Shawnee () is a city in and the county seat of Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 29,857 in 2010, a 4.9 percent increase from the figure of 28,692 in 2000. The city is part of the Oklahoma City-Shawnee Combined Statistical Area and the principal city of the Shawnee Micropolitan Statistical Area.
With access to Interstate 40, Shawnee is approximately 45 minutes east of downtown Oklahoma City. To the east and northeast, Shawnee is 112 miles from the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, which provides shipping barge access to the Gulf of Mexico.
History
The area surrounding Shawnee was settled after the American Civil War by a number of tribes that the federal government had removed to Indian Territory. The Sac and Fox originally were deeded land in the immediate area but were soon followed by the Kickapoo, Shawnee, and Potawatomi Indians. These federally recognized tribes continue to reside today in and around Shawnee.
Over the course of the 1870s, Texas cattle drovers pushed their herds across Indian Territory; there were four major trails, with the West Shawnee trail crossing near present-day Kickapoo and Main streets. With the cattle drives, railroads were constructed through the territory, with the government forcing tribes to cede rights of way.
In addition, white settlers pressed for more land; they were encroaching on territories previously reserved by treaty to Native Americans. In 1871 a Quaker mission was established here. (The current Mission Hill Hospital is located near that site, now occupied by an historic building.) That first missionary, Joseph Newsom, opened a school in 1872. By 1876 a post office and trading post had been established a quarter mile west of the mission at what became known as Shawnee Town.
Beginning in April 1889, the United States government succumbed to the pressure that had built to open the tribal lands to white settlement. It was also making policy to encourage Native Americans to assimilate into white society. By allocating communal lands to individual households and extinguishing tribal land claims, Congress was preparing the territory for eventual statehood. The end of communal holdings was also intended to be the end of traditional tribal government, to be replaced with leaders appointed by the federal government.
The Dawes Act allocated the tribes' communal lands into 160-acre plots to individual tribal members believing it would support a family farm. Tribal members were registered with records known as the Dawes Rolls established for each tribe. The government declared that tribal land in excess of what was allocated to member households was "surplus" and available for settlement by non-Native Americans. It allocated that surplus land through land runs, essentially races by which people staked claims on land. Some tribes lost parts of their communal lands, disrupting traditional governments and practices.
The first land run took place in the central area of Oklahoma Territory in 1889 known as the Unassigned Land. In the Land Run of 1891 onto surplus land of the Sac and Fox, Citizen Pottawatomie and Shawnee, just east of the original run, was opened for settlement. Prospective land owners lined up along the Kickapoo Tribe's border and Etta B. Ray was the first to dash across the line into the area designated County B. Her claim and those of John Beard, James T. Farrall, and Elijah A. Alley were to become the city of Shawnee. Etta Ray married Henry Beard, an Oklahoma City business owner, a month after the run and they came to her claim to live in the cabin that she and her family had built for them. Several names were proposed for the new city, including Brockway, Forest City and Shawneetown, after the store that was south of the townsite. Following a long discussion among early settlers who had their own ideas for the town's name, a compromise was reached. They named the town Shawnee after the tribe that had been living there. A second run, onto the Kickapoo Land to the west of the original, was held in 1895, adding more acreage added to Pottawatomie County
In the early spring of 1895, Mr. Beard entered into an agreement with the promoters of the Choctaw, Oklahoma and Gulf Railroad (CO&G), then extending its line from Memphis, Tennessee, to Amarillo, Texas, to build through the land his wife had claimed. In consideration he gave the railway company one-half of the claim of one hundred and sixty acres. The road was built through his farm, and the City of Shawnee was founded on July 4, 1895.