Oklahoma: A Story Through Her People

Opposite, clockwise starting from the top:
Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage
Center in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF THE SHAWNEE CHAMBER
OF COMMERCE.
The Oklahoma City Philharmonic.
The Oklahoma City Philharmonic.
The National Cowboy and Western
Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
The world of fiction has been enriched
by Oklahoma authors with romance, science
fiction, and Western novels. Ralph Ellison
drew up his childhood in northeast Oklahoma
City to write Invisible Man, considered one
of America’s top five novels of the twentieth
century. Louis L’Amour wrote than 100 fiction
masterpieces. Tony Hillerman, Billie Letts,
S. E. Hinton, Merline Lovelace, C. J. Cherryh,
Rilla Askew, Michael Wallis, Glenn Shirley,
and Carolyn Hart have produced best-selling
books, and some have been made into
major movies.
Some of the early art in Oklahoma came
from artists who traveled with expeditions
sent to explore the new land and make a
record of its natural resources and people.
The American Indian Tribes that were relocated
in Oklahoma produced many artists
such as Woodrow Crumbo, a Pottawatomie;
Jerome Tiger, a Creek-Seminole; and Acee
Blue Eagle, the first American Indian artist to
embark on a solo career and travel worldwide
to promote American Indian art.
Above: The Gaylord-Pickens Museum,
home of the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.
Bottom, left: A seventy mile long strip of
central Oklahoma is the only place in the
world where the Barite Rose Rocks can be
found. Nancy and Joe Stine of the Timberlake
Rose Rock Museum in Noble, Oklahoma,
(known as the Rose Rock Capital of the
World) are the state’s foremost experts
on the rose rock formation.
Bottom, right: Barite Rose Rocks.
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