The weekly chieftain. [volume] (Vinita, Craig County, Okla.) 1905-1913, 1911-06-09


adequately than is done in most or
phan homes-burned, and though the
structure which had heretofore shelter
ed the insane was fitted up to replace
the orphanage, it never seemed the
same, and because of limited room the
| facilities were limited.
Thus, one by one, our schools of
which we were so justly proud and to
which we pointed as monuments of
our civilization, have gone-the Fire
God is surely appeased since he has
ravenously demanded and swallowed
the last one
The Male Seminary was situated on
an eminence, one mile south of Table
quah, Oklahoma, and was a beautiful
building, surrounded on three sides by
stately colonial pillars-built Of brick
well lighted, ventilated, and heated,
for the most part, by oldfashioned fire.
lplaces.
No one who was at the seminary
when it's walls began to fall can ever
forget the scene. 1t seemed like the
funeral pyre of all our pride of the
past, and our ambition for the future.
Strong men, men whose Alma Mater
it was, wept unrestrainedly, as men
do weep when some great national ca
lamity befalls. One bay-a full-blood
THE tears streaming down his cheeks,
said 1T is all we had-there is not
one thing left us that is really ours"
From the walls of the old Cherokee
National Male Seminary have gone
forth scores of men whose names are
honored not only among their own peo-
pie but in many different states. Her
graduates are filling pupits--they have
entered the medical world-have be-
come lawyers, statesmen, teachers, and
fnanciers. We, as a nation, are proud
of the brilliant career of Hon. r. L.
Owen, United States senator from Ok
lahoma and his connection with this
school, Having graduated in the east,
as did so many Cherokee young men
of that generation, he realized the ne
cessity of higher education for his peo-
pie, and as superintendent Of educa-
ton, he carried out many of his ex-
cellent ideals and succeeded in plac-
ing the seminary on much higher
literary basis than it had hitherto en-
joyed.
Hon. w. w. Hastings, SO well known
in Washington, d. c., because of his
untiring efforts to bring the Cherokees
into their own, during these years of
tribal dissolution, claims the seminary
as his Alma Mater.
Then there is Hon. w. P. Thompson,
one of Oklahoma's more brilliant law
yers; Rt. Rev. H. B. Smith, archdea-
con of the Southern Episcopal diocese
of Oklahoma; Hon. Joel B. Mayes, at
his death chief of the Cherokees; his
brother, Hon. S. H. Mayes, who like
wise was elected chief, and many,
many more, known and loved among
their own people, who shine as stars
of the first magnitude in a galaxy of
brightness and who to man point to
the Male Seminary as a great stepping
istone toward the elusive Goddess Sue
cess.
In the years that are to come we
can no more boast of the good work
being done at the seminary, but its his
tory will be handed down from father
to son, from generation to generation
as long as there is drop of Cherokee
blood in the veins Of the sons of Okla
| homa.
) The Scots, weeping DER the bier Of
their beloved Duncan, said:
HE is gone from. the mountain,
) He is lost to the forest
t Like a summer-dried fountain
: When our need was the sorest."