The Great Beckoning: Book One: The Story of Sapulpa and the Ozark Trail
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$14.99
Regular price $17.99
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The Great Beckoning: Book One: The Story of Sapulpa and the Ozark Trail
Sale price
$14.99
Regular price $17.99
Around 1850, a Creek Indian named Sapulpa opened a dry goods store and blacksmith shop in the northern hills of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. This start-up beside a walnut tree grove shading Rock Creek promised a lifetime of hard work. But having journeyed back and forth across the southeastern United States, Sapulpa must have seen in his land the kind of gentle slopes and watered paths preferred by riders, wagons, and the newfangled Iron Horse. His wooded land offered those advantages and more: a gateway to a natural trail through that hill country to the southernmost Great Plains. Sapulpa probably knew that just a half-day’s travel east, his trail crossed the Arkansas River’s only natural ford in Indian Territory. That would soon have the ever-expanding rail lines chomping at the bit to penetrate these lands, create new towns, and supply new markets. And it’s just possible this young Creek warrior grasped the history, if not the motives, beckoning colonial pioneers to seek westward homesteads. While most such travelers avoided Indian Territory in 1850, Sapulpa may have suspected, if not expected, that would soon end. For he had experienced such betrayals several times.
Born a quarter-century earlier to parents who died before he reached age 5, Sapulpa no doubt grew up hearing first- and second-hand accounts of how white settlers coveted and stole tribal lands from his people and other Native Americans, with little to no care for the lives they overran. Sapulpa learned how the Creeks twice sided with the British in lost wars against the colonials, spurring the victorious “Americans” to gradually push his diverse peoples out of Georgia, Alabama, and other eastern regions. The young lad witnessed the devastating 1836 Creek War, but he managed to evade the chains placed on thousands of tribesmen and women forcibly moved to Indian Territory. Fleeing alleged crimes, Sapulpa ventured far across the growing United States before joining his fractured peoples in Indian Territory to start his retail and ironworks.
That sets the stage for our tale. Its roots go back three centuries to bitter lines drawn over beloved homelands. They drew blood time and time again through the founding of the United States of America, a culture built on virtues its divergent founders did not truly understand, goals its stakeholders could not agree upon, and treasures its pioneers too often took for granted. Sapulpa himself devoted three years to the worst of these crucibles, a national calamity that closed some wounds and opened others that burn to this day.
These elements took dynamic form in America’s westward movements, the rise of the railroads, and the resulting competition between horsepower, steam power, and the internal combustion engine. These cultural shocks would drive this tale along the Ozark Trail to U.S. Highway 66, the legendary Mother Road now celebrating its 100th anniversary. And as Sapulpa witnessed, these historic pulses created numerous communities like his namesake city, which sprang from a boisterous railyard to anchor a mythic concrete ribbon stretching from Chicago to Los Angeles. In its short, vibrant heyday, the beloved Route 66 would sustain more westward travelers than all the Gold Rush and homestead wagon trains combined. And yet those boomtimes ended almost as quickly as they began, especially for the city of Sapulpa, leaving its many distinct communities to adapt once more to changing times and climates.
This illustrated two-book series “The Great Beckoning” provides a general overview of these dynamic developments and much more. Book One carries readers through numerous Muscogee Nation tragedies, the Ozark Trail’s discovery, its use by the Frisco Railroad and the City of Sapulpa, to close with the great divorce of 1928. Book Two picks up the tale with the rise, fall, and renewal of Route 66 and how Sapulpa emerged from those trials and tribulations to reach toward its full potential.
Born a quarter-century earlier to parents who died before he reached age 5, Sapulpa no doubt grew up hearing first- and second-hand accounts of how white settlers coveted and stole tribal lands from his people and other Native Americans, with little to no care for the lives they overran. Sapulpa learned how the Creeks twice sided with the British in lost wars against the colonials, spurring the victorious “Americans” to gradually push his diverse peoples out of Georgia, Alabama, and other eastern regions. The young lad witnessed the devastating 1836 Creek War, but he managed to evade the chains placed on thousands of tribesmen and women forcibly moved to Indian Territory. Fleeing alleged crimes, Sapulpa ventured far across the growing United States before joining his fractured peoples in Indian Territory to start his retail and ironworks.
That sets the stage for our tale. Its roots go back three centuries to bitter lines drawn over beloved homelands. They drew blood time and time again through the founding of the United States of America, a culture built on virtues its divergent founders did not truly understand, goals its stakeholders could not agree upon, and treasures its pioneers too often took for granted. Sapulpa himself devoted three years to the worst of these crucibles, a national calamity that closed some wounds and opened others that burn to this day.
These elements took dynamic form in America’s westward movements, the rise of the railroads, and the resulting competition between horsepower, steam power, and the internal combustion engine. These cultural shocks would drive this tale along the Ozark Trail to U.S. Highway 66, the legendary Mother Road now celebrating its 100th anniversary. And as Sapulpa witnessed, these historic pulses created numerous communities like his namesake city, which sprang from a boisterous railyard to anchor a mythic concrete ribbon stretching from Chicago to Los Angeles. In its short, vibrant heyday, the beloved Route 66 would sustain more westward travelers than all the Gold Rush and homestead wagon trains combined. And yet those boomtimes ended almost as quickly as they began, especially for the city of Sapulpa, leaving its many distinct communities to adapt once more to changing times and climates.
This illustrated two-book series “The Great Beckoning” provides a general overview of these dynamic developments and much more. Book One carries readers through numerous Muscogee Nation tragedies, the Ozark Trail’s discovery, its use by the Frisco Railroad and the City of Sapulpa, to close with the great divorce of 1928. Book Two picks up the tale with the rise, fall, and renewal of Route 66 and how Sapulpa emerged from those trials and tribulations to reach toward its full potential.