Entering Indian Territory

You are crossing into the far northeast corner of Oklahoma, into ground that was once Indian Territory. In eighteen thirty-three the United States ceded this land to the Quapaw people. The country around you became home to bands from many displaced nations, including the Seneca, Shawnee, Peoria, Miami, Ottawa, and Wyandot, peoples pushed westward from the Great Lakes and the Ohio Valley and resettled here on the edge of the new territory.

For decades it stayed quiet farming and grazing land. Then, beginning in nineteen oh five, prospectors struck rich veins of lead and zinc beneath these hills, and a mining boom poured sudden wealth onto the Quapaw and their neighbors. The district became one of the great lead and zinc fields in the world.

The mines are largely silent now, but the tribal nations remain, their governments rooted in the land they were given here.