Oklahoma in "Appendix: Compson" (Location)

In the Choctaw language, "Oklahoma" means "red people." It was the land to which many of the Indians tribes were sent by the American government during the first half of the 19th century, including the Chickasaws who once lived in Yoknapatawpha. When Faulkner says they were granted the land by treaty because the U.S. did not know then "about the oil" (325), he may be thinking specifically of the gusher that erupted in Oklahoma in 1896, leading to another rush, not for farm land as in 1889 but for oil rich land. New technologies like the automobile were making oil a very valuable commodity.