In 1889, this territory was offered by the federal government to non-Native Americans for settlement in the Oklahoma Land Rush.

The dispute led to the killing of General William McIntosh, the chief of the Lower Creeks, and left the treaty in doubt.

They suffered a huge loss of life, as did their limited number of Seminole allies under Halleck Tustenuggee.

During the Choctaw-Chickasaw Treaty negotiations of 1866, the Principal Chief of the Choctaws, Allen Wright, coined the term Oklahoma and suggested it as the name for all of Indian Territory.In about 1879, Elias C. Boudinot began a campaign, perhaps at the behest of one of his clients, the M–K–T Railroad, to open the land "unoccupied by any Indian" to settlement by non-Indians.

In an attempt to prevent encroachment, President Rutherford B. Hayes issued a proclamation on April 26, 1879, forbidding trespass into the area which Territory is designated, organized, and described by treaties and laws of the United States and by executive authorities as the Indian's country ...It was too late.

Almost immediately speculators and landless citizens began organizing and agitating for the opening of the land to settlement.

The Boomers planned excursions, which they called raids, into the area and surveyed townsites, built homes, and planted crops.

Federal troops of the United States Army provided law enforcement; the closest criminal and civil jurisdictions were the federal courts of the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, with its courthouse centered in the border town to the east of Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Despite that, the district and territory was generally peaceful with its longtime infamous federal judge Isaac C. Parker (1838-1896), and a posse of his United States deputy marshals.

Under the congressional act, local officials were appointed to handle civil and criminal matters until elections were held.

Under the later Curtis Act of 1898, the communal lands of the Five Civilized Tribes in the adjacent Indian Territory to the east, were allocated to registered heads of households, thus extinguishing tribal title.

The federal government declared any excess lands as "surplus" and allowed sale to non-Native Americans.