William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

Chapter 30: Oklahoma.

Oklahoma is the name proposed by Creek and Cherokee radicals for the Indian countries, when the tribes shall have become a people, and the hunting grounds a State. Enthusiasts, like Adair and Boudinot, dream of such a time. These Indians cannot heal their tribal wounds, nor get their sixteen thousand Cherokees to live in peace; yet they indulge the hope of reconciling Creek and Seminole, Choctaw and Chickasaw, under a common rule and a single flag. Still more, their hearts go out into a day when tribes still wild and pagan-Cheyennes, Apaches, Kiowas, and other Bad Faces — will have ceased to lift cattle and steal squaws, will have buried the hatchet and scalping-knife, and will have learned to read penny fiction and to drink whisky like White men.

That day is yet a long way off.