Holland, JenniferFolger, Benjamin2022-05-092022-05-092022-05-13https://hdl.handle.net/11244/335604This thesis observes the movement of White aspiring physicians to Indian and Oklahoma Territories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the racial and professional interactions that ensued. Like other Whites, Oklahoma represented an opportunity to acquire economic freedom and prosperity through land runs and other settler colonial processes. In Oklahoma, aspiring physicians used the chaos and lawlessness in Oklahoma and Indian Territories along with their whiteness to jumpstart their professional careers while experimenting and enforcing orthodox forms of medicine over Oklahomans. Native, Black, and White Oklahomans resisted through various means, and White orthodox physicians largely used statehood as a means to cement their medical vision for the state of Oklahoma. In the American West, as settler colonial policies spread, contested medical spaces emerged with various forms and understanding of health and healing practiced. In Oklahoma this is especially true. Statehood became a pivotal event that allowed doctors to reflect on the medical future of the state and utilize their recently acquired professional authority and power to enact changes to the medical profession including medical school reform and institutionalizing healthcare. This thesis centralizes national trends in the professionalization of medicine to explain how the American West and Oklahoma were unique in offering White physicians the opportunity to practice medicine, but they were met with resistance and often threatened by nontraditional practitioners.Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 InternationalHistory, United States.History of Science.Health Sciences, Medicine and Surgery.