Oklahomans warmly call themselves “Sooners” after the founders who settled before the territory was open for claims; Indian Removal was cooption of settler militias in the process of establishing their own southeastern frontier marches; the Proclamation of 1763 banning settlement west of the Appalachians was reviled and ignored; Texas, California, and Oregon started as unpermitted settlements

Claiming unsettled land with your own guns against explicit government prohibition, daring them to do something about it, and seeing them give in is 100% the American way.