Chief's House
1.5 mi. NE of Swink, Swink, OKOklahoma's oldest house" still standing is significant not only for its antiquity, but also for the fact it was built by the Federal Government in fulfillment of a solemn treat obligation (itself no mean fort in the early 19th century and occupied for many years by a well known District Chief of the Choctaw Nation.
The 1830 Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Crook, arranging the removal of the Choctaws from Mississippi to what is now Southeastern Oklahoma, provided $10,000 for erection of a council house and home s for each of three district chiefs. This log house near present-day Swink was that built for the Apukshenubbee District chief. Specifications for it were printed in the Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock) in 1836. Contract fulfillment date was Sept. 1, 1837.
Greenwood LeFlore, it might be pointed out, was the district chief who signed the Dancing Rabbit Creek treaty. He chose not to leave Mississippi, however, and sent his cousin, Thomas LeFloro, to serve in his stead. Other chiefs were elected when his term expired. But by then each had his own home and continued to live in it rather than occupy the government-provided house. As result Thomas LeFlore, as one historian has noted, "lived in the house so long that he thought he owned the place."
Certainly he built up the property. In time he had a thousand acres, cared for plantation-style by Negro slaves. Even after he had moved away the place was always known as the "Thousand Acre Farm." During the Civil War it was focal point of pro-Confederate activities. After the war, however, the plantation was broken up into smaller tracts and different families lived in the old house. For a time it was occupied by a Parson Keith," & Methodist missionary who hold church services and performed weddings in the house. When the tribal land was individually allotted under terms of the Dawes Commission, this part of the old "Thousand Acre Farm" passed to the Swink family (for whom the near by community was named). In 1902 it was sold to the Blair family. The present owners bought it in 1956, have granted per perpetual easement to the house itself to the Oklahoma Historical Society
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.