Oklahoma Journeys

Week of August 4, 2007

David Payne Arrested, 1884

This week on Oklahoma Journeys: Celebrating our Centennial. Boomers getting busted, territorial style. Indian Territory was meant to be the final home for many Native American nations, by the late 1800's, however, some white felt that some of the unused land should be given up for settlement by non-Indians. It's David Payne and his boomers this week on Oklahoma Journeys from the Oklahoma Historical Society.

From the Oklahoma Historical Society, this is Oklahoma Journeys: Celebrating our Centennial. I'm Michael Dean.

After the Civil War ended in 1865 the Federal Government used the fact that some Native Americans had fought for the Confederacy as an excuse to renegotiate treaties and began to take parts of Indian Territory from the Indians. In addition, they bought a large parcel of land from three Indian tribes. This land, the unassigned lands, was a large rectangle in the middle of the territory and was the area that many whites felt should be opened up for settlement. The Native American nations knew that if the unassigned lands were opened for settlement it would be just a matter of time before all of their lands were gone. It was illegal for anyone to enter Indian Territory without permission but that didn't stop groups of white settlers from trying to live there. The Boomers as they were called were colonists, sometimes numbering in the hundreds who would illegally travel into Indian Territory and set up towns. The Boomer leader for Indian Territory was David L. Payne a Civil War veteran and part time farmer. Payne led a number of trips into Indian Territory all of them unsuccessful. He and other Boomers would gather in Kansas towns along the border, get all fired up with speeches and rhetoric and then head into Indian Territory. They sat up their towns in various places, once in present day Oklahoma City, once near Stillwater and elsewhere. Regardless of where they encamped, the result was always the same. Federal troops from Fort Reno would arrive and either forcibly or peacefully escort the Boomers off of the land and usually into jail. Some of these encounters weren't friendly and some involved prolonged gun battles between troops and Boomers other arrests were made without incident. In August of 1884 David Payne led what was to be his last Boomer movement into Oklahoma. Settling near Rock Falls, two miles northwest of present day Braman, Payne and his cohorts proceeded to lay out a town and begin building structures, the first being the office of the Oklahoma War Chief newspaper. More than 300 people followed Payne to Rock Falls and started the process of settlement. It was in this week of 1884 on August 7th that soldiers from Fort Reno arrived at Rock Falls and ordered Payne and his followers to leave. Repeat offenders were arrested and first-time Boomers were escorted to the Kansas line. The dozen or so primitive structure erected at Rock Falls were burned to the ground along with the Oklahoma War Chief printing press. Payne was taken to stand trial in Fort Smith but managed to get a change of venue to a court in Topeka, which, later that fall ruled in his favor. Payne died from a heart attack the morning after the ruling was issued and didn't live to see the territory opened for settlement. You can see some of his belonging on display and learn about him at the Oklahoma History Center, on NE 23rd Street just east of the state capitol in Oklahoma City. Oklahoma Journey's: Celebrating our Centennial is a production of the Oklahoma Historical Society dedicated to the collection, preservation and sharing of our state's past. I'm Michael Dean.