red River. They did not realize the mistake until they arrived back at the Arkansas River, never making it as far south as they had imagined.
Perhaps the most significant outcome of the Long expedition was the focus on the desert-like conditions the group encountered. Long referred to parts of Oklahoma as “disgusting, incurable bareness and dreary with temperatures up to 100 degrees.” Decades later, Nuttall’s more positive view of Oklahoma, especially of its diverse ecology, would lead people to reconsider Long’s insistence that the area was not fit for settlement.
It is important to consider the time of year these expeditions took place and the impact of weather conditions on the explorers—and how their experiences affected future perceptions of Oklahoma. The belief that Oklahoma was not suitable for farming or settlement is part of why it would be set aside as a place to relocate Indigenous people who were living on what was viewed as far more desirable land. To understand how that process played out, it is first helpful to discuss the culture of the southeastern tribes who were removed to Indian Territory (in present-day Oklahoma) in the 1830s.