History

Bringing Their Stories to Life: An Archive Aims to Preserve the Histories of 12,000 Native Veterans who Served in World War I

ColavecchioS — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 15:00:00 +0000

History

Bringing Their Stories to Life: An Archive Aims to Preserve the Histories of 12,000 Native Veterans who Served in World War I

From Issue: Fall 2025 / Vol. 26 No. 3

by William C. Meadows

In April 1918, the last year of World War I, Private First Class Leo McGuire was driving an ambulance to and from a field dressing station near Seicheprey, France, to retrieve wounded soldiers. McGuire was a member of the Osage Nation from Oklahoma and had enlisted when he was 19 years old. On one of his trips, a shell exploded near the ambulance, throwing it from the road. McGuire was knocked unconscious and when he awoke, returned to his duty station on foot. Although suffering from an injury in his back and not yet recovered from the shock, he still tried to return to duty that afternoon, but the medical officers insisted he wait until the following day. For his heroic actions, the U.S. Army awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second highest award for gallantry. He was the first U.S. soldier to receive this award.

Almost 500 former students of the Haskell Institute (now Haskell Indian Nations University) in Kansas served in World War I, including these U.S. Army soldiers outside one of its buildings in 1918.

Courtesy of Sequoyah National Research Center

Left to right: Company G 13 Infantry 8 Division soldiers Anton Mentag (Aleut), Owen Yackeyonny (Comanche), Stacey Sitting Hawk (Cheyenne) and James Hezekiah Chebahtah (Comanche) at Camp Mills Base Hospital in Long Island, New York, in 1919. Captain T. J. Hewitt said of Mentag, “He can play anything from a charge to the rag-time on the bugle.”

Courtesy of Sequoyah National Research Center

On August 8, 1918, Chief of Service Col. Percy Jones pins the Distinguished Service Cross on Private Leo F. McGuire, a member of the Osage Nation and the first U.S. soldier to receive this prestigious award.

Courtesy of Sequoyah National Research Center

Photo by Getty Images/svengine

At least 12,000 Native American, Alaska Native and Indigenous members of Canada First Nations served in World War I. Among them were ambulance drivers such as McGuire as well as officers, infantrymen, pilots, sailors, communications experts, nurses, cooks, musicians and others who served. Limited documentation and scattered sources have long made finding and recording their stories difficult, and the details of their service could have been lost to time. However, for the past eight years, the Sequoyah National Research Center at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock has been trying to acquire the stories of all of the known 12,000 Indigenous veterans who served in World War I and make these records accessible to their families, Native communities and other researchers.

Little Rock has a close connection with soldiers of World War I as its Camp Pike (now Camp Joseph T. Robinson) was one of the main training centers for soldiers from Arkansas and Oklahoma. Daniel Littlefield, the director of the research center, said, “That really made a name for us.”

Littlefield was a professor of English at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and the archive grew out of his desire to add Native American writings to his American literature classes. Yet no collection of such writings existed at that time. He and fellow English professor James Parins at the university began compiling a bibliography of Native authors and eventually published two volumes titled “A Biobibliography of Native American Writers.” From the materials they collected, particularly Native-published newspapers, they formed the American Native Press Archives in 1983.

As the archive had no budget, it was run by Littlefield, Parins and volunteers from 1983 to 2006. After securing a space and financial support from the university, the archive was renamed the Sequoyah Research Center in 1999 and then the Sequoyah National Research Center in 2008. Today, it has a staff of two and continues to be helped by student interns and volunteers.

The center has acquired the largest collection of Native-published newspapers and periodicals in the United States and has become the official archives of the Indigenous Journalists Association (formerly the Native American Journalists Association). Journalist Paul DeMain (Oneida)—who started the independent newspaper News From Indian Country in 1986 and served as its editor for 33 years—donated a large collection of his newspapers. The center’s archive is the “legacy of [Native] newspaper publishing,” DeMain said. “It will be able to tell the story [of Indian Country] as told by Indigenous people from as many perspectives as possible.”

Over time, many Native authors and others have donated a wide variety of materials about and by Native Americans to the archive at the center, including books, photographs, personal papers, transcripts of interviews as well as films, music and other video and audio recordings. Littlefield said, “We call it the world’s largest collection of Native expression. If they say it, write it, speak it, film it, sing it, we try to collect it.”

As the archive contained many records about Native veterans, in 2017, the center’s staff decided to create an exhibition about World War I Native American code talkers, the servicemen who used their own language to convey “coded” messages over radio transmissions. Yet they realized they were only one part of a far larger picture. Eventually, they collected and displayed the names of 2,300 Native veterans at the center.

Many Native soldiers of World War I were identified from Indian boarding school publications in the archive. Many of these schools put students through military-style training, including drills and how to handle riffles. “A lot of those guys went right out of boarding schools into the military,” Littlefield said. School publications often listed those who enlisted and published letters they wrote to the schools and their families while serving. One such letter from Robert Big Thunder (Ho-Chunk) was published in the 1919 Chilocco “Indian School Journal.” He describes his combat service, the use of Ho-Chunk language in “code talking” as well as the wounds he received and subsequent convalescence.

In 2019, the United States World War I Centennial Commission asked the center to help provide materials for its website. But once the commission concluded in 2020, the center decided it would endeavor to collect and curate materials about all the 12,000 Native World War I veterans. The center’s “Modern Warriors of World War I” database now has the records of more than 6,200 veterans and is continuously growing. In addition to contributions from families and other institutions, the center has partnered with Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to obtain many records.

The files have revealed some surprises. For example, several Native veterans were musicians. Many wrote that their regimented training in boarding schools helped them in boot camp and adjusting to military life. Others described visiting historical sites in France that they had learned about in school.

The center is now digitizing its thousands of records so they can be available through a website, which is expected to be launched in 2026. The goal was “to preserve it, but not take it away from the communities,” said the center’s archivist, Erin Fehr (Yup’ik). While many studies focus on numbers and statistics, the database was designed to humanize the individual soldiers and show the communities from which they came. “So when a great-grandson wants to find out more about his great-grandfather’s service in World War I, he will be able to go onto our website and pull all of the material that we’ve been able to find,” Fehr said.

