In Oklahoma in the early 20th century it wasn’t easy to be a small-town Cherokee boy who was not only ambitious but also gay.
A snapshot of Lynn Riggs from a collection of letters between the playwright and his partner Enrique Gasque (also known as Ramón Naya), circa 1937 to 1939 Yale University Library
(The story of Oklahoma is) "set at a time when the land these fictional Oklahomans lived on was known widely as Indian Territory—a 31,000-square-mile area where the federal government had been sending the Native groups it uprooted from their homelands in the north and east since the early 1800s. The 1900 U.S. census reported that more than 97 percent of people living in the territory belonged to one of four native groups: the Chickasaw, the Choctaw, the Creek and the Cherokee. (Playwright Lynn) Riggs was a member of the Cherokee Nation, and Claremore—where both the play and the musical took place—was the town where he’d been born." - Jennie Rothenberg Gritz
Article: Behind ‘Oklahoma!’ Lies the Remarkable Story of a Gay Cherokee Playwright