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Banking in Oklahoma Before Statehood - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Banking in Oklahoma Before Statehood

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This lively book takes Oklahoma history into the world of Wild West capitalism. It begins with a useful survey of banking from the early days of the American republic until commercial patterns coalesced in the East. It then follows the course of American expansion westward, tracing the evolution of commerce and banking in Oklahoma from their genesis to the eve of statehood in 1907.

Banking in Oklahoma before Statehood is not just a story of men sitting behind desks. Author Michael J. Hightower describes the riverboat trade in the Arkansas and Red River valleys and freighting on the Santa Fe Trail. Shortages of both currency and credit posed major impediments to regional commerce until storekeepers solved these problems by moving beyond barter to open ad hoc establishments known as merchant banks.

Banking went through a wild adolescence during the territorial period. The era saw robberies and insider shenanigans, rivalries between banks with territorial and national charters, speculation in land and natural resources, and land fraud in the Indian Territory. But as banking matured, the better-capitalized institutions became the nucleus of commercial culture in the Oklahoma and Indian Territories.

To tell this story, the author blends documentary historical research in both public and corporate archives with his own interviews and those that WPA field-workers conducted with old-timers during the New Deal. Bankers were never far from the action during the territorial period, and the institutions they built were both cause and effect of Oklahoma’s inclusion in national networks of banking and commerce. The no-holds-barred brand of capitalism that breathed life into the Oklahoma frontier has remained alive and well since the days of the fur traders. As one knowledgable observer said in the 1980s, “You’ve always had the gambling spirit in Oklahoma.”

ISBN-13: 9780806194189

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Publication Date: 02-26-2024

Pages: 408

Michael J. Hightower is a fourth-generation Oklahoman and an independent historian and biographer. He is the author of the two-volume chronicle Banking in Oklahoma; 1889: The Boomer Movement, the Land Run, and Early Oklahoma City; and At War with Corruption: A Biography of Bill Price, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma. He has taught sociology at the University of Virginia and Washington and Lee University and splits his time between Oklahoma and Virginia.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Preface xi

Part I The Early National Period, 1781-1863

1 Bank Battles 3

2 Free Banking 26

Part II The Indian Territory to 1889

3 The Riverboat Frontier 55

4 Crossed over the Range 74

5 Territorial Trading 101

6 Jacks-of-All-Trades 124

Part III The Twin Territories, 1890-1907

7 Twilight of the Frontier 149

8 Bust and Boom 176

9 A Happy Medium 197

10 The Scramble 220

11 The New Land of Promise 248

12 Taking Stock 272

13 Other People's Money 296

Epilogue 316

Notes 323

Bibliography 363

Index 371