The collection is open to anyone conducting research but can offer much to Native peoples and scholars. Internships and graduate research opportunities have enabled Native students to help identify, organize and learn from the collections. “I feel like I’ve learned a lot about my ancestors,” said Charlie Smith (Cherokee), a public history graduate student. “This is something I can contribute toward and will help build up my future professional life.”

Choctaw author Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer relayed how a son’s account of his father Tushpa’s faith in God and resilience during the Choctaw Trail of Tears inspired her to write her novella, “Tushpa’s Story.” Sawyer said, “Without the Sequoyah National Research Center preserving and sharing this piece of history, I would never have known about Tushpa, and his journey might have remained lost.”

Judy Allen (Choctaw), executive director of public relations for the Choctaw Nation, used the collection to create a web-based digital archive about Choctaw veterans. She said, “Erin was generous with her time and records so that the World War I Choctaws could be included.” She said the center also provided information that helped the Choctaw Nation request medals of valor for some of its World War I soldiers.

“Our goal is to bring these men to life,” Fehr said, “to show they were humans just like you and I, and that they had families. They had hopes and dreams, and yet they set those aside to serve in the U.S. military.

Native Veterans of World War I

More than 12,000 Indigenous men and women served in a variety of roles in the U.S. military during World War I. They came from communities in Canada and across the United States. Each of their experiences before, during and after their service was unique. Here is a snapshot of just a few of the 6,200 veterans whose stories are recorded in the Sequoyah National Research Center’s collection.

Courtesy of Sequoyah National Research Center

Private Calvin Nahoto Atchavit (Comanche)

Calvin Atchavit was born on June 20, 1893, in Indian Territory, along West Cache Creek near Faxon, which later became Cotton County, Oklahoma. Orphaned while young, he and his brother were raised by their aunts. He was working as a mechanic in Walters, Oklahoma, when he was drafted on April 25, 1918, and began his military training at Camp Travis, Texas.

On September 12, 1918, he was wounded in the battle of St. Mihiel, which was fought between American and German forces in northern France. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross “for extraordinary heroism in action” while serving with Company A, 357th Infantry Regiment, 90th Division, A.E.F. near Fey-en-Haye, France, on September 12, 1918. During the attack of his company, though he had been severely wounded in the left arm, Private Atchavit shot and killed one of the enemy and captured another. In another action, while laying land wire and cutting enemy communications and barbed wire in no man’s land, he became separated from his group. Getting into a skirmish he was wounded in the hip, but he was still able to return several days later with a German prisoner.

He distinguished himself in another battle, aided by his skills relaying messages in his Native language as a code talker. In 1919, the Oklahoma City Times published his picture and reported that the Belgian Government had given him a “WAR CROSS, for talking over the lines when they were TRAPPED BY THE ENEMY. His Comanche tongue helped get messages across that were not understood by the enemy.” Atchavit returned to the United States on June 5, 1919, and was discharged June 16, 1919.

After the war, he and his wife, Sarah Passah, were farmers in Cotton County, Oklahoma. He died on October 9, 1943, at age 50 and is buried at Highland Cemetery in Lawton, Oklahoma. In 2012, the Comanche Indian Veterans Association posthumously awarded Atchavit the Numu Pukutsi (Comanche Contrary Warrior) Award.

Courtesy of Sequoyah National Research Center

Private Albert Grass (Standing Rock Lakota)

Albert Grass (Hehaka Mani [Walking Elk]) was born February 7, 1897, at Cannon Ball, North Dakota. He was the grandson of Chief John Grass and served as the last Dakota Sioux hereditary chief. He was the first Sioux soldier to enlist in Company I, 2nd North Dakota. Soon a private in Company A, 16th Infantry, 1st Division, Grass gained distinction as a dispatch runner and scout. He also served as a code talker, using his Lakota language. As a 1921 news article in the collection reports, “When Germans cut in on the ground wireless or telephone lines from listening posts, it was Grass and Richard Blue Earth, another Sioux who was killed in action, who communicated in the Sioux language between the outposts and the command headquarters to the utter confusion of the Huns.”

After avoiding German machine-gun fire, Grass was killed while attempting to get water for his comrades by a bomb dropped from a German plane on July 20, 1918, during the Battle of Soissons in northern France. When his body was returned in 1921, his elaborate funeral was attended by more than 3,000 people, including members of the men’s warrior society the White Horse Riders, an American Legion Post and a Catholic church.

Courtesy of Sequoyah National Research Center

Corporal Otis Leader (Choctaw/Chickasaw)

Otis Leader was born March 6, 1882, near Scipio in Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma. At the age of 34, after U.S. federal agents mistook him for a “Spanish Spy” in 1917, he wished to show his willingness to defend his country and so enlisted in the U.S. Army. He would serve as a corporal in Company H, 16th Infantry, 1st Division. After an artillery round killed his entire gun crew at Chateau-Thierry, Leader armed himself, flanked two “machine gun nests” and captured 18 German prisoners. He was wounded twice and poisoned with chemical gas twice.

He participated in the battles of Cantigny, Soissons-Chateau Thierry, St. Mihiel, Verdun, and the Argonne Forest. While convalescing at a hospital in France after being gassed, he was called upon to continue to serve as a code talker, communicating military messages in Choctaw to those in battle.

In Paris, French painter Raymond Desvarreux chose Leader for the subject of a portrait as the “Ideal American Doughboy.” U.S. General John Pershing called Leader one of the war’s “greatest fighting machines.”

For his outstanding service, Leader received two French Croix de Guerres, two Silver Citation Stars, the Purple Heart with clusters and several other awards. After World War I ended, he worked in several positions for the Oklahoma State Highway Department and was active with American Legion Posts. Leader died on March 26, 1961.

Courtesy of Sequoyah National Research Center

Musician 1st Class Guy Maktima (Hopi)

Guy Maktima was born on October 27, 1891, and grew up in Mishongnovi Village on the Hopi reservation in Arizona. As a high school student, he attended the Sherman Institute, an Indian boarding school in Riverside, California, where he was a noted long-distance runner, a member of the cross-country team and tried out for the 1912 Olympics.

He later graduated high school from the Phoenix Indian School, where he enlisted in the Arizona Army National Guard’s 1st Infantry, Company F. From May 13 to October 26, 1916, he joined 28 other American Indians for border patrol duty at Naco, Arizona, to search for Mexican revolutionary Francisco “Pancho” Villa, who was being pursued by General John Pershing.

