I
CHEROKEE
OFFICIAL PAPER OF CITY AND COUNTY
Oklahoma Historical Soelt't
DEMOCRAT
PUBLISHED BY THE ARROW PUBLISHING CO.
Successor to The Tahlequah Arrow and Herald
TAHLEQUAH, OKLA., THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1914.
TWENTY-NINTH YEAR-NUMBER 13
COLUMN TO MISS WILSON
WAS FORMALLY DEDICATED
(From Saturday's Daily Arrow)
State officials who were expected
to be in attendance at the meeting .
of the Commercial club Thursday, ]
but through missing railroad con- ]
nections at Muskogee failed to be j
present, arrived yesterday to be in
attendance at the dedication of the
column from the ruins of the old
Cherokee Female Seminary that had
been removed and placed on the
campus of the Northeastern State
Normal to the memory of Miss
Florence Wilson, for twenty-six
years superintendent of the Chero-
kee National Female Seminary.
The Institution, practically given to
Oklahoma as a heritage between
their tribal school system and the
system of Oklahoma jtate normals,
it having been the outcome of the
Cherokee system of education. Up-
on the arrival of the eastbound
Frisco train about the noon hour
the state visitors were taken to the
Domestic Science department of the
N. E. S. N., where they, in company
with President Cable, the congress-
man-elect, VS. W. Hastjngs, liepre-
who began to spread for this benefit
of those there assembled, and in
memory of Miss Florence Wilson,
one of the most pleasing mental
feasts that is apt to occur to any of
those present in a lifetime. Mrs.
Fite, before entering upon her part
of the program said she desired to
read to the assemblage the follow-
ing phone message she had just re-
ceived, form Dr. Belle Cobb of Wag-
oner, who was an alumnae of the
Cherokee National Female Seminary
of 1878.
"Being the oldest living alurunae
of the seminary since the Civil War,
I want to send my regrets ior not
being present at this dedication and
want to add a word of appreciation
of Miss Wilson's worth and her in-
fluence over the woman'hood of the
present generation of Cherokee wo-
men. Being intimately connected
with her for five years as pupil and
teacher 1 do not remember that she
was ever absent front the school
room a single day in that time. She
was always there. Blessed with a
fine physical makeup and never fail-
sentative Houston B. Teeliee, Judge
J. D. Cox, Representative-elect A. S.
Wyly, Superintendent of Indian
Schools, It. W. Foster, president of
the Commercial club, and liev. Geo.
S. Sutton, enjoyed a bountfiul
turkey dinner prepared by M'.ss
Wirfs. Two o'clock found an Arrow
representative at the door of the
N. E. S. N. chapel, where but for
the courtesy of a member of the
faculty, he would likely have en-
joyed standing room at one of the
most interesting dedictation services
It has ever been his privilege to at-
tend. The time set for convening was
2:30 o'clock and when ihat time ar-
rived it was clearly demonstrated
that for the uses to which it ia put
the chapel is entirely inadequate and
an auditorium is a crying necessity
for that educational institution.
As a prelude to the opening of
the services, the N. E. S. N. orches-
tra appeared upon the platform and
under the direction of Miss Eula
Smith, of the department of music,
rendered a slow, sweet dirge-like
number in a manner that held the
audience in a state of perfect quiet
and attention during the rendition.
President liable, as master of
ceremony, called upon Rev. Joe
Thompson for an invocation, after
which he introduced Robert Sand-
ers, a student of the N. E. S. N.,
who gave quite a history of the
Cherokees and their progress along
educational lines, and was followed
by the Northeastern Glee Club, when
one of the oldest students of the
old Female Seminary, a grand-
niece of the great Sequoyah and
at present president of the Cherokee
National Alumnae, Mrs. R. L. Fite,
irg good health, she was always
well and ready for duty. A teacher
most faithful to her duty, most
mindful of the welfare of her pupils,
most tactful in the management, of
them, most solicitous after their
future standing and wellbelng, the
memory of Miss Florence Wilson
will ever live in the hearts of the
women of the Cherokee Nation.
BELLE COBB.'
After the message had been heard
and heartily enchored, Mrs. Fite in
her easy manner began a remin-
iscent talk on the history of the
Cherokees, their schools and the
teacher in whose honor the meeting
was held, as follows:
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentle-
men: As I listened to Mr. Sanders
tell you the purpose of this meeting
a feeling of pride, mingled with
something immeasurably sweet and
sad filled my heart. With a feeling
of pride 1 can call the predecessor of
this school my Alma Mater, with
joyful pride I can claim the woman
to whom you are paying homage to-
day as my teacher and as my per-
sonal friend. There is a sweet sad-
ness in the reflection that I repre-
sent a past generation, a gen-
eration though past according
to its conditions was not less
glorious in its achievements than
the one in which you are living to-
day. From one point of view there
is a sweet bitterness in this occas-
ion. It is like opening the tomb of
the past and looking upon dead
faces, gazing upon past customs that
have crumbled away and reviewing
buried memories.
