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Oklahoma Territorial Plaza – Perkins, Oklahoma

2012.12.22

The Oklahoma Territorial Plaza opened a few years ago in Perkins, a small town between Guthrie and Cushing on OK-33, at the junction with US-177.  They are slowly adding more structures and restoring them as needed.  The buildings are only open in the summers, so we just walked around and looked in the windows on a nice December day.

Oklahoma native Wayne Cooper created two statues for the plaza.  One depicts Chief Nacheninga (No-heart-of-fear), aka No Heart, of the Bah-kho-je (Iowa) Tribe.  The tribe originated in the Great Lakes region, but moved east into present-day Iowa and Missouri as white settlement expanded.  Under Chief Nacheninga (1797–1862), they ceded their lands and moved to a reservation on the Kansas–Nebraska border in 1839.  In 1878, a faction that still resisted assimilation into white culture moved to a portion of Sac and Fox lands in Indian Territory, near the future town of Perkins.

The other statuary subject is Frank Eaton (1860–1958).  His family moved from Connecticut to Kansas when he was eight; soon afterwards he witnessed the murder of his Union veteran father by ex-Confederate vigilantes.  A neighbor gave him a revolver and taught him how to shoot.  At fifteen he went to Fort Gibson, where he reportedly outgunned everyone at the fort and gained the nickname Pistol Pete.  He became renowned for his fast draw and accuracy, despite having a crossed left eye which prevented him from sighting down the barrel.  By seventeen, he was a deputy U.S. Marshal in Indian Territory, packing two Colt .45 pistols.  Over the years, he hunted down and shot his father’s killers along with other criminals.  He settled near Perkins in 1889 and became sheriff and a blacksmith.

In 1923, a group of Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College students decided the school’s tiger mascot should be abandoned in favor of this living legend.  Although Frank Eaton obliged and appeared at many homecoming games, Pistol Pete would not become the official mascot of Oklahoma State University until after his death in 1958.

Behind the statues is the home Frank (and Anna) Eaton lived in for the last thirty years of his life.  The house was built around 1900.

The Davis–Longan cabin was built in 1901 about eight miles west of Perkins.

The 1896 IXL Schoolhouse was located a miles west of Perkins.  IXL or I.X.L. was an acronym for Indian Exchange Land.  (As a side note, there is an I.X.L., Oklahoma in Okfuskee County.)  The Methodist church dates from around the same time period.