Cherokee Outlet

[10] Meanwhile, the Indian peoples in neighboring Kansas came under intense pressure from the U.S. government and White settlers.

[13] In 1865, mixed-blood Cherokee Jesse Chisholm laid out the Chisholm Trail from Texas to Kansas, and the next year, the first large cattle herd was driven through the Cherokee Outlet from Texas to the railroad in Abilene, Kansas.

The Chisholm Trail passed through the present city of Enid and entered Kansas near Caldwell.

In 1880, cattlemen, mostly Kansans, formed the Cherokee Strip Livestock Association to manage a chaotic situation in the outlet.

The more than 100 members of the Livestock Association divided up the land, erecting fences and corrals and building ranch houses.

[16][17] Also during the 1880s, Captain Bill McDonald, acting as deputy U.S. marshal for the Southern District of Kansas and the Northern District of Texas, cleared the Cherokee Outlet of cattle thieves and train robbers, who had taken to hiding out in what they thought was a kind of "no-man's land".

Having previously rejected a bid from the cattlemen to buy the land for $3.00 per acre, the Cherokee protested in vain that the government price was too low.

President Benjamin Harrison forbade all grazing in the Cherokee Outlet after October 2, 1890, which eliminated all profit from leasing the land.

[21] The Cherokee Strip Live Stock Association disbanded in 1893, the same year the outlet was opened to non-Indian settlement.

On September 16, 1893, the eastern end of the Cherokee Outlet was settled in the Cherokee Strip land run, the largest land run in the United States and possibly the largest event of its kind in history.

[25] The Cherokee Outlet and the actions of the cattlemen play a prominent role in a portion of the Matt Braun Western novel The Kincaids.

[26] The 1897 land run serves as the setting of films such as 1925's Tumbleweeds starting William S. Hart and 1939's The Oklahoma Kid starring James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart.