[3] At the end of his three-year service Payne returned to Doniphan County and was elected to the Kansas House of Representatives, serving in the 1864, 1865, and 1872 sessions.

In July 1867, Kansas Governor Samuel Johnson Crawford issued a proclamation calling for volunteers to protect Kansans from Indian attacks in the west.

Payne enlisted and was mustered in as the captain of Company D. This battalion replaced the Seventh Cavalry which had been transferred to the Platte River for the summer.

In October 1868, Payne mustered in as a lieutenant in Company H of the 19th Kansas Cavalry, which served in a winter campaign against Indians on the western Great Plains.

Elias Boudinot, a Cherokee citizen working as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., published an article about the public land issue in the February 17, 1879, edition of the Chicago Times.

Dr. Morrison Munford of the Kansas City Times began referring to this tract as the "Unassigned Lands" or "Oklahoma" and to the people agitating for its settlement as Boomers.

[5] To prevent settlement of the land, President Rutherford B. Hayes issued a proclamation in April 1879 forbidding unlawful entry into Indian Territory.

Inspired by Boudinot, Payne began his efforts to enter and settle the public domain lands as allowed by existing law.

On his first attempt to enter Indian Territory, in April 1880, Payne and his party laid out a town they named "Ewing" on the present-day site of Oklahoma City.

[6] Payne was furious, as public law (specifically the Posse Comitatus Act) prohibited the military from interfering in civil matters.

[8] During another trip in July 1884, the army seized his Oklahoma War Chief press, burned his buildings, and took Payne and his group through the Cherokee Nation after their arrest.

In the fall term, Judge Cassius G. Foster quashed the indictments and ruled that settling on the Unassigned Lands was not a criminal offense.