In 1918, his unit was activated for service in World War I. The company was reorganized and became the 158th Infantry Band, which included five other American Indians and Maktima, who played trombone. They served in France from August 1918 to April 1919. Playing throughout the French countryside, Maktima and his fellow Native soldiers were thought of as curiosities as many French had never seen American Indians before. On Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, the band performed at many celebrations. The next day, Maktima was promoted to Musician 1st Class. That December, the band performed for U.S. President Woodrow Wilson at the American ambassador’s house in Paris.

In April 1919, he returned to New York and was honorably discharged on May 3, 1919. He died on December 16, 1985.

Courtesy of Sequoyah National Research Center

Private Robert Frank “Chief Rekwoi” Spott (Yurok)

Robert Spott was born in 1888. He came from the Yurok village of Requa (Rekwoi) in northern California. Within six months, Spott went from peaceful fishing on the Klamath River to fighting in the trenches of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in France. He served as a message courier in the U.S. Army’s 111th Infantry Regiment, 28th Division, and later in the 40th Division.

Spot received the French Croix de Guerre with Palm for rescuing a wounded French general. Later he was poisoned by a chemical gas during a battle in Bordeaux and was hospitalized for a year in France following the war.

Spott went on to serve as the chairman of the Yurok Tribal Council and president of the California Indians Association. He also became an anthropologist and worked closely with Alfred Kroeber, with whom he was lead author on the 1942 publication “Yurok Narratives.” Spott is responsible for much of the early ethnography about the Yurok people.

Spott would continue to be a leader in his Native community for several decades. He died on August 28, 1953, in Crescent City, California.

Courtesy of Sequoyah National Research Center

Musician 2nd Class Isaac Sequajaw Willis (Little Traverse Ottawa)

Isaac Sequajaw Willis was born December 10, 1897, near Charlevoix, Michigan bordering Lake Michigan. He attended Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania from October 1913 to June 6, 1917. Willis enlisted in the U.S. Navy in Philadelphia the next day at the age of 19. He served on the USS Kentucky, a training ship designed for coastal defense that operated along the East Coast.

Having played music at Carlisle, Willis served as a Musician 2nd Class. While in the Navy he wrote several letters to Carlisle School Superintendent James Francis Jr. to thank him for sending him issues of the school’s “Carlisle Arrow and Redman.” Willis tells him about other former Carlisle students in service and even apologizes for missing the 1918 graduation due to his military service. Willis also commented on the excellent food and clean quarters as well as his joy in crossing the Atlantic Ocean. He noted how well the musicians were treated by the other sailors and that the captain sent them a box of candy. In his letter he wrote, “I will never regret joining the Navy.”

Willis was honorably discharged September 11, 1919. He died April 29, 1957.

During World War I, at least 14 Native American women are known to have served as nurses in the Army Nurse Corps and the American Red Cross in France and the United States. Information about many of them is archived at the Sequoyah National Research Center.

Courtesy of Sequoyah National Research Center

2nd Lt. Ruth Cleveland Douglass Counihan (Mille Lacs Chippewa)

Ruth Cleveland Douglass was born March 28, 1893, in Brainard in northern Minnesota, and later attended Pipestone Indian School at Pipestone in southwest Minnesota. She enlisted as a nurse for the U.S. Army on January 16, 1918. She spent eight months at Camp Pike in Arkansas before being sent to Bazoilles-sur-Meuse, a commune in France that was being used as an evacuation hospital. After spending 10 months in France she returned to the United States, where she worked at General Hospital at Fort McPherson, Georgia, for 15 months and then at Station Hospital in Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, in September 1920.

Douglass experienced many challenges during her service. On the third day of her voyage to France on the USS Leviathan, an influenza epidemic broke out. By the time they reached France, 80 soldiers and two nurses had perished. She later worked in pneumonia, surgical and other wards, and following the Armistice, helped decorate and distribute Christmas presents and wine to convalescing soldiers. Tending wounded in France, Douglass recalled, “The first thing a nurse puts on in the morning is a ready smile. The boys responded splendidly.”

Douglass wrote about her time in service in 1919: “I am not a regular Army Nurse, but came in as a War Emergency Nurse.” She commented, “Contrary to public opinion, the emergency still exists.”

Douglass married Patrick Sheahy on March 13, 1922. After his death she married James F. Counihan on June 26, 1930. She died on January 13, 1965, in Portland, Oregon, at the age of 71.

Courtesy of Sequoyah National Research Center

2nd Lt. Lula Leta Owl Gloyne (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians)

Lula Leta Owl was born December 27, 1891, in North Carolina. She graduated from the Hampton Institute, a university historically dedicated to educating Black and Native American students, in 1914. She then obtained her nurse’s training at Chestnut Hill Hospital School of Nursing in Philadelphia, graduating in 1917 and becoming the first Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians registered nurse.

Owl was a nurse on staff at St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal School on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in South Dakota when a call went out for nurses to serve in World War I. She volunteered for overseas duty, but unable to pass the seaworthy exam due to extreme seasickness, was sent to Camp Lewis, Washington, where she served for the duration of the war.

Owl was the only Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians officer in World War I, serving as a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. She secretly married Jack Gloyne in 1918 (even though it was forbidden, as she was an officer and he an enlisted man). The couple went on to have four children.

After the war, Gloyne served as a U.S. Indian Health Service field nurse in South Dakota, North Carolina and Oklahoma. She was also instrumental in the founding of the first hospital for her Cherokee people in 1937. In 1943 she was declared a “Beloved Woman” (Ghigau) by her tribe, a prestigious Cherokee title historically bestowed on women who demonstrated exceptional leadership or contributions to her community or great heroism in battle. She died April 17, 1985, at age 93. In 2015, she was inducted into the North Carolina Nurses Association Hall of Fame.

Authors

William C. Meadows

William C. Meadows is an author of several books about Native veterans and a professor of Anthropology and Native American Studies at Missouri State University.

