The History of Female Native American Education and Northeastern Oklahoma State University

Seminary Hall, Northeastern Oklahoma State University

'The Trail of Tears' (1838-1839) culminated in the relocation of over 20,000 Cherokee Indians from Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama and North Carolina to Northeastern Oklahoma. Estimates are that 4,000 Cherokee men, women and children died during The Trail of Tears.

Upon settling in Oklahoma at an area called Park Hill, just outside of the present day city of Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the Cherokee Indians began to rebuild their nation.

Within a decade of arriving in Oklahoma, around the same time the Southern Baptist Convention was being formed, the Cherokee people - with the help of missionary Samuel Worcester who came with the Cherokees to Oklahoma - began to establish a system of education for the Cherokee men - and women.

In 1851 the Cherokees at Park Hill began a seminary for women, with rigorous curriculum, patterned after that of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in Massachusetts. The seminary offered no instruction in Cherokee language or culture, but was open only to full- and mixed-blood Cherokee girls. The school was in operation until 1909 and approximately 3,000 girls attended.

These women and their educational experiences greatly influenced the Cherokee Nation and the lives of their descendants. Students at the Cherokee Female Seminary took courses in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, political economy, literary criticism, theology, philosophy and other advanced academic courses. Pupils staged dramatic productions, held music recitals and published their own newsletter. The seminary building was eventually destroyed by fire, but three original columns from the building mark the entrance into the modern Cherokee Heritage Center.

The first woman to receive her Ph.D. in the United States of America, Miss Sarah Worcester, was a descendent of the founder of the Cherokee Female Seminary. Wilma Mankiller, the female Chief of the Cherokee Nation in the 1980's said this about the Cherokee Female Seminary . . .

"The Cherokee Female Seminary was among the first educational systems built west of the Mississippi - Indian or non-Indian. In fact, for a period of time during the mid-nineteenth century, the Cherokee population was more literate than the neighboring non-Indian population”

Cherokee Female Seminary, Tahlequah, Oklahoma

The Cherokees were so successful in educating Cherokee women through the Cherokee Female Seminary that some of the more traditional Cherokee men began to complain that the women were no longer suited for domestic chores.

Eventually, the traditionalists were overruled and the Cherokee Female Seminary was folded into the Cherokee Men's Seminary which had been established in Tahlequah, Oklahoma and the combined schools became what we know today as Northeastern State University, one of oldest institutions of higher learning west of the Mississippi, and still the university with the highest concentration of Indian students in the United States.

Davy Crockett was severely persecuted for standing up for the Cherokee people before Congress in the 1830's at Washington, D.C. Crockett's own political career was destroyed because he supported the Cherokees when everyone else wanted them out of sight and out of mind. Davy Crockett left Washington D. C. and eventually made his way west to Texas where he became a frontier hero and died at the Alamo.

But before Crockett left the nation's capital he made a statement regarding his strong stand for the oppressed Cherokee Indians:

"I would sooner be honestly damned than hypocritically immortalized."

I have long fought for the equality of women in Christian education, churches, and leadership in general. I not only believe leadership is based on gifting and not gender, My feelings are well summarized by Davy Crockett.

I'm proud to be an Oklahoman and an advocate for women in leadership.