American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Founded in 1851 at Park Hill, in the Cherokee Nation, the Cherokee Female Seminary and its counterpart, the Cherokee Male Seminary, reflected the tribe’s commitment to formal education and acculturation. The female school originally was staffed by graduates of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, and the educational philosophy of the seminary reflected the influence of that New England institution. Students were instructed in a broad spectrum of nineteenth-century curriculae and imbued with ethical and moral values championed by their teachers. Until Oklahoma achieved statehood in 1907, the Cherokee National Council consistently provided tribal money for the schools’ improvement. Young Cherokee women who graduated from the school later became doctors, ranchers, and politicians. One-third of the 160 graduates became educators-many of whom returned to the seminary to teach. From the time of its opening, the seminary was deemed an academic and cultural success by parents, Indian agents, and school board officials who visited the school’s classes and social events. Viewing the meticulously dressed, articulate, and well-mannered young “Cherokee Rosebuds, ” visitors were duly impressed by their conscientious efforts to appear neat and refined. Each day the students fastidiously cleaned (upon penalty of demerits) the areas most often open to inspection-the kitchen, parlor, and classrooms, Teachers wearing white gloves also examined the private rooms of the students. The scrubbed floors, polished banisters, manicured lawns, and formal flower beds all reflected the institution‘s dedication to order and cleanliness, primary virtues of late nineteenth-century American life.