Goingsnake meeting presents early CN education’s history

BY WILL CHAVEZ

Assistant Editor – @cp_wchavez

About the Author

WILL CHAVEZ

WILL-CHAVEZ@cherokee.org  918-207-3961 Will Chavez is a Cherokee/San Felipe Pueblo Indian who has worked in the newspaper and public relations field for 25 years. During that time he has performed public relations work for the Cherokee Nation and has been a writer, reporter and photographer for the Cherokee Advocate and Cherokee Phoenix newspapers. For many years h ...

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WESTVILLE, Okla. – At the April 18 Goingsnake District Heritage Association meeting at the Westville Library, Cherokee historian Marybelle Chase spoke about the early Cherokee Nation school system.With her presentation, “Public School System in the Cherokee Nation,” she said the tribe’s school system was a result of the Principal Chief John Ross’s goal of “independence and prosperity for the Cherokee people.”“He believed their security laid in education. In his annual message to the Cherokee Legislature in the fall of 1840, Chief Ross recommended that they come up with a plan for a free public school system,” she said.At this time there were missionary schools in the CN that Cherokee children attended, but Ross did not seek the help of missions or the United States government to form a tribal public school system. Chase said the tribe’s Public Education Act of 1841 called for the appointment of a school superintendent to be paid from the national treasury to supervise the new school system.“In each community, the people were required to elect three local school directors whose duty was to see that the community built and maintained a school building. The schools were built of logs by the Cherokee people in each district,” she said.In the beginning, most teachers were white from the East and their pay matched those of teachers in eastern states, she said.“As more Cherokees became educated, many of them took over as teachers, replacing the whites,” Chase said. “The superintendent selected the teacher of each school with the advice of the three directors. Schools were to have a minimum of 25 students who lived within walking distance.”She said if the local directors could not maintain a minimum of 25 students, the superintendent had the right to move the school to a more-populated location in the district.Chase said the school system experienced some problems because full-blood Cherokee parents “saw no need for education” while the mixed-blood Cherokees were accepting of the school system.“The Cherokee-speaking children of full-blood parents found it difficult to learn from teachers who did not speak Cherokee,” she said.In 1843, the council increased the number of Cherokee schools from eight to 18, and in 1846 three more schools were added. By 1860 there were 30 public schools in the Nation.“An editorial in the Cherokee Advocate on March 7, 1874, stated, ‘we now have 67 common schools at an average expense of $400 each and with a total school population of 1,800 out of perhaps 3,600 school-age children,” Chase said.She said the Cherokee Advocate editor believed the cost needed to be re-evaluated because the average attendance at each school was 15 students and five students at the 20 schools in the full-blood areas.“At any rate, even with the problems at hand, the schools flourished, and out of the public school system, and that included the missionary schools, (Cherokee Nation) Male and Female Seminaries, came future citizens and leaders of the Cherokee Nation,” she said. “This was due to the vision of Chief John Ross and other leaders who saw the need for the education of the Cherokee people, so that they would be able to take their place in the world.”Along with being a member of the Goingsnake District Heritage Association, Chase is a member of the Oklahoma chapter of the Trail of Tears Association and the Tulsa Cherokee Community Organization.She has been researching Cherokee historical and family history records for nearly 35 years, has published 18 books of Cherokee claims and rolls and was editor of the “Cherokee Tracer” for 15 years.The Goingsnake District Heritage Association exists for the purpose of researching, preserving and disseminating knowledge of Cherokee history, culture and lineage, for the old Going Snake District (which includes most of Adair County) as well the Cherokee Nation.