Payne organized his own party and entered Indian Territory and laid out a town site where Oklahoma City stands today. Soldiers arrested Payne and his group, took them to Fort Reno, and then escorted them back to Kansas. Payne resented the fact federal law

prohibited the military from interfering in civil matters.

In July 1879, Payne took another party back to the site of Ewing. Again soldiers arrested them and this time took them to federal court at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Judge Isaac Parker ruled against Payne and fined him $1,000.

Payne did not give up. He organized other parties in southern Kansas that tried unsuccessfully to settle in Indian Territory. He even founded the Oklahoma War Chief to promote the cause.

On one of his trips soldiers seized Payne’s printing press, burned a building, and again took Payne and his group to Fort Smith.

The public began to complain about the military’s treatment of Payne and the others. The case was turned over to the U. S. District Court in Topeka, Kansas. Judge Cassins G. Foster quashed the charges and ruled that settling on the Unassigned Lands was not a

criminal offense. Payne’s group cheered, but the government did not immediately accept the court’s ruling.

Payne continued to work for opening Indian Territory to settlement. He gave many speeches. His last was in Wellington, Kansas, on November 27, 1884. The next day he died of heart failure at about age 48. Thousands of people attended the funeral in the Methodist Episcopal Church at Wellington and visited his grave in a local cemetery.

Payne did not live to see white settlement occur in Indian Territory. The Unassigned Lands were not opened to settlement until 1889 four years after Payne died. His grave remained in Kansas until 1995 when his remains were moved to Oklahoma. A monument was dedicated over the new grave in Stillwater, Payne County, named in his honor