Then the federal government dissolved the tribe, and The Advocate wasn't reborn until 1977. Today, it is a monthly publication. The historical crossover of The Advocate and The Tahlequah Daily Press' ancestors is sketchy, and local historians tell different stories. When the Cherokees initially re-established The Advocate in the Tahlequah area in 1844, The Tahlequah Telephone was already being published there. Some say that when The Advocate went out of print from 1851 to 1890, it actually merged with The Telephone .
Historians say the names of papers in the area often changed during a three-week period.
The Advocate generally supported the Cherokee chief's administration editorially, while The Arrow opposed it. During that decade, a particularly heated dispute between the two publications ended in tragedy when the editor of The Arrow-Telephone barged into the office of the competition and shot The Advocate editor . The Tahlequah Arrow eventually became The Republican Star and then The Cherokee County Democrat . In the earlier part of the century, another upstart, The Star , ran for a time, then was absorbed by The Democrat , which was renamed The Cherokee County Democrat-Star . According to official documents, this weekly newspaper claimed ancestry to The Advocate .