On Dangerous Ground: Oglala Lakota Land Used as a Bombing Range in World War II is Still Perilous

ThorneLE — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 18:30:00 +0000

History

On Dangerous Ground: Oglala Lakota Land Used as a Bombing Range in World War II is Still Perilous

From Issue: Fall 2023 / Vol. 24 No. 3

by William C. Meadows

Shawn Swallow vividly remembers the first time he detonated an unexploded bomb on his Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwest South Dakota. “It was scary,” he recalls. He thought, “It could go off. I could blow up.” The year was 2004, and he had been one of several men from his Oglala Lakota community who had volunteered to train how to dispose of unexploded bombs on a part of the reservation used for target practice during World War II.

A target built of dirt for World War II pilots to practice dropping bombs can still be seen on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Christopher Boyer/kestrelaerial.com

On June 26, 2008, then Oglala Sioux Tribe President John Yellow Bird-Steele (second from right) signed an agreement with Colonel Scott A. Vander Hamm (far right) that the U.S. Air Force would work with the tribe to clean up the former bombing and gunnery ranges.

Courtesy of Rapid City Journal

The Badlands Bombing Range that was used by pilots from what is now Ellsworth Air Force Base for target practice covered nearly 350,000 acres, some of which became what is now Badlands National Park. The U.S. Air Force still owns 2,500 acres that had been used as a gunnery range.

Information provided by the U.S. Air Force

Unexploded munitions such as this rocket warhead are still found on the Badlands Bombing Range on Oglala Lakota lands.

Shawn Shallow

Left: The safest way to dispose of unexploded ordinance is set them off with other explosives where they were found.

Right: Removal crews stay a significant distance away when the explosives are detonated.

Courtesy of National Park Service (2)

Car bodies that had been used as targets during World War II are among the debris that still litter the former bombing range.

Jerry Penry

Nearly two decades later, Swallow now heads the Badlands Bombing Range Program dedicated to cleaning up the military debris left on the land of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, his Oglala Lakota people. While primarily limited funding has led this work to be sporadic since the military stopped using the land after the war, this past summer his team resumed its methodical and sometimes dangerous tasks. After decades of disposing of unexploded bombs, Swallow’s teams have it down to an art. “You don’t get complacent by no means,” he said. “But you know what to expect and the precise things you need to do.”

Swallow grew up surrounded by his Oglala Lakota community. His family was one of many forced to leave the reservation to make way for the bombing range. During World War II, Canada’s Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Corps took land owned by at least six First Nations communities in Canada and 16 American Indian tribes in Alaska, Arizona, California, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and South Dakota for use as practice bombing ranges. In the United States, they did so under the guise of “eminent domain,” which allowed the government to condemn or purchase land for the war effort. Military forces would use these lands to practice dropping bombs from planes and shooting ammunition at ground targets, leaving behind a scattering of debris that included shell casings and unexploded bombs.

After the war, some First Nations were given back their parcels of land and have won lawsuits against the Canadian government for not cleaning up remaining military pollution. The U.S. government also said tribes could have their lands back. But the ammunition contaminated the environment and made it unsafe for any person, wildlife or livestock to roam. In South Dakota alone, 38 military installations still have land contaminated by hazardous materials, including the former gunnery and bombing ranges along the northern border of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The Oglala Lakota people in the area were left with a mess that they then told the U.S. government it would have to address. “We will not take back land that is not clean,” said Swallow. Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency no longer classifies this area as a uninhabitable brownfield site, more than 80 years later, the Oglala Lakota people are still unable to walk safely on their own land.

Lost Homes

In 1942, the U.S. Department of War and Army Air Force took possession of 341,726 acres of land on the Pine Ridge Reservation to create the bombing range for military personnel in training. Despite Oglala Lakota and other peoples living in the area, the U.S. government deemed it “empty and useless.”

The Army seized their land, paying farmers and those living on communal Lakota land mere dollars an acre before relocating them. The July 7 to August 24, 1942, Tract Register for the Army Service Forces’ Office of the Chief of Engineers Real Estate Division lists 874 Lakota and non-Indian landowners (including some school and county sites) who had between half an acre to 960 acres seized. While land quality varied, Lakota residents were often paid less than a dollar to $8 per acre. Some who declined to participate reported having their land condemned and received no compensation. Some non-Native counties, schools and individuals, however, were disproportionately paid. For example, one Washington County School’s .53-acre tract of land sold for $1,035.

In the documentary “Darkest Night” produced by the Little Wound School on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 2022, Lakota elders describe what taking these lands did to their people. Some Lakota residents were told the Japanese were invading to encourage their rapid relocation. “They put fear into my grandma and other people that lived out there,” one elder recalled. Another remembered a story of those attending a church service on the last day they were on their land. “They were praying for a miracle where they wouldn’t have to leave,” he said. “While they were in the church, about 10 of those big bombers flew over … the church and dropped about 300 bombs onto a flat about a mile and a half away. That sure let them know it was time to leave.”

Most Lakota residents were given only 10 days to leave their homes, and in 1942, many did not have vehicles. Some would have to kill their livestock as they could not take them with them. Mickey Hartnett, a co-manager for the Kansas State University Technical Assistance to Brownfields Program, still has Lakota relatives living on the Pine Ridge Reservation. “They basically packed up what possessions they could on wagons and left,” Elders told him. They said they “abandoned their farms and homesteads.”

In spite of the danger, some refused to leave the reservation. However, the Lakota families who did relocate moved to other areas along its edge or away entirely. The small payments they received for their land were not enough for them to be able to buy new homes. Emma Featherman-Sam (Oglala Lakota), the first director of the Badlands Bombing Project, recalled, “It really was a sad time for these people that lost lands there. They feel that the government came in and took the lands without their permission.”

An August 1, 1942, letter from Under Secretary of the Interior Abe Fortas to Secretary of War Henry Stimson recognized the financial impacts upon the Oglala Lakota people: “The 8,500 Indians of the Reservation cannot permanently spare the 382,000 acres [sic] desired by the War Department without disastrous affects upon the tribe’s economy. This department is willing and anxious to obtain for the War Department the use of this Indian land at the earliest possible moment and at the lowest possible cost.” Fortas also requested assurance that the land would be returned to the Lakota people, yet this process would not begin until after 1975.

