TAHLEQUAH, Okla.  The meeting between the two North American Indian leaders had been called to discuss international issues, but Phil Fontaine, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, could not help deviating from the agenda.

Fontaine, whose organization represents more than 800,000 American Indians in Canada, wanted to know what the Cherokee Nation principal chief, Chad Smith, thought of Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford. “I heard he’s Cherokee,” Fontaine told Smith. “He’s having a great year.”

Smith confirmed that Bradford was indeed a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and they continued talking about him. “It was a great conversation,” Smith said. “There we were talking Sam Bradford and O.U. football.”

Entering Saturday’s Red River Rivalry between No. 1 Oklahoma and No. 5 Texas, Bradford is at the forefront of Heisman Trophy conversations, and at the center of attention in the Cherokee Nation, the second-largest tribe in the United States. Bradford is believed to be the first Cherokee to start at quarterback for a Division I university since Sonny Sixkiller, a full-blooded Cherokee, who was born here and starred at Washington in the early 1970s.