Okemah, Oklahoma
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Date: 2019-01-07

Okemah, Oklahoma, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=130441 / CC BY SA 3.0

Okemah, Oklahoma

Okemah is the largest city in and the county seat of Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, United States. It is the birthplace of folk music legend Woody Guthrie. Thlopthlocco Tribal Town, a federally recognized Muscogee Indian tribe, is headquartered in Okemah. The population was 3,223 at the 2010 census, a 6.1 percent increase from 3,038 in 2000. In that census, about 26.6 percent of the residents identified themselves as Native American.

Historically occupied by the Osage and Quapaw, who ceded their lands to the United States by 1825, the area was assigned to the Creek Nation and specifically the Thlopthlocco Tribal Town after Indian Removal of tribes from the Southeast United States in the 1830s.

Okemah was named after a Kickapoo Indian chief. In March 1902, Chief "Okemah" built a bark house in his tribe's traditional fashion. He had come to await the opening of the townsite, which took his name on April 22, 1902. In the Kickapoo language, "okemah" means "things up high," such as highly placed person or town or high ground.

In preparation for Oklahoma's statehood, the Dawes Commission was authorized in 1896 to work with the Five Civilized Tribes to enroll their members for allotments of tribal land to individual households. Registration of tribal members lasted from 1898 to 1906. After allotment, the government was going to declare the remaining tribal lands "surplus" and sell them to European-American settlers.

Okemah was platted by a group of Shawnee residents in March 1902 on land belonging to Mahala and Nocus Fixico, full-blood Creek. The Fixicos had no legal right at the time to sell their holding, as enrollment of tribal members on the Dawes Roll continued until 1906, and no land sales were to take place by Indians until it was completed. That did not appear to affect the promoters or the development of the town.

On April 22, 1902, the formal opening launc...