The Enabling Act of 1906, in its first part, empowered the people residing in

Indian Territory Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the Federal government of the United States, United States government for the relocation of Native Americans in the United States, ...

and

Oklahoma Territory The Territory of Oklahoma was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 2, 1890, until November 16, 1907, when it was joined with the Indian Territory under a new constitution and admitted to the Union as ...

to elect delegates to a state constitutional convention and subsequently to be admitted to the union as a single state. The act, in its second part, also enabled the people of

New Mexico Territory The Territory of New Mexico was an organized incorporated territory of the United States from September 9, 1850, until January 6, 1912. It was created from the U.S. provisional government of New Mexico, as a result of '' Nuevo México'' becomi ...

and of

Arizona Territory The Territory of Arizona, commonly known as the Arizona Territory, was a territory of the United States that existed from February 24, 1863, until February 14, 1912, when the remaining extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the ...

to form a constitution and State government and be admitted into the Union, requiring a referendum to determine if both territories should be admitted as a single state.Everett, Dianna. ''Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture''. "Enabling Act (1906)." Retrieved January 10, 2012.

Background

The Oklahoma Organic Act of 1890 contemplated admitting Oklahoma and Indian Territories as a single state. However, residents of

sponsored a bill to admit Indian Territory as the

State of Sequoyah The State of Sequoyah was a proposed U.S. state, state to be established from the Indian Territory in Eastern Oklahoma, eastern present-day Oklahoma. In 1905, with the end of tribal governments looming, Five Civilized Tribes, Native Americans (th ...

, which was defeated in the U.S. Congress in 1905. President

Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), also known as Teddy or T.R., was the 26th president of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. Roosevelt previously was involved in New York (state), New York politics, incl ...

then proposed a compromise that would join

with

to form a single state. This resulted in passage of the Oklahoma Enabling Act, which President Roosevelt signed June 16, 1906.

Requirements for the Oklahoma Constitution

The Act included several other requirements for the

Oklahoma Constitution The Constitution of the State of Oklahoma is the governing document of the United States, U.S. State of Oklahoma. Adopted in 1907, Oklahoma ratified the United States Constitution on November 16, 1907, as the 46th U.S. state. At its ratificatio ...

: * Citizens of the U.S. or members of tribes who have been resident in the territories for at least six months may participate in the constitutional convention and vote in the referendum.Enabling Act Sec 2 * The capital shall temporarily be in

Guthrie, Oklahoma Guthrie is a city and county seat in Logan County, Oklahoma, United States, and a part of the Oklahoma City Metroplex. Its population was 10,191 at the 2010 census, a 2.7% increase from 9,925 in the 2000 census. First known as a railroad st ...

, until 1913, when a referendum shall determine a permanent capital. * Provisions shall be made for a public school system, free from sectarian control and with classes conducted in English (provided that foreign languages may be taught). ** Section 16 and 36 of surplus lands be reserved for the benefit of common schools ** Section 13 of surplus lands be reserved for the benefit of higher education, reserving 1/3 for the University of Oklahoma, 1/3 for the Agricultural and Mechanical College and Colored Agricultural Normal School, and 1/3 for Normal Schools * That said State shall never enact any law restricting or Right of suffrage or abridging the right of suffrage on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude * the

Osage Indian Reservation The Osage Nation ( ) () is a Midwestern Native American nation of the Great Plains. The tribe began in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys around 1620 A.D along with other groups of its language family, then migrated west in the 17th cen ...

be organized as a separate county in the new state * Preservation of freedom of religion * Prohibition of polygamy and plural marriage * Prohibition of the manufacture, sale, barter or gift of liquor for 21 years after statehood * "nothing contained in the said constitution shall be construed to limit or impair the rights of person or property pertaining to the Indians of said Territories (so long as such rights shall remain unextinguished) or to limit or affect the authority of the Government of the United States to make any law or regulation respecting such Indians, their lands, property, or other rights by treaties, agreement, law, or otherwise, which it would have been competent to make if this act had never been passed." President Roosevelt proclaimed

Oklahoma Oklahoma ( ; Choctaw language, Choctaw: , ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Texas to the south and west, Kansas to the north, Missouri to the northea ...

a state on November 16, 1907.

Equal footing doctrine

The requirement to keep Guthrie as the State's temporary capital was challenged in court after

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Oklahoma, most populous city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat ...

, won the election and the capital was moved prematurely. '' Coyle v. Smith'' was the U.S. Supreme Court Case that helped define the

equal footing The equal footing doctrine, also known as equality of the states, is the principle in United States constitutional law that all states admitted to the Union under the Constitution since 1789 enter on equal footing with the 13 states already in ...

doctrine. On December 29, 1910, the state of Oklahoma enacted a statute which removed the state capital from Guthrie to Oklahoma City. W.H. Coyle, owner of large property interests in Guthrie, sued the state of Oklahoma, arguing that the move was performed in violation of the state constitution's acceptance of the terms of Congress's enabling act. The power given to Congress by Art. IV, § 3, of the Constitution is to admit new States to this Union, and relates only to such States as are equal to each other in power and dignity and competency to exert the residuum of sovereignty not delegated to the Federal Government. The Supreme Court held that preventing the state of Oklahoma the right to locate its own seat of government deprived it of powers which all other states of the Union enjoyed, and thus violated the traditional constitutional principle that all new states be admitted "on an equal footing with the original states". As a result, the provision of the enabling act which temporarily restricted Oklahoma's right to determine where its seat of government would be was unconstitutional.

Enablement of Arizona and New Mexico statehood

The second part of the act provided for the enablement of the peoples of Arizona and New Mexico to form a state constitution and government in anticipation of admission to the union as a single state. However, the combined state was not admitted under these provisions; instead a separate act, the State Enablement Act of 1910, was enacted and was the statutory vehicle that led to their admissions as individual states.

Failure to disestablish reservations

A pair of

U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on question ...

cases first originating around 2015 challenged part of the Oklahoma Enabling Act by asserting that the Act failed to actually disestablish the reservation lands for the purposes of determining whether a crime committed on those lands was of the state's jurisdiction, if they had been disestablished, or federal, if they remained reservations, under the

Major Crimes Act The Major Crimes Act of 1885 or (18 U.S.C. § 1153), enacted as section 9 of the Indian Appropriations Act, 1886,

. In July 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had failed to disestablish the reservations in the Enabling Act and so for purposes of the Major Crimes Act, those lands that were former reservations should be considered Indian country, overseen by federal jurisdiction.

References

External links

* * {{cite web , url=https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/oklahoma/ , title=Oklahoma Statehood, November 16, 1907 , website=Center for Legislative Archives , date=15 August 2016 , publisher=U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Oklahoma Territory Indian Territory Equal footing doctrine United States federal territory and statehood legislation Native American history of Oklahoma History of Oklahoma City 1906 in American law 1906 in Oklahoma Territory Annexation