Pontotoc County is in the south central part of Oklahoma. As of the 2020 census, the population was 38,065. Its county seat is Ada. The county was created at statehood from part of the Chickasaw Nation in Indian Territory. It was named for a historic Chickasaw tribal area in Mississippi. According to the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, Pontotoc is usually translated "cattail prairie" or "land of hanging grapes."
Murray County is a county located in the southern part of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2020 census, the population was 13,904. The county seat is Sulphur. The county was named for William H. Murray, a member and president of the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention and later a Governor of Oklahoma.
Marshall County is a county located on the south central border of Oklahoma. As of the 2020 census, the population was 15,312. Its county seat is Madill. The county was created at statehood in 1907 from the former Pickens County of the Chickasaw Nation. It was named to honor the maiden name of the mother of George Henshaw, a member of the 1906 Oklahoma Constitutional Convention. The county and its cities are part of the Texoma region.
Johnston County is a county located in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2020 census, the population was 10,272. Its county seat is Tishomingo. It was established at statehood on November 16, 1907, and named for Douglas H. Johnston, a governor of the Chickasaw Nation.
The Chickasaw are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, United States. Their traditional territory was in northern Mississippi, northwestern and northern Alabama, western Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky. Their language is classified as a member of the Muskogean language family. In the present day, they are organized as the federally recognized Chickasaw Nation.
Tatums is a historic Freedmen's town in Carter County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 151 at the 2010 census, a decline of 12.2 percent from the figure of 172 in 2000. It is part of the Ardmore, Oklahoma Micropolitan Statistical Area.
Stratford is a town in Garvin County, Oklahoma, United States. Prior to Oklahoma statehood in 1907, the town existed under different names and was in the Chickasaw Nation in a geographic region known as Indian Territory. Peach orchards abound in and around the town. As of the 2020 census, the town’s population was 1,405.
Milburn is a town in Johnston County, Oklahoma, United States, along the Blue River. The population was 317 at the 2010 census, an increase of 1.6 percent from the figure of 312 in 2000. The town is notable as the location of the Chickasaw White House, the former home of Chickasaw Governor Douglas H. Johnston. This home is now a museum and is listed on the NRHP.
Mill Creek is a town in Johnston County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 319 at the 2010 census, a decline from the figure of 340 in 2000. Mill Creek Community is an unincorporated area of Johnston County that surrounds the town and claims to have about 1,000 residents, including those who live within the town limits. Local residents consider the town as the focal point of the community.
Tishomingo is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Johnston County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 3,034 at the 2010 census, a decline of 4.1 percent from the figure of 3,162 in 2000. It was the first capital of the Chickasaw Nation, from 1856 until Oklahoma statehood in 1907. The city is home to Murray State College, a community college with an annual enrollment of 3,015 students. Tishomingo is part of the Texoma region.
Sulphur is a city in and county seat of Murray County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 5,065 at the 2020 census, a 2.8 percent gain over the figure of 4,929 in 2010. The area around Sulphur has been noted for its mineral springs, since well before the city was founded late in the 19th century. The city received its name from the presence of sulfur in the water.
Bromide is a town in Coal and Johnston counties in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The population was 165 at the 2010 census.
Johnston Murray was an American lawyer, politician, and the 14th governor of Oklahoma from 1951 to 1955. He was a member of the Democratic Party.
The State of Sequoyah was a proposed state to be established from the Indian Territory in the eastern part of present-day Oklahoma. In 1905, with the end of tribal governments looming, Native Americans of the Five Civilized Tribes—the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek (Muscogee), and Seminole—in Indian Territory proposed to create a state as a means to retain control of their lands. Their intention was to have a state under Native American constitution and governance. The proposed state was to be named in honor of Sequoyah, the Cherokee who created a writing system in 1825 for the Cherokee language.
The Chickasaw Nation is a federally recognized Native American tribe with headquarters in Ada, Oklahoma, in the United States. They are an Indigenous people of the Southeastern Woodlands, originally from northern Mississippi, northwestern Alabama, southwestern Kentucky, and western Tennessee. Today, the Chickasaw Nation is the 13th largest tribe in the United States.
Douglas Hancock Cooper Johnston, also known as "Douglas Henry Johnston", was a tribal leader who served as the last elected governor of the Chickasaw Nation from 1898 to 1902. He was re-elected in 1904 and, after the Dawes Act changed how tribal lands were allocated and regulated in Indian Territory to allow statehood in 1907, he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 as governor of the tribe under federal authority. He served until his death in office in 1939.
Bloomfield Academy was a Chickasaw school for girls founded in 1852 by the Reverend John Harpole Carr, located in the Chickasaw Nation in Indian Territory, about 3 miles (4.8 km) southeast of the present town of Achille, Oklahoma. A boarding school funded by both the Missouri Conference of the Methodist Church and the government of the Chickasaw Nation, it operated there until 1914, which a major fire destroyed most buildings. Now privately owned, the site of the former academy near Achille was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
The Sequoyah Constitutional Convention was an American Indian-led attempt to secure statehood for Indian Territory as an Indian-controlled jurisdiction, separate from the Oklahoma Territory. The proposed state was to be called the State of Sequoyah.
The White House of the Chickasaws in Milburn, Oklahoma was built in 1895. It was designed by Dallas architect W.A. Waltham in the Queen Anne style. The house is also known as Gov. Douglas H. Johnston House, because Chickasaw Governor Douglas Hancock Johnston and his descendants resided in the mansion from 1898 to 1971 when the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. At the time of its construction, the house was on the north edge of the community of Emet, Oklahoma, where Johnston operated a store, but its formal street address is now 6379 E. Mansion Dr., Milburn, Oklahoma
Mary Frances Thompson Fisher, best known as Te Ata, was an actress and citizen of the Chickasaw Nation known for telling Native American stories. She performed as a representative of Native Americans at state dinners before President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s. She was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1957 and was named Oklahoma's first State Treasure in 1987.