Misfires

This bombing range on the Pine Ridge Reservation was used extensively from 1942 through 1948 as air-to-air and air-to-ground gunnery ranges and for precision and demolition bombing exercises. Planes would fly the 50 miles from the Rapid City Air Base (now Ellsworth Air Force Base) near Rapid City, South Dakota. Most firing took place within the present-day South Unit or Stronghold District. Old cars and 55-gallon drums painted bright yellow served as targets, while bombardiers aimed at 150- to 250-foot-wide circular bullseyes constructed of raised earth marked with a cross. Visible from the air, some culturally important sites and hundreds of fossil resources were destroyed in the bombing, including some large fossil remains of the elephant-sized titanothere.

Not all firing was accurate. Many pilots in training had difficulty in defining the exact boundaries of the firing range. National Park Service accounts report that miles outside of the boundary, residents recalled that they had to dive under tractors while cutting hay to avoid bombs dropped by planes. In the nearby town of Interior, a church and the building containing the community’s post office had 6-inch shells shot through the roof. Oglala Lakota resident Marvin Cuny lived just outside the boundary of the bombing range. “They started a fire up there and we was fighting the fire,” he recalled. “We had to take off and run because about eight or 12 fighter jets flew over and started shooting at them barrels.” Although no people from the community died from the misguided attacks, another elder recalled having some of their horses shot by planes strafing targets. In addition, at least a dozen members of flight crews perished in training accidents.

After the war, the South Dakota National Guard used portions of the bombing range as an artillery range. The military finally stopped using most of the land in 1968, when the U.S. Army Air Force declared most of the range “excess property.” That year, the U.S. Congress returned 202,357 acres of the former range to the Oglala Lakota Nation and designated 136,882 acres as the Badlands National Monument, later renamed Badlands National Park. In 1978, all remaining badland Bombing Range lands were declared excess except for 2,486 acres on Bouquet Table, formally known as the Impact Area and renamed the Air Force Retained Area or Badlands Gunnery Range. This parcel was used for National Guard artillery practice between 1966 to 1973, and although retained by the Air Force, is no longer used by the military.

Bad Lands

The ground in and around the areas of the Oglala Lakota lands used for target practice became littered with discarded bullet shells and unexploded bombs, or ordinance, referred to as UXO. These are explosive or chemical munitions that were fired but did not activate. Throughout the Stronghold District, UXO ranges from small bullets to large bombs. Pieces of or entire UXO can be hard to locate because it can be only partially visible on the surface, covered by vegetation, snow or other matter, or even buried up to 20 feet below ground. Large explosive shells are occasionally found eroding out of the Badlands buttes. While some UXO can be physically removed, others require controlled detonation where they are found.

Since 1948, teams from several U.S. agencies, including the Air Force, Army Corp of Engineers, Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have periodically surveyed and cleaned up sections of the range. In 1980, the EPA determined it was a “superfund” site and allocated additional funds for its cleanup. At first, the approach was to collect the debris and UXO and bury them in disposal sites on the reservation. Then in 1993, the Oglala Sioux Tribe established the Badlands Bombing Range Project funded by the Department of Defense.

While cleaning every square foot of the area is unlikely, plans were developed to remove all ordinance near inhabited or traveled areas. Teams had to receive specialized training in how to locate and map ordinance that was later removed through contracts with personnel hired by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Hartnett was working at the EPA in 1995. He had extensive experience in cleaning up military sites, so he was assigned to spend several months locating ordinance dump sites on the reservation.

Several public meetings were held in local district halls to inform people of the efforts to return their lands and clear them of military and other debris. Hartnett recalled, “We had one public meeting that was on the reservation, and while we were showing pictures of some of the bombs that were dropped back then, someone came walking into the hall carrying a bomb and saying, ‘Is this one of them?’” The hall was quickly evacuated, and an Air Force bomb squad was summoned to dismantle the bomb.

From 1994 to 2006, the Technical Outreach Services for Native American Communities program in partnership with Kansas State University and Haskell Indian Nations University provided training for members of Native American communities near former military sites who wished to learn how to clean them up. Featherman-Sam oversaw the first UXO teams, including many Lakota veterans. From 2006 to 2014, 17 tons of material was collected from target areas, including more than 500 unexploded cartridges and bombs.

Now contained entirely within the Pine Ridge Reservation and co-managed by the National Park Service and the Oglala Sioux Tribe, the South Unit of the Badlands Bombing Range is considered the most dangerous. Christian Knutson (Oglala Lakota) has seen UXO on the land most of his life, as he grew up near the range and now serves as park ranger at the Badlands’ White River Visitors Center. “Nowadays, mostly you’ll find little casings and bullets from like the 20 mm,” he said. “But I have found a few bigger UXOs.”

Park visitors tend to avoid this area, which is farther away from major highways, more remote and less accessible, requiring a truck or travel by foot. So most discoveries of UXO in the South Unit come from back-country hikers or local ranchers who use several grazing areas in the unit for cattle and horses. Residents and visitors are instructed to heed posted UXO warnings and never to approach, touch or disturb any UXO, but rather to note the location and report any to staff of the visitors center.

This past summer, after several years hiatus from lack of funding and then the COVID-19 pandemic, Shawn Swallow’s teams resumed their work. They have conducted a visual inspection of areas and used metal detectors to look for anomalies on or below the surface. Once located, any munitions and explosives were recorded and targeted for removal or detonation.

Deep Impacts

Today more than 10,000 individuals are working on removing UXO across the United States, including on the lands of several tribal nations. Although few individuals who experienced the forced relocation from Pine Ridge firsthand are alive today, their descendants are still affected psychologically and financially by the loss of family lands. Although Lakota peoples were allowed to repurchase their lands starting in the 1960s, many could not afford to do so or had had established homes elsewhere. One U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report estimates that only about one-fourth of the land has been reoccupied by descendants of the initial evacuees.

“The people who were children back during that time are a lot of the elders now that come to our meetings,” Featherman-Sam said. “Some of those elders get up and they cry when they talk about what happened to them during that time.” Knutson said, “I do know that there is still a group of people here that view the South Unit as land lost.”

Although today some of the range is used for grazing and hiking and is inhabited by Lakota families, much debris remains to be removed and years of work still lay ahead. Despite numerous cleanup projects, a 2023 assessment still lists The Pine Ridge Gunnery Range and the Badlands Bombing Range as “medium risk” sites and UXO are still frequently reported. However, Swallow indicated that areas of high, medium and low risk still exist based on their proximity to homesteads. In 2019, planes using radar developed a topographic map that showed that 90 percent of areas with suspected UXO are located within 750 feet of an access road.

