Cherokee Supreme Court Building | |
Location | Keetoowah St. and Water Ave., Tahlequah, Oklahoma |
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Coordinates | 35°54′47″N94°58′00″W / 35.91306°N 94.96667°W Coordinates: 35°54′47″N94°58′00″W / 35.91306°N 94.96667°W |
Area | less than one acre |
Built | 1844 |
NRHP reference No. | 74001657 [1] |
Added to NRHP | June 28, 1974 |
Cherokee Supreme Court Building (also known as Cherokee County School) is museum at Keetoowah Street and Water Avenue in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The building was constructed in 1844 and it was added the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. It is the oldest government building in Oklahoma and possibly the oldest building still surviving in the state. [2]
The building that once housed the Supreme Court of the Cherokee Nation has been converted into a museum, the Cherokee National Supreme Court Museum and is open to the public. It reportedly is the oldest public building in Oklahoma. [3] [lower-alpha 1] It was constructed on the southeast corner of the town square by James S. Pierce in 1844. The first chief justice of the Cherokee Nation, John Martin (judge) (1784–1840) held court here. The printing press for the early-day Cherokee Phoenix newspaper was also located in this building, and a reproduction of the press and the newsroom can be seen here. [4]
Cherokee County is a county located in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2010 census, the population was 46,987. Its county seat is Tahlequah, which is also the capital of the Cherokee Nation.
Park Hill is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in southwestern Cherokee County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 3,909 at the 2010 census. It lies near Tahlequah, east of the junction of U.S. Route 62 and State Highway 82.
Tahlequah is a city in Cherokee County, Oklahoma located at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. It is part of the Green Country region of Oklahoma and was established as a capital of the 19th-century Cherokee Nation in 1839, as part of the new settlement in Indian Territory after the Cherokee Native Americans were forced west from the American Southeast on the Trail of Tears.
Claremore is a city and the county seat of Rogers County in Green Country or northeastern Oklahoma, United States. The population was 19,580 at the 2020 census, a 5.4 percent increase over the figure of 18,581 recorded in 2010. Located in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains, the town is part of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area and home to Rogers State University. It is best known as the home of early 20th-century entertainer Will Rogers.
The Cherokee are Native American people. There are three, currently existing, federally-recognized Cherokee tribes
New Echota was the capital of the Cherokee Nation in the Southeast United States from 1825 until their forced removal in the late 1830s. New Echota is located in present-day Gordon County, in northwest Georgia, 3.68 miles north of Calhoun. It is south of Resaca, next to present day New Town, known to the Cherokee as Ustanali. The site has been preserved as a state park and a historic site. It was designated in 1973 as a National Historic Landmark District.
The Cherokee Nation, also known as the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is the largest of three Cherokee federally recognized tribes in the United States. It was established in the 20th century and includes people descended from members of the Old Cherokee Nation who relocated, due to increasing pressure, from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokee who were forced to relocate on the Trail of Tears. The tribe also includes descendants of Cherokee Freedmen, Absentee Shawnee, and Natchez Nation. As of 2021, over 400,000 people were enrolled in the Cherokee Nation.
The Hunter's Home, formerly known as the George M. Murrell Home, is a historic house museum at 19479 E Murrel Rd in Park Hill, near Tahlequah, Oklahoma in the Cherokee Nation. Built in 1845, it is one of the few buildings to survive in Cherokee lands from the antebellum period between the Trail of Tears relocation of the Cherokee people and the American Civil War. It was a major social center of the elite among the Cherokee in the mid-nineteenth century. It has been owned by the state since 1948, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1974.
The Cherokee Heritage Center is a non-profit historical society and museum campus that seeks to preserve the historical and cultural artifacts, language, and traditional crafts of the Cherokee. The Heritage center also hosts the central genealogy database and genealogy research center for the Cherokee People. The Heritage Center is located on the site of the mid-19th century Cherokee Seminary building in Park Hill, Oklahoma, a suburb of Tahlequah, and was constructed near the old structure. It is a unit of the Cherokee National Historical Society and is sponsored by the Cherokee Nation, the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, and other area tribes. The center was originally known as Tsa-La-Gi but is now known as the Cherokee Heritage Center.
Bacone College, formerly Bacone Indian University, is a private tribal college in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Founded in 1880 as the Indian University by missionary Almon C. Bacone, it was originally affiliated with the mission arm of what is now American Baptist Churches USA. Renamed as Bacone College in the early 20th century, it is the oldest continuously operated institution of higher education in Oklahoma. The liberal arts college has had strong historic ties to several tribal nations, including the Muscogee and Cherokee. The Bacone College Historic District has been on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Muskogee County, Oklahoma since 2014.
Jesse Bushyhead was a Cherokee religious and political leader, and a Baptist minister. He was born near the present-day town of Cleveland, Tennessee. As a young man, he was ordained a Baptist minister.
The Cherokee National Capitol, now the Cherokee Nation Courthouse, is a historic tribal government building in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Completed in 1869, it served as the capitol building of the Cherokee Nation from 1869 to 1907, when Oklahoma became a state. It now serves as the site of the tribal supreme court and judicial branch. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961 for its role in the Nation's history.
Sequoyah's Cabin is a log cabin and historic site off Oklahoma State Highway 101 near Akins, Oklahoma. It was the home between 1829 and 1844 of the Cherokee Indian Sequoyah, who in 1821 created a written language for the Cherokee Nation. The cabin and surrounding park, now owned by the Cherokee Nation, was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.
The Cherokee Female Seminary,, was built by the Cherokee Nation in 1889 near Tahlequah, Indian Territory. It replaced their original girls' seminary that had burned down on Easter Sunday two years before. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
The first Cherokee Female Seminary was a boarding school opened by the Cherokee Nation in 1851 in Park Hill, Oklahoma. On Easter Sunday 1887, a fire burned the building, but the head of the school, Florence Wilson, made sure all the girls got out. Two years later, in 1889, the new Cherokee Female Seminary reopened and still stands just north of Tahlequah.
The United States Post Office and Courthouse, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is a historic post office, courthouse, and Federal office building built in 1912 and located at Oklahoma City in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma. It previously served as a courthouse of the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, and of the United States Court of Appeals, briefly housing the Eighth Circuit and, then the Tenth Circuit for several decades. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. It continues to house the Bankruptcy court for the Western District of Oklahoma. The building includes Moderne and Beaux Arts.
The Cherokee Nation was a legal, autonomous, tribal government in North America recognized from 1794 to 1907. It was often referred to simply as "The Nation" by its inhabitants. The government was effectively disbanded in 1907, after its land rights had been extinguished, prior to the admission of Oklahoma as a state. During the late 20th century, the Cherokee people reorganized, instituting a government with sovereign jurisdiction known as the Cherokee Nation. On July 9, 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had never been disestablished in the years before allotment and Oklahoma Statehood.
The Cherokee National Jail or Cherokee National Penitentiary was built in 1874 as part of a governmental complex for the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. It served the Cherokee Nation until it was sold to Cherokee County, Oklahoma, which used it as a jail into the 1970s.
The Cherokee National History Museum is an art and cultural history museum in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, United States. Established in 2019, it is housed in the historic Cherokee Nation Supreme Court building, formerly known as the Cherokee National Capitol building. It is at 101 South Muskogee Avenue.
Anna Mitchell was a Cherokee Nation potter who revived the historic art of Southeastern Woodlands pottery for Cherokee people in Oklahoma. She was designated as a Cherokee National Treasure and has works in numerous museum collections including the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, among others.