Garvin County was originally a part of Pickens and Pontotoc County Districts of the Chickasaw Nation.
The dividing line was the Washita River, so most of the current Garvin County was in the Pickens District. The division into smaller counties came in 1907 with statehood and formally permitted non-native settlement. However, even before non-native settlement was permitted in the Chickasaw Nation, the illegal non-native settlers far outnumbered the Chickasaw people. Only a small number of non-natives had formal permission to reside in the Nation, usually because they had professional services to offer that the Nation wanted to have available. Because of rapidity of settlement and the sheer numbers involved, however, only a small percentage of the "intruders", as the illegal's were known, were ever formally prosecuted and therefore appear on the Intruder Rolls of the Chickasaw Nation, IT .