Swallow sees a day the work could be completed and said he feels as an Oglala Lakota tribal member that he is “obligated to clean it.” Yet he also said, “I don’t see it done in my lifetime” because of the cost and intermittent commitment of funding. To complete the job, he estimates, would take $17 million. Still, Swallow takes great pride in helping restore his tribe’s lands and protecting people. “Knowing that we took care of something that could have endangered somebody,” he said. “That’s the rewarding part.”

Authors

William C. Meadows

William C. Meadows is an author of several books about Native veterans and a professor of Anthropology and Native American Studies at Missouri State University.

Attu’s Lost Village: Descendants of Aleut Community Relocated During World War II are Reclaiming their Legacy

EhrlichK — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 20:09:38 +0000

History

Attu’s Lost Village: Descendants of Aleut Community Relocated During World War II are Reclaiming their Legacy

From Issue: Fall 2022 / Vol. 23 No. 3

by William C. Meadows

As Alaska’s westernmost Aleutian Island came into view, Theresa Deal recalled, “I was getting chills.” Aboard a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) research vessel, Deal was among the 11 passengers who in 2017 were the first Aleut people to step foot on Attu—or Atux̂as as they call the island—since World War II. “My mom was born here. She was forced to leave,” she said. “It was just magical. There’s not many adjectives that I could find that can describe the feeling of going back.”

Beneath this mountain once was the Aleut village of Attu. Now Attu Island is uninhabited.

Zoë Sobel/KUCB

In the 1930s, the Attu village was inhabited by about 40 Alaska Native people.

Aleutian/Pribilof Project Collection, ASL-PCA-233; J. Malcolm Greany Papers and Photographs, Aleutian Islands, 1941. ASL-MS253-01-14, Alaska State Library Historical Collections

One of the most prominent buildings in the community was a Russian Orthodox church, reflecting the external influence on their Aleut culture.

Aleutian/Pribilof Project Collection, ASL-PCA-233; J. Malcolm Greany Papers and Photographs, Aleutian Islands, 1941. ASL-MS253-01-14, Alaska State Library Historical Collections

Aleut Agefangel (on the left) with Chief Mike Hodikof (standing) and his wife, Anastasia (on the right), collecting roots in 1936.

Alan G. May papers, 1902-1990, University of Alaska, Anchorage, UAA-HMC-0690; Bottom: Alaska State Library Historical Collections, ASL-P01-3598

Attuans also harvested grass to make baskets. In this 1919 image, women are weaving in front of a traditional house, dug out of a hillside.

Alan G. May papers, 1902-1990, University of Alaska, Anchorage, UAA-HMC-0690; Bottom: Alaska State Library Historical Collections, ASL-P01-3598

Aleut Private Simeon Pletnikoff helped liberate Attu Island from the Japanese occupation.

National Archives, Photo No. DHBR-9041

Aleut residents of Pribilof Islands were evacuated in 1942 in anticipation of further Japanese invasion of Alaska’s islands.

National Archives, Photo No. DHBR-9041

American and Canadian forces stormed Attu in May 1943 to expel the Japanese invaders.

U.S Navy, Courtesy of Aleutian Islands Photographs, 1942-1948, APRCA, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, UAF-1970-11-30

At the 75th anniversary reunion of the Battle of Attu in 2012, U.S. and Japanese veterans met Attu descendants such as Helen Ford, who showed a grass basket that her sister wove to U.S. veteran Joseph Sasser.

Lisa Hupp, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

This Japanese antiaircraft gun on Kiska Island is the type of military debris left behind here and on Attu after World War II. USFWS has since made strides in cleaning up the islands.

Lisa Hupp, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

In 2017, 11 descendants of the original Aleut inhabitants of Attu returned to their ancestors’ homeland. They gathered grass for baskets and honored those who died with a white cross.

Zoë Sobel/KUCB

The Aleut people, or Unangax̂ in their Native language, inhabited several villages in the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands off what was then Alaska Territory (this area would not become a U.S. state until 1959). As World War II approached, the Unangax̂ numbered just over 1,000 people living in 10 villages, which were inhabited by anywhere from 10 to 294 people.

The Aleutian Islands were strategically valuable for the United States, Canada and Japan. The Japanese invaded them to prevent the United States from building military air bases on the islands, which would have enabled U.S. planes to reach and bomb Japan. Japan also wanted to disrupt supply routes to the Soviet Union, build bases capable of reaching the Soviet Union if war with that country developed and draw U.S. forces away from the central Pacific.

On June 3, 1942—just six months after Japan’s attack on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor—the Japanese bombed the U.S. military at Dutch Harbor on Unalaska Island, beginning what would become the 13-month, 1,000-mile-long Aleutian Islands Campaign. Unangax̂ from Attu to the Alaskan Peninsula were affected. Japanese ground troops occupied the western islands of Attu and Kiska with no resistance. When the Japanese invaded Attu Island early on June 8, they found 42 Unangax̂ as well as Fred and Etta Jones, a radio technician and a school teacher, living there. Fred Jones was killed and one Unangax̂ man later died; the others remained on the island with Japanese troops for three months. Then Japanese forces were ordered to go to nearby Kiska Island to support their troops and to remove all of Attu’s inhabitants. Now prisoners, they boarded a coal freighter with few personal effects and were transported to Kiska and then to Hokkaido, Japan. An Unangax̂ woman died along the way. The remaining Attuans became the only Alaska Native prisoners taken to Japan during the war.

In Japan, the Attuans were housed in vacant railway employee dormitories. Although allowed much freedom of movement, they experienced poor living conditions and some violence, and a policeman stole some of their rations. Henry Stewart reports in his 2008 book “Alaska at War 1941–1945: The Forgotten War Remembered” that nearly half of the Attuans in Japan perished, including 16 of the 40 detainees and four of five children born there. Most died from acute tuberculosis, which 20 Attuans developed soon after arriving. Starvation accelerated their condition. Ten to 15 Attuans were often hospitalized at a time. Because the 881 Unangax̂ who were still living in 10 communities on Alaska’s islands were in a combat zone, the U.S. government evacuated them hastily to six locations officially deemed “refugee camps” in southeast Alaska. U.S. military forces then burned their villages to deny the Japanese any benefit from them. The former villagers were now housed at unsanitary and abandoned canneries, a herring saltery and rotting gold mine camps that had no plumbing, electricity or toilets. With little potable water, low-quality food and limited winter clothing, the Unangax̂ were appalled by the conditions of the camps and suffered greatly.

