Pleasant Porter, was an American Indian statesman and the last elected Principal Chief of the Creek Nation, serving from 1899 until his death.
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.
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.
James Sanford Davenport was a U.S. Representative from Oklahoma and a member of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. He served on the Congressional committee that created the first roads and highways committee in the U.S. House.
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.
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.
John Rogers was the last elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation West elected in December 1838 by the faction of Old Settlers who rejected the Cherokee Nation constitution of 1839.
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 Jr. is a Cherokee Nation politician and attorney currently serving as the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation since 2019. He was re-elected to a second term in the 2023 Cherokee Nation principal chief election.
Thomas Horner Owen (1873–1938) was a judge of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. Born and raised in Arkansas, he moved to Indian Territory in 1894. According to Victor Harlow's version of Owen's biography, Owen was born near Jasper, Arkansas on February 24, 1873.
