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University of Oklahoma Graduate College the Struggle for Schools: Education, Race, and Sovereignty in the Creek Nation, 1820-190

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University of Oklahoma Graduate College the Struggle for Schools: Education, Race, and Sovereignty in the Creek Nation, 1820-190 View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by SHAREOK repository UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE THE STRUGGLE FOR SCHOOLS: EDUCATION, RACE, AND SOVEREIGNTY IN THE CREEK NATION, 1820-1907 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By ROWAN FAYE STEINEKER Norman, Oklahoma 2016 THE STRUGGLE FOR SCHOOLS: EDUCATION, RACE, AND SOVEREIGNTY IN THE CREEK NATION, 1820-1907 A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY _______________________ Dr. Fay A. Yarbrough, Chair _______________________ Dr. Joshua Piker _______________________ Dr. Sterling Evans _______________________ Dr. R. Warren Metcalf _______________________ Dr. Amanda Cobb-Greetham © Copyright by ROWAN FAYE STEINEKER 2016 All Rights Reserved. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS On any given day, I have experienced excitement, satisfaction, fear, frustration, and disillusion while researching and writing this dissertation. Day in and day out, however, my most persistent emotion has been gratitude for everyone who assisted me throughout the process. My committee members, or the “dream team” as I prefer to think of them, have been instrumental in helping me conceive, research, write, and revise this project. Fay Yarbrough is an ideal mentor and advisor. I cannot thank her enough for her constant support, thoughtful feedback, and consistent willingness to assist me. Even after she accepted a job at Rice University, she generously volunteered to continue to work with me from a distance. I also deeply appreciate Josh Piker’s mentorship. After Professor Yarbrough’s departure, he kindly agreed to serve as the co-advisor for my dissertation. His thoughtful criticism on many aspects of this project has not only strengthened the final product but also challenged me to think more broadly and deeply as a historian. When he too left University of Oklahoma for William & Mary, he also generously offered to advise me from a distance. Sterling Evans agreed to serve as my advisor remaining at University of Oklahoma. I greatly appreciate his enthusiasm, support, and useful feedback. Warren Metcalf provided me with a strong foundation in both U.S. and Native American history throughout my graduate career. His insightful feedback and suggestions have been invaluable. I am also indebted to Amanda Cobb-Greetham. Her own work inspired this dissertation and she graciously agreed to serve on my committee, despite her numerous other responsibilities. iv Many other individuals have offered their support and suggestions along the way. Cathy Kelly managed to ask a few simple questions that pushed me to rethink the entire dissertation. This in turn, opened up new avenues and opportunities. Bill Reese also lent his expertise for which I am grateful. Chuck Rankin offered words of encouragement, practical advice, and a sense of professional purpose outside of my dissertation. Kathy Brosnan and David Wrobel have also contributed to my intellectual and professional growth. Members of the Newberry Library’s NCAIS summer institute, fellows at the Spencer Fellows Retreat, and several other individuals at conferences asked important questions and offered useful suggestions Several organizations and institutions have provided me with crucial financial assistance throughout the research and writing stages. The generous support of the Hudson Family Fellowship, Anne Hodges & Wayne Morgan Fellowship, Robberson Research Grant, Alice Mary Robertson Award from the Women and Gender Studies Department, and several awards from University of Oklahoma’s History Department funded trips to various archives across the country. The Newberry Consortium for American Indian Studies, Phi Alpha Theta, and the Society of Colonial Dames also generously supported vital stages of research. The National Academy of Education/Spencer Institute Dissertation Fellowship funded a full year of dissertation writing and opened up numerous professional opportunities. I am thankful for the several archivists and staff members who assisted me along the way. Jenn Donner and Melissa Kunz at the University of Tulsa Special Collections and Jackie Reese at University of Oklahoma Western History Collection never hesitated to offer their assistance. Renee Harvey at the Gilcrease Museum welcomed me on v multiple occasions and always managed to make a dull day at the archives enjoyable with her kindness. Archivists at the Oklahoma History Center, Beinecke Library, National Archives, and NARA-Ft. Worth and College Park branches also helped me navigate their collections. Several friends