Accustomed to the barren, treeless Aleutians, many struggled with the forested realms of their camps, experiencing claustrophobia and depression. Larry Chercasen, who grew up on Umnak Island and was relocated to Ward Lake near Ketchikan, said in a 2008 interview for the University of Alaska’s Oral History Project that “I woke up one morning, I looked out of the port hole and the ship was real still and I saw trees. … I wondered what they were, and I thought what are those, big grass?” he said. “It was the first time I’d seen a live tree in my life…And the first time I heard thunder and lightning in my life. It frightened me to death.”

The internment of the Unangax̂ lasted more than three years. Nearly 10 percent of the evacuees died in these camps.

Attuans in Military Service

Despite their situation, many Unangax̂ who had been in the camps still supported the U.S. war effort. Some escaped to find work with construction companies and military contractors. Others opened their homes for wounded or periodically shared their church on Unalaska Island with troops.

Aleut peoples from across the Aleutian Island chain and southeast Alaskan relocation camps also served in the military with distinction during World War II. Widespread induction of Aleut men did not occur until after the general relocation of Aleut peoples to southeast Alaska. There, men registered with local draft boards. Some did not wait for the draft and enlisted. Despite being interned, for example, evacuee Luke Shelikoff left the Lake Ward Refugee Camp to join the U.S. Army.

In May 1943, U.S. and Canadian forces stormed Attu to expel the Japanese. Among them were the 7th Scout Company and the 7th Reconnaissance Troop, which were combined to form the 350-man 7th Provisional Scout Battalion. This unit included a 30-man detachment from the 1st Alaskan Combat Intelligence Platoon (Provisional) of the Alaska Defense Command. Beginning in November 1941, the unit was commanded by Colonel Lawrence Castner, intelligence chief of the U.S. Army’s Alaska Defense Command. Members were recruited from Alaskan big game hunters, trappers, dogsledders, commercial fishermen, miners, prospectors and American Indian, and Inuit and Aleut peoples. Having no official uniform, they chose their own weapons and gear. Because the unit was composed largely of Alaskans, it quickly became known as the Alaska Scouts. Due to their dislike of dress code and unshaven nature, the group was dubbed Castner’s Cutthroats, although the name had no relation to their service.

The 66-man company was split into smaller commando-style teams. Having lived more than 8,000 years in the Aleutians, the Unangax̂ had extensive knowledge of their homeland’s food sources and geography, including the location of trails, the timing of tides and which harbors were safe in difficult winds. The military drew upon these Indigenous peoples’ invaluable information and survival techniques. According to a 1991 article in Alaska Magazine, Alaska Native Scout Drafin “Buck” Delkettie said, “We taught the Army instructors how to do things our way. How to take bear out of the woods, how to make our own snowshoes, how to go into the woods and catch your own food, how to just plain survive.”

Utilizing the Indigenous scouts’ ability to live off the land, Castner taught them how to gather military intelligence. Members conducted long-range reconnaissance to spot Japanese troops as well as ground surveys and mapping, including searching for potential runways and beachheads for amphibious landings without being detected. Selected as a scout because of his knowledge of the Aleutian Islands, Simeon Pletnikoff, known as “Aleut Pete,” relayed in a 1992 University of Alaska oral history recording that he and other Alaska Natives helped scout Adak and Amchitka Islands and later participated in the reclaiming of Attu Island. Often working in small parties, the Alaska Scouts were mobile: they were lightly armed, generally used nonmilitary equipment and lived off the land while searching for Japanese troops.

After securing Amchitka and Adak, U.S. forces prepared for the first amphibious island landing in U.S. history on Attu. A U.S. bombing campaign had destroyed Attu village prior to retaking the island. U.S. troops assaulted four beaches along the 40-mile-long Attu, with Alaska Scouts serving as guides, map readers, scouts, advisers and snipers. The Battle of Attu was the principal Allied effort to end Japan’s only military campaign in the Western Hemisphere and contained some of the bloodiest hand-to-hand fighting of World War II.

The Aleuts’ valuable service helped to expel the Japanese invaders. Yet, as several minorities in the Pacific Theater of World War II experienced, some Unangax̂ found themselves mistaken for the enemy. In his oral history interview Pletnikoff recalled, “I had a heck of a time. Out on the front line, the Americans would get ahold of me and want to kill me and all that. They tried to take me to the Provost Marshall for impersonating a U.S. soldier.” He would have to say to them, “What’s the matter with you guys? I’m an Aleut.”

On August 15, 1943, scouts landed to reconnoiter Kiska Island. Finding no Japanese, U.S. forces landed, officially ending the Aleutian Campaign. They did not know that the Japanese had evacuated the 5,183-man garrison nearly three weeks before, and while patrolling the island over the next eight days, dense fog and confusion resulted in Allied forces firing on one another.

Unangax̂ from the Pribilof Islands—representing nearly half of the population—experienced a different trajectory than others in the Aleutian Chain. Long dominated by the USFWS, these men were classified as “wards of the government,” which initially prevented them from enlisting in military service. Kept on their islands, they were used for their labor and hunting skills in the seal-hide trade. In 1943, several left for military service. As the draft drained local manpower at Funter Bay Camp, the USFWS was able to have Unangax̂ in the military furloughed and others deferred so they could participate in harvesting fur seals that summer. After 87 Pribilof inhabitants and 13 other Unangax̂ produced $1.58 million in furs and seal byproducts, those on active duty returned to their stations.

Resilience, Restitution and Reconnection

While the war for the Aleutian Islands ended in 1943, it was far from over for the Unangax̂. Some remained in relocation camps as late as 1945—two full years after Japanese troops left the Aleutians. Some returned to find their villages burned and destroyed. The surviving 25 Attuans—including Alfred Prokopeuff, the sole surviving Unangax̂ baby born in Japan—and those from smaller villages on other Islands were not allowed to return. These became known as the “Lost Villages.”

