Muskogee

Muskogee, a city and the county-seat of Muskogee county, Oklahoma, U.S.A., about 3 m. W. by S. of the confluence of the Verdigris, Neosho (or Grand) and Arkansas rivers, and about 130 M. E.N.E. of Oklahoma City. Pop. (1900), 4154; (1907), 14,418, of whom 4298 were negroes and 332 Indians; (1910), 25,278. It is served by the St Louis & San Francisco, the Midland Valley, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, and the Missouri, Oklahoma & Gulf railways. Fort Gibson (pop. in 1907, 1063), about 5 m. N.E. on the Neosho, near its confluence with the Arkansas, is the head of steam-boat navigation of the Arkansas; if is the site of a former government fort and of a national cemetery. Muskogee is the seat of Spaulding Institute (M.E. Church, South) and Nazareth Institute (Roman Catholic), and at Bacone, about 2 m. north-east, is Indian University (Baptist, opened 1884). Muskogee is the commercial centre of an agricultural and stock-raising region,. is surrounded by an oil and natural gas field of considerable extent producing a high grade of petroleum, and has a large oil refinery, railway shops (of the Midland Valley and the Missouri, Oklahoma & Gulf railways), cotton gins, cotton compresses, and cotton-seed oil and flour mills. The municipality owns and operates the water-works, the water supply being drawn from the Neosho river. Muskogee was founded about 1870, and became the chief town of the Creek Nation (Muskogee) and the metropolis and administrative centre of the former Indian Territory, being the headquarters of the Union Indian Agency to the Five Civilized Tribes, of the United States (Dawes) Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes, and of a Federal land office for the allotment of lands to the Creeks and Cherokees, and the seat of a Federal Court. The city was chartered in 1898; its area was enlarged in 1908, increasing its population.