Pleasant Porter, was an American Indian statesman and the last elected Principal Chief of the Creek Nation, serving from 1899 until his death.
Jesse Bartley Milam (1884–1949) was best known as the first Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation appointed by a U.S. president since tribal government had been dissolved before Oklahoma Statehood in 1907. He was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941, who reappointed him in 1942 and 1943; he was reappointed by President Harry S. Truman in 1948. He died while in office in 1949.
Dennis Wolf Bushyhead was a leader in the Cherokee Nation after they had removed to Indian Territory. Born into the Wolf Clan, he was elected as Principal Chief, serving two terms, from 1879 to 1887.
Charles Thompson was born to a full-blood Cherokee father and a European-American mother in the Southeastern United States. According to one writer, the mother had been kidnapped at a young age and raised by Cherokees. She never learned the identities of her real parents nor when or where she was born. As a result, she did not speak English and could communicate only in Cherokee. The family migrated west to Indian Territory during the Trail of Tears, and settled near the present-day site of Lake Spavinaw, in what is now Delaware County, Oklahoma.
William Charles Rogers was born in the Cherokee Nation near present-day Skiatook, Oklahoma, USA, on December 13, 1847. A Confederate veteran and successful farmer, he entered tribal politics in 1881.
Joel Bryan Mayes was Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.
Samuel Houston Mayes of Scots/English-Cherokee descent, was elected as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory, serving from 1895 to 1899. His maternal grandfather belonged to the Deer clan, and his father was allied with members of the Cherokee Treaty Party in the 1830s, such as the Adair men, Elias Boudinot, and Major Ridge. In the late nineteenth century, his older brother Joel B. Mayes was elected to two terms as Chief of the Cherokee.
Thomas Alberter Chandler was an American politician and a U.S. Representative from Oklahoma.
William Wirt Hastings was an American lawyer, educator and politician who served nine terms as a U.S. Representative from Oklahoma between 1915 and 1935.
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.
Clement Vann Rogers was an American politician and judge in Indian Territory. Clem Rogers' parents were both mixed-blood Cherokees who moved to Indian Territory in 1832, several years before the Trail of Tears. Before the American Civil War, Clem allied with the "Treaty Party", a Cherokee faction that supported signing the Treaty of New Echota. When the Civil War broke out, Clem enlisted in the Confederate Army, and served under General Stand Watie. After the war, he became active in Cherokee politics, first elected as a judge in the Cooweescoowee District, then served five terms in the Cherokee Senate. He later served as a delegate to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention. Rogers was the father of entertainer Will Rogers.
John Jolly was a leader of the Cherokee in Tennessee, the Arkansaw district of the Missouri Territory, and Indian Territory. After a reorganization of the tribal government around 1818, he was made Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation–West. Jolly was a wealthy slave-owning planter, cow rancher, and merchant. In many ways, he lived the life of a Southern planter.
The Cherokee Male Seminary was a tribal college established in 1846 by the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory. Opening in 1851, it was one of the first institutions of higher learning in the United States to be founded west of the Mississippi River.
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.
William Penn Adair (1830–1880) was a leader of the Cherokee Nation. He was born in the traditional Cherokee territory in Georgia. As a child with his family he survived the forced march on the Trail of Tears of Indian Removal from the Southeast to Indian Territory to what is now Oklahoma. He became an attorney who served in public office both before and after the American Civil War and as a justice of their nation's court. He entered the Confederate States Army, and he achieved the rank of colonel. Like many others, he joined on the promise that the Confederacy would support a Native American state if it won the War. He served as Cherokee Nation delegate at Washington, D.C. during the 1860s and 1870s.
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.
Chuck Hoskin Sr. is a Cherokee and American politician and former member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives from the 6th district, which includes parts of Craig, Mayes, and Rogers counties. He served as a whip for the Democratic caucus. After leaving the House he served for four years as the Mayor of Vinita, Oklahoma. He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and he served from 1995 to 2007 as a member of the Tribal Council, and in 2011 became Chief of Staff for the Principal Chief, Baker. In 2019 his son, Chuck Hoskin Jr., was elected Principal Chief of Cherokee Nation.
Carrie Bushyhead Quarles was a Native American, graduated in the first class of students from the First Cherokee Female Seminary and was a teacher to Native American children for nearly forty years. Born in Tennessee to biracial parents of Cherokee and Scottish heritage, she came to Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears. She graduated in 1855 as valedictorian of the inaugural class of the Cherokee Female Seminary and began teaching at the school the following year. During her career, which lasted until 1893, she trained numerous Native American leaders, such as Alice Brown Davis, Samuel Houston Mayes, and Thomas Buffington.
Carlotta Archer was a Native American teacher, musician, and civil servant. She was the only woman to ever serve on the original Cherokee Nation Board of Education. She then served as the Mayes County Superintendent of Schools from 1908 to 1927, before accepting a federal post in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and serving at the Muskogee and Pryor agencies as deputy field clerk until 1941. After her retirement from civil service, she worked as a librarian and executive secretary of the Red Cross. She was one of the first women to hold elective office in the state of Oklahoma.
