In April 2010 the Cherokee Nation dedicated the 1844 Supreme Court building, located in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, as the first of its tribally run museums; it began restoration of the National Prison in May. Principal Chief Chad Smith described the museums as
“monument[s],” testaments to the continued sovereignty of the Cherokee Nation. 1
Tribal and local government officials, Cherokee citizens and Tahlequah residents, members of the press, and individuals representing historic preservation agencies attended both events. Leading up to these dedications, calls for artifacts went out to Cherokee Nation citizens and Oklahoma residents. Cherokee Nation Cultural Tourism staff contacted state and local museums to determine what objects might be held in their collections. Cherokee Nation researchers scoured archives throughout Oklahoma to gather information. Cherokee citizens performed most of the behind the scenes research, decision-making, site preparation, and marketing. The original institutions and their contemporary restorations as tribally run museums may seem like two very different national projects, but as Chief Smith articulated, they both represent the survival of the Cherokee Nation, “still a sovereign nation.”
Nineteenth-century Cherokee reformers established institutions as a national effort to provide protection and security to Cherokee people as clans and towns had done for previous generations. The Cherokee Nation did not abandon traditional ideas about caring for others
1
“Tribe Dedicates Cherokee National Supreme Court Museum,” 14 April 2010; “Tribe
when they were sick or disabled in spite of rapid culture change and removal; instead it offered national options for those unable to draw upon family or community as they had in the past. The orphan asylum recreated kin relationships among those living at the facility; it preserved the children’s Cherokee identities; and it provided a range of educational and manual labor skills to sustain their lives within the Cherokee Nation. The prison reinforced the jurisdictional primacy of the Cherokee Nation over its citizens while it focused on restoring those imprisoned to productive lives. When the federal government pushed to dissolve the Cherokee Nation and disperse communal land-holdings among individual citizens, the Cherokee Nation pardoned its prisoners, “to give all an equal opportunity in
caring for his share of the common property.”2
The release of the prisoners provided able- bodied men the opportunity to fulfill an older legal obligation to preserve common land holdings. The asylum for the deaf, dumb, blind and insane offered those unable to work in traditional capacities a home with a professional staff to provide for their particular
disabilities. All of the institutions provided professional medical care. The Cherokee Nation offered Cherokee people alternative forms of care when families faced circumstances that prevented them from fulfilling traditional obligations.
The Cherokee Nation did not adopt institutions in a cultural vacuum. Officials
understood how states and localities used these institutions. It was with this knowledge that the Cherokee Nation opened institutions similar in purpose to their non-Indian neighbors. However, these institutions were not replicas of the United States’ facilities; they received financing from the Cherokee treasury, employed Cherokee people, preserved Cherokee language, and maintained a national Cherokee identity.
2
These institutions belied the claims by advocates of allotment that Indian people were incapable of providing for themselves; the Cherokee Nation’s institutions stood in stark contrast to conditions in Oklahoma Territory. When questioned in 1902 about turning over Territory institutions to the proposed state, Thomas H. Doyle, member of the Oklahoma statehood executive nonpartisan committee, responded, “We have no State Capitol, We have
no penitentiary…We have no blind asylum.” 3
Oklahoma Territory offered little in the way of social services to the future state while the Cherokee Nation relinquished not only the land that it had governed but also the institutions that had cared for Cherokee citizens. After statehood, Cherokee County, Oklahoma, used the national prison as a county jail. The federal government assumed control of the Cherokee Orphan Asylum, which became a Bureau of Indian Affairs Boarding School. As for the mentally ill, the 1907-08 Oklahoma state legislature established the East Oklahoma Hospital for the Insane in Vinita, which had been in the Cherokee Nation. The hospital’s first board of trustees included two former members of the Indian Territory Medical Association, Oliver
Bagby and C. L. Long.4
At the dedication of the new Supreme Court museum, Dr. Bob Blackburn, president of the Oklahoma Historical Society, recognized the contributions of the Cherokee Nation to the state. “The Cherokee Nation legacy,” he emphasized, “is important to all Oklahomans and
especially vital to the people of the Cherokee Nation.”5
Social service institutions are a
3
Thomas H. Doyle, “Single Versus Double Statehood,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 5 (1927),
266-286. 4
W. B. Richards, compiler, The Oklahoma Red Book (Tulsa: Press of Tulsa Daily Democrat,
1912), 218-219. 5
“Oklahoma’s Oldest Public Building Set to Open as Cherokee Nation’s First Wholly
central part of that legacy. Poor relief, asylums for orphans and the disabled, and the
penitentiary demonstrate both the persistence of traditional Cherokee values and the ability of the Cherokee Nation to adapt to changed circumstances. The institutions also reveal that the exercise of tribal sovereignty historically extended beyond the diplomatic front and into the lives of the Nation’s citizens.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100407007056/en/Oklahoma’s-Oldest-Public-