provided encouragement, but perhaps more importantly fun and frivolity, throughout the dissertation process. Matt Pearce, Brandi Hilton-Hagemann, Julie Jonsson, Emily Wardrop, Dustin Mack, and Doug Miller helped create many enjoyable memories. Bryan Rindfleisch was kind enough to offer his friendship my first day as an M.A. student at OU and I have valued it ever since. He and his wife Bridget have been a constant source of kindness, enthusiasm, and generosity. They even provided me with dinner and company every Sunday evening for a year. Thank you to my mom and dad who have always shared unshakeable faith in my abilities and encouraged me to pursue me goals. Finally, thank you to my husband Jeff. He has spent hours reading drafts, discussing my research with intellectual rigor, and softening the blows of criticism. More importantly, he has provided his unwavering friendship and partnership. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………….iv Abstract………………………………………………………………………………..viii Introduction……………………………………………………………………………...1 Chapter 1: Early Creek Education…………………………………….……………..…21 Chapter 2: Experimental Education in the Antebellum Period…………….…………..64 Chapter 3: Educational Politics during Reconstruction……...…………………..……112 Chapter 4: Education, Culture, and Nationhood in the Age of Assimilation………………….....……………………………….……...157 Chapter 5: Schools, Settlers, and Sovereignty in the Allotment Era..……………………………………………………………….....202 Chapter 6: The Undoing of the Creek National Schools …………………………......244 Conclusion: ....................................................................…...........................................294 Bibliography:……………………………………………………………………….....303 vii ABSTRACT This dissertation analyzes the relationship between education and nationhood in the nineteenth-century Creek Nation. Over the course of the century, Creeks adapted schools as part of a larger nation-building effort to shape their own society and defend their sovereignty. Creeks built an extensive primary and secondary school system, financed, legislated, and managed by their national government. Education became an important political institution, produced new cultural expressions, and reinforced Creek identity. While the Creek government designed these national schools to privilege Native children, they simultaneously segregated Afro-Creek students and excluded Euro-American youths. By the 1890s, however, the forces of settler colonialism and white supremacy drastically altered the state of education in Indian Territory. When Oklahoma entered statehood in 1907, the federal government dissolved the Creek national school system, mandating that Native students attend newly formed public schools with white children or federally controlled boarding schools. Meanwhile, Afro-Creeks and African American settlers became subject to Jim Crow segregation. Although federal policies had dissolved the state apparatus that facilitated public schools, education persisted as an important component of Creek life during the twentieth century. viii INTRODUCTION: The pages that follow use education as a frame through which to tell the intersecting stories of two nations - the Creek Nation and the United States. Of course, educated Creeks during the nineteenth century had an intimate understanding of the relationship between these two polities. As Principal Chief Pleasant Porter eloquently explained in an address before the Creek Council in 1899: We have made ourselves an indestructable element in their national history. We have shown that what they believed to be arid and desert places were habitable and capable of sustaining millions of people. We have led the vanguard of civilization in our conflicts with them for tribal existence from ocean to ocean. The race that has rendered this service to the other races of mankind cannot perish utterly. For Porter, the Creek education system gave credence to his belief that indigenous peoples rather than Euro-American colonizers who threatened his nation “led the vanguard of civilization.”1 Porter was born in 1840 in the Creek Nation during a time of great tumult. He entered the world only a few years after the U.S. forcibly removed his people from their homelands in the Southeast to Indian Territory. Still recovering from the devastation of removal, the majority of Creeks remained antagonistic toward Euro-American colonizers, including missionaries who sought to impose “civilization” upon them. Although Creeks rejected interference with their cultural practices and intrusion into their political affairs, many individuals recognized the potential to adapt schools to protect their own interests during Porter’s childhood. During the 1850s, he attended one of the earliest schools, Tullahassee Mission, where he studied English, 1 Message of Porter to the National Council of Creeks, October 2, 1900, box 1, folder 35, Pleasant
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