Surfing the www yesterday during lunch to find out about hominy made me find some other topics unrelated to hominy the food. Discovering that the town of Hominy is named after a Native American, I wondered about other towns in Oklahoma. Some Oklahoma towns appear to be named after Native American tribes, such as Tonkawa, Miami, Ponca City, Chickasha, Cheyenne, Muskogee, Shawnee. Sequoyah might be named after another tribal leader. Other towns in Oklahoma are obviously some sort of Native American word or derivative of words, such as Tahlequah, Okmulgee, Wewoka, Waynoka, Okarche, Okemah. So, being too curious for my own good sometimes, I decided to pick a town and find out more about it. This will turn into another big chore. Kinda like the family history chore that I started and need to continue wrangling some day.
One thing I discovered is a map of the Tribes of Indian Nation. The map appears to show the areas of the country where the various tribes and nations originated. Pretty cool.
Today for no particular reason, I chose the town of Tonkawa. It is north of Stillwater between there and Ponca City. It is named after the Tonkawa Tribe. The Tonkawas call themselves Tickanwa-tic, which means Real People. The name Tonkawa apparently is from the Waco Indian word Tonkaweya, which means "they all stay together." The Tonkawa tribe almost became extinct by the mid-1880's before the tribe was relocated from southeast Texas to the Tonkawa, Oklahoma region. The tribal headquarters are at Fort Oakland. So far, I am not finding out much about Fort Oakland as an old army post. I found a reference to the Oakland Agency near Tonkawa, which is where the Nez Perce tribe was relocated after living near Quapaw in the late 1870s. In the mid-1880s, the Nez Perce moved from Oklahoma Territory back to their native lands in Idaho. Shortly afterward, the Tonkawa tribe moved into the former Nez Perce reservation. Still searching for information about the Oakland Agency and/or Fort Oakland.
Northern Oklahoma College is located in Tonkawa.
Anyway, interesting lunchtime surfing of the www learning about Oklahoma. Time to go back to work. Have a great day.
2 comments:
Cool stuff. I always hated history in school, but now I kinda like it. It's even cooler the closer to home it is.
I went to a homecoming parade in Hominy many moons ago and one of the floats was "Tip-a-canoe and Tonkawa too!"
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