"Boomers" is the name used for two groups of

settler A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established a permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. A settler who migrates to an area previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited may be described as a pioneer. Settl ...

s in the

Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, or simply the South) is a geographic and cultural region of the United States of America. It is between the Atlantic Ocean ...

in what is now the state of Oklahoma. The first group were participants in the "Boomer Movement." These participants were white settlers from 1879–1889 who believed the so-called "

Unassigned Lands The Unassigned Lands in Oklahoma were in the center of the lands ceded to the United States by the Creek (Muskogee) and Seminole Indians following the Civil War and on which no other tribes had been settled. By 1883 it was bounded by the Cher ...

" within the

Indian Territory The Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States Government for the relocation of Native Americans who held aboriginal title to their land as a sovereign ...

were public property and open to anyone for settlement, not just Indian tribes. Their belief was based on a clause in the

Homestead Act of 1862 The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain, typically called a homestead. In all, more than of public land, or nearly 10 percent of th ...

which said that any settler could claim of "public land." The land was said to be public because it had been set aside for Indian reservations, yet the allotment for some tribes was reduced as a result of allying with the Confederacy during the Civil War and the

Reconstruction Treaties On the eve of the American Civil War in 1861, a significant number of Indigenous peoples of the Americas had been relocated from the Southeastern United States to Indian Territory, west of the Mississippi. The inhabitants of the eastern part of th ...

that followed. The name "Boomer" came from figuratively making noise and raising hell for their claims. Some Boomers entered the Unassigned Lands and were removed more than once by the

Army on the Frontier The "Army on the Frontier" is a term applied to the activities of the United States Army stationed near the frontier settlements from the beginning of national existence until about 1890, the end of the settlers' frontier. The principal functions ...

. Charles C. Carpenter was the earliest leader of the Boomer movement, but was eventually succeeded by David L. Payne. Payne helped grow the movement by founding the Southwestern Colonization Company, which served to organize the movement. After his death, Payne was succeeded by William L. Couch. President

Grover Cleveland Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837June 24, 1908) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American ...

opened the Indian Territory to settlement by signing the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889 on March 2, 1889. The result was the

Land Rush of 1889 The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889 was the first land run into the Unassigned Lands of former Indian Territory, which had earlier been assigned to the Creek and Seminole peoples. The area that was opened to settlement included all or part of Canad ...

. In it, rushers could be divided into two groups: the

Sooners Sooners is the name given to settlers who entered the Unassigned Lands in what is now the state of Oklahoma before the official start of the Land Rush of 1889. The Unassigned Lands were a part of Indian Territory that, after a lobbying campaig ...

were settlers who entered the Unassigned Lands just prior to the April 22, 1889 official opening in a race to grab the best land, while the ones who waited until the actual opening date are also sometimes referred to as "Boomers", confusingly.Do You Know Your Oklahoma History?
for one example of using Boomer in this style After its founding in 1890, the

University of Oklahoma , mottoeng = "For the benefit of the Citizen and the State" , type = Public research university , established = , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.7billion (2021) , pr ...

adopted "Boomers" as the nickname of their football team, after having first tried "Rough Riders." In 1908, the name was changed to "Sooners", the current team name. Their fight song is "

Boomer Sooner "Boomer Sooner" is the fight song for the University of Oklahoma (OU). The lyrics were written in 1905 by Arthur M. Alden, an OU student and son of a local jeweler in Norman. The tune is taken from "Boola Boola", the fight song of Yale University ...

". The OU "mascot" is the

Sooner Schooner The Sooner Schooner is an official mascot of the sports teams of the University of Oklahoma Sooners. Pulled by two white ponies named Boomer and Sooner, it is a scaled-down replica of the Studebaker Conestoga wagon used by settlers of the Ok ...

, a Conestoga wagon that crosses the field when the University of Oklahoma football team scores. It is pulled by a pair of ponies named "Boomer" and "Sooner". There are a pair of costumed mascots also named "Boomer" and "Sooner".

References

External links

* {{cite encyclopedia , first=Stan , last=Hoig , title=Boomer Movement , encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture , publisher=Oklahoma Historical Society , date=2009
Oklahoma Digital Maps: Digital Collections of Oklahoma and Indian Territory
Pre-statehood history of Oklahoma Oklahoma culture History of agriculture in the United States American regional nicknames Agriculture in Oklahoma