Taken from their homes, subjected to deplorable living conditions and losing most of their personal property, they persevered. They sustained themselves through devout focus on their version of Russian Orthodoxy, community values and inner strength. They protested and petitioned their treatment, left relocation camps to find work and refused the orders of their Japanese captors when possible. This resiliency would help them rebuild their lives after the war. However, Attuan survivors were scattered to other Aleut and Alaskan communities and to orphanages in Alaska and Washington, fracturing their remining community, language and culture. Less than 300 Attuan descendants are known to exist today. Many of the Unangax̂ remained silent about their ordeal for years, suppressing the story from grief and concern that they would be considered unpatriotic for speaking up about their treatment. Theresa Deal stated that her mother, Mariana Hodikoff—Attuan “prisoner number 36”—never spoke about her experiences in Japan.

After years of debate, U.S. government officials apologized to the Unangax̂ in 1988 and ordered restitution to 450 individuals for personal losses associated with their forced relocation and internment in southeast Alaska during the war. Under the terms of the American Civil Liberties Act of 1988, each survivor received $12,000. A $6.4 million trust fund was created for their communities.

While historians have often focused on the Battle of Attu, for the Unangax̂ the legacy of World War II has been one of both geographic and cultural loss. The impacts of lost islands and villages, harsh treatment, scattered resettlement and displacement continues. Yet even though there has been loss, there has also been recovery.

In a National Park Service article, Alice Snigaroff Petrivelli reflects on the relocation experience and how they have since rebuilt. “It was humiliating for independent Aleuts to be treated like children. The evacuation made Aleut people feel as though they had no rights whatsoever,” she said. “I noticed that we were referred to as ‘these people’ whenever there was a discussion about the evacuees. Well, ‘these people’ are now in control of their own destinies, as much as any American citizen is, and will continue to do a good job preserving their culture and traditions.”

Today Unangax̂ contribute as prominent community leaders throughout the United States. These include State Representative and businessman Carl E. Moses, physician Barbara Riley, sculptor John Hoover and Indigenous studies scholar Eve Tuck.

Restoring a Legacy

With the closing of the Casco Cove Coast Guard Station in 2010, a pre-GPS communications station, Attu is no longer inhabited. Most of Attu Island is within the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, which encompasses 1,400 islands and is under the USFWS management. Although challenging to get to, Attu is open to the public. As Refuge Manager Steve Delehanty explained, however, “The actual site of Attu village is not owned by the federal government. It’s not part of the Alaska Maritime Wildlife Refuge. It belongs to the Aleut Corporation.” This is one of the Alaska Native–owned 13 regional bodies that own and manage land for their peoples. In addition to the metal, wood and stone remains scattered across the island during the war, some areas still contained leaked oil, petroleum and lead. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers removed two petroleum leaks, numerous fuel tanks and other pollutants in 2016 under the Formerly Used Defense Site Program. Yet the island still does not have any facilities to accommodate lengthy public visits.

In 2012 an Attuan reunion in Anchorage, Alaska, allowed long-scattered relatives to reconnect, which led to the 11 descendants visiting the island in 2017. They were only able to reach the island with the help of a USFWS research vessel that had traveled two days to get there. During a five-hour visit, they held a remembrance service for all the Attuans near the remains of the former Attu village church. There they buried a Russian Orthodox cross, gathered soil, rocks and grass for basket weaving, walked on the beach and “maritime tundra,” and reconnected with their ancestors. Theresa Deal hiked to a memorial to the Attuans who once lived on the island. “That was an emotional thing. At least I’m glad that my mom’s name was on the survivor list because I’m here.”

In 2018 descendants of Attuans, American and Japanese soldiers met at the Alaska Aviation Museum in Anchorage to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of Attu. There, they premiered the Japanese documentary film about the Battle of Attu called “When the Fog Clears.” Helena Pagano Schmitz and Theresa Deal, both descendants of Attu Tribal Chief Mike Hodikoff, met at this event and decided to found the all-volunteer, nonprofit organization called Atux̂ Forever. Through this initiative, they hope to make Attu more accessible to descendants to visit and reclaim their culture and homeland.

“I feel our story is left out of World War II,” Schmitz reflected. “We lost our culture, we lost our language, and we lost our way of life, and I’m trying to bring it back.” Theresa Deal said, “I think it’s important to have access to the island for all descendants and future descendants.”

Authors

William C. Meadows

William C. Meadows is an author of several books about Native veterans and a professor of Anthropology and Native American Studies at Missouri State University.

Lasting Impressions: Jennie Ross Cobb, First Female American Indian Photographer, Framed Cherokee Life in Indian Territory

EhrlichK — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 19:33:24 +0000

History

Lasting Impressions: Jennie Ross Cobb, First Female American Indian Photographer, Framed Cherokee Life in Indian Territory

From Issue: Fall 2022 / Vol. 23 No. 3

by Karen Shade-Lanier

In many ways, photographer Jennie Ross Cobb was much like some of her early subjects. She was a young woman from a respected family and a student at Cherokee National Female Seminary, one of the initial institutions of higher learning for women west of the Mississippi River. Also like her subjects, she was Cherokee. Yet she holds one key distinction. As the first known female American Indian photographer, she captured images of the Cherokee Nation’s people during a time of change, when they were still establishing in the area that would become Oklahoma and their tribal autonomy was especially vulnerable.

Jennie Ross Cobb circa 1945.

Courtesy of Hunter’s Home, Oklahoma Historical Society

Years after Jennie Ross Cobb had married and left her former residence of Hunter’s Home, she found this camera that she had left there years earlier still in the attic.

Photo by Jeremy Charles. Courtesy of Hunter’s Home, Oklahoma Historical Society

This photo of the Ross family, possibly taken by then Jennie Ross around 1900, includes her parents, Fannie Thornton and Robert Bruce Ross, who are seated in the center row.

Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

Cherokee National Female Seminary

The Cherokee Nation built this school for young women in the tribe’s capital city of Tahlequah in 1889, replacing the original building, which burned down two years prior. The Cherokee Nation managed it until 1909, two years after Oklahoma became a state. Today, it is Northeastern State University. Here is the Cherokee National Female Seminary graduating class of 1902.