Oklahoma's economic history is divided into four periods. The first period covers the nineteenth century, encompassing settlement by American Indians of the Southeast followed by new arrangements facilitating private land ownership. The second extends from 1900 to the onset of the Great Depression in 1930. The third ends in 1973 with the first of the major oil shocks. The fourth comprises the energy boom and bust of the late twentieth century, along with contemporary conditions.
The century from 1800 to 1900 encompassed the time of Indian and white settlement. During the nineteenth century Oklahoma was characterized by very high ratios of land to labor and capital, by almost total dominance of primary (natural resource based) production, and by unique institutional and cultural features, of which the effects of some remain important in today's economy. The initial settlement by the Five Tribes in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s in what is now Oklahoma (at that time Indian Territory) did not reflect free-market labor migration in response to income differentials. Added to the coercion of removal was the fact that the Five Tribes had adopted the institution of slavery in their former southern setting. Slave-owning Indians brought with them an additional labor supply.
Economic analysis of Oklahoma prior to white settlement is complicated by the cultures of the Five Tribes. Some members of those groups had adopted the dominant white culture's modern economic and political systems prior to Removal. Others, frequently full bloods, did not wish to become part of the modern sector. There was thus a dual economy. The modern sectors of the Five Tribes apparently prospered during the period from removal to the Civil War. Tribal governments were reestablished, and although land was owned collectively, the tribes granted effective control to large-scale landholders raising cotton and livestock. No doubt per capita incomes grew significantly during this "Golden Era."
The Civil War was an economic disaster for the Five Tribes. The North-South conflict was played out in miniature in the territory. Assets were destroyed and agricultural activities interrupted. After the war ended, punitive measures against tribes that had sided with the South involved confiscation of their lands in the western half of the state.
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