National Register Listing

Cherokee National Jail

a.k.a. Cherokee National Prison

Choctaw St. and Water Ave., Tahlequah, OK

The Cherokee Nation was forcibly removed to Indian Territory from its ancient homeland in the Southeast in the fall and winter of 18381839. This tragic trek to a then virtually unknown wilderness has since come to be known as the "Trail of Tears," justifiably so because roughly one-fourth of those making the journey failed to arrive. The various routes westward were marked by a steady procession of graves of the new-born, the aged, and the diseased.

The tragedy of this forced removal is made even more poignant by the fact that the Cherokee Nation of Indians had, in 1822 -- sixteen years before their Trail of Tears began -- adopted a republican form of government patterned on that of the then relatively new United States of America. Included was a national judicial system, at the head of which stood a National Supreme Court.

The word "civilized" in the so-called Five Civilized Tribes that eventually comprised Indian Territory was not an idle one. Thanks to the genius of Sequoyah, the Tribe by 1828 was publishing a newspaper in two languages - English and Cherokee. It was the only native American Indian tribe with a written language of its own - a language that stands as one of the great literary "inventions" of history.

The Cherokees, then, were not a band of savages being uprooted by a dominant society, but a nation largely of new Christians, ably led by visionary and dedicated leaders, being transplanted in a new and undeveloped homeland. And so it is that one of their first major accomplishments, after arrival in Indian Territory, was the reorganization of a tribal government torn apart by the stresses and strains of forcible removal from an ancient homeland.

Schools were started within months. A restored judicial system was soon to follow. Significantly, the first permanent structure erected at the new capital site was a plain two-story brick building to house the Supreme Court. Before too many years, however, normal life in the Cherokee Nation was again to be disrupted, this time by the Civil War, In this tragic conflict the Cherokee people were bitterly divided into Union and Confederate groups and their government structure was essentially destroyed as a functioning body. Destroyed with it were all of the government buildings in Tahlequah, the national capital, with the sole exception of the Supreme Court Building. (National Register status for it is being sought with a separate nomination. )

For a time following the trauma of the war years law and order in the Cherokee Nation had pretty much broken down, Robbery, assault, and murder became commonplace, Outlaws, Indian and white, roamed the area. Then gradually some semblance of order was at last re-established. The court system began again to function and it soon became obvious that if government under law was to survive, a secure facility was needed to house major offenders prior to trial and, if convicted, to hold them while they served out their sentences.

Thus in 1874 the Cherokee National Prison was added to the growing list of permanent buildings erected to house government functions in the capital, (The handsome red brick Capitol itself dates from 1867. It, too, still stands and is already on the National Register.) A gallows was erected adjacent to the sandstone jail. Both remained in use by the Cherokee Nation until 1904, when the property was sold to Cherokee County. The building still serves as a jail. That it has survived a century of use, in the capacity for which it was erected, is a significant commentary on the quality of workmanship achieved by the Cherokees as they managed their full-fledged nation-within-a-nation.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1974.