Oklahoma, in its earliest organized forms, consisted of over forty independent Native American nations, although they arrived through a complex process. Native American migration preceded contact with Europeans, but by the mid-18th century, Native American nations saw their lands gradually threatened by Euro-American colonization. Migration push and pull factors such as war, famine, and encroachment have driven movements of indigenous cultures for centuries. However, in the early 19th century, Native American migration patterns began to be forced and regulated according to European terms. Treaties, land sales, and forced relocations to predetermined reservations changed the way Native Americans related to the land and their environment, as well as intertribal relationships. By the 1820s and 1830s, most Native American nations had ceded their lands east of the Mississippi River to the newly created United States by treaty or ultimately by the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Trade and Intercourse Act of 1834 defined in more detail "Indian Territory" as "all that part of the United States west of the Mississippi and outside the States of Missouri, Louisiana or the Territory of Arkansas, or any other organized territory . » Over time, these vast reservation lands shrank to the limits of eastern Oklahoma as the insatiable demand for cheap land for white settlers grew. Unlike the dichotomous black/white experience of the South, Oklahoma became a foreshadowing example of the diversity of the American West. While the South experienced a period of multiracialism before its expulsion, through segregation, the South never experienced the cultural diversity seen in Oklahoma. Oklahoma, both politically and demographically, would grow... middle of paper ... the vast majority of black towns in Oklahoma would grow. Works Cited “Indian Removal Act, May 28, 1830.” In Documents of United States Indian Policy, edited by Francis Paul Prucha, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 52-53.; and “Law on Commerce and Sexual Relations, June 30, 1834.” In Documents of United States Indian Policy, edited by Francis Paul Prucha, (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 63-68. The term "Indian Territory" does not appear in any of these documents but is of later creation.Mozell C. Hill, "The All-Negro Communities of Oklahoma: The Natural History of a Social Movement," Journal of Negro History 31 (July 1946), 254-68. Joseph Taylor, “The Rise and Decline of a Utopian Community, Boley, Oklahoma,” Negro History Bulletin 3 (March 1940), 92; and Joseph Taylor, “Mound Bayou – Past and Present,” Negro History Bulletin 3 (April 1940), 105.