In 1875 Miss Florence Wilson,
who lived near Evansville, Ark., and
■ who had become acquainted with and
| greatly attached to the Cherokees
living in that locality and the peo- I
! pie here at Tahlequah where she j
' had taught the public school, v. us
appointed by the Cherokee Board of
i Education, principal of the Cherokee
National Female Seminary, located
then at the beautiful spot near Park
Hill. On Easter Sunday, April 10,
1887, as the school was in a most
prosperous condtion that dear old
house was burned. Miss Wilson was
there. On May 28th, 1888, out
there on the southeast corner, the
corner stone of this building was
laid. Miss Wilson was here. How
well do I remember that auspicious
day, it was a bright and beautiful
dav, all nature seemingly smiled up-
on the efforts and the aspirations of
our people. How bright and beauti-
ful were the shimmering waters of
yonder dear old spring, how green
and beautiful was each leaf and
flower and rich in hopes and prom-
ises were every surrounding. It
was a regular picnic day, the Chero-
kees came from all over the nation.
That matchless statesman, Dennis
W. Bushyhead, was the Cherokee
chief. That learned orator, that
Princeton graduate, William P.
Ross, delivered the address of the
day.
It was under just such conditions
that we witnessed the laying of the
corner stone of this beautiful build-
ing, durable in structure, chaste in
finish, a fitting omen of the future,
or what the future has proven to be
in its successor. The building was
completed and opened for admission
to students on the first Monday in
September, 1889, Miss Wilson was
the principal again. She had spent
the interval between the burning of
the old seminary and the completion
of the new teaching again In the
public school in town. She had
watched the p: - :ess of the building
from the-first -«'Oke of the shovel
until the tap on the last tower was
completed. She came in advance of
the opening, assisting in the ar-
rangement of the furniture and the
enrollment of the pupils. With that
masterful stroke of hers she rang
the call bell from this very rostrum
something over twenty-five years
ago. Twelve long years she stayed
here. These walls, these rooms,
these hulls, these window.s. tills
chapel, this rostrum, have all be-
come hallowed by her prosence. In
1901 she left here. This school was
always uppermost in her heart and
just a few days after the door of
the Cherokee National Female Semi-
nary was closed forever and just a
few days before that little gem
among nations that country of her
adoption with which she had linked
her destiny was swallowed up tn
this great cosmopolitan state of Ok-
lahoma, she passed away, dying at
Little Rock on August I3th, 1909
And now since you out of ttie great
ness and fullness of your hearts
have done this beautiful thing of
reproducing one of the columns of
the old Park Hill Seminary, placing
it in your campus, dedicating it to
her memory you could not have done
a thing more fitting. It is only a
column of brick and mortar, it
would not attract the attention of
the ordinary passerby but all the
grand sarcophagi or marble monu-
ments or granite shafts builded by
the money of Rockefeller could not
be hailed by the Cherokee people
with more appreciation. You have
gone, as it were, and gathered from
out the garden of their first love a
hand full of ashes of the history of
their beautiful past and planted it
in their second. In a way each brick
represents the love, the devotion,
the care, the efforts, the heroism,
the aspirations and the achieve-
ments of a woman whose noble and
splendid personality permeated the
woof and warp of the fabric of the
existence of Cherokee womanhood.
You have tied together a broken
cord that was binding the past with
the future, you have drawn us closer
together. It will make you feel that
you are a part of that past. It will
make us feel that, the past is not lost
but is reconstructed in this great new
modern school with its most ex-
Cf^lent presdent, with corps of splen-
did teachers, maintained by this
great new state for the advancement
and education of our children and
may we of that beautiful past and
you of this wonderful present go
hand in hand to a glorious future.
In the name of the Alumnae As-
sociation of the Old Cherokee Fe-
male Seminary who represent the
motherhood of the Cherokee people
and in the name of every man,
woman andi child who have come
within the shadow of her influence
I want to thank you and I am sure
that if there is such a thing as in-
dividual immortality beyond the
grave ahd those great white celest-
ial wings of Miss Wilson are fanning
our cheeks today, her great heart
is rejoicing and she will carry the
message of this beautiful deed that
you have done to God on high.
I have been askedi for a short
PRESIDENT WILSON DELIVERS HIS,
ANNUAL ADDRESS TO CONGRESS
paper on Miss Wilson as "A Woman
and a Friend." I only wish 1 had
a fairy god-mother who with one
touca of her wand could put luto my
mouth a silver tongue that I might
tell you of the love we have for the
memory of this woman, not only as
a teacher, but as a woman and a
friend.
In advance I want to ask your
pardon for using some personal
things, while they are very
dear and sacred personal possess-
ions of mine and I am using
them on account of the sacredness
of this occasijn, there are hundreds
of women throughout the old Chero-
kee country who nave similar
reminiscense. I want to tell you
about the tirst time that I remem-
ber of ever seeing Miss Wilson. It
made an indelible impression upon
my mind. It was in the summer
of 1876, the year of the great cen-
tenial exposition, I was a mere
child then, at the impressionable age
of the early teens. She with one of
her assistant teachers were starting
to that far away country to visit the
exposition. She had come to tell
my sister goodbye. She was sitting
in that great wonderful old stage-
coach that used to make daily trips
to Ft. Gibson, where the passengers
were transferred across the river to
Muskogee, that little station on the
M. K. & T. Railroad, where they
boarded the (rain going either north
or south. Philadelphia, at that
time, in my estimation was very fat-
away from Tahlequah. In my child-1
ish way I had studied the United
States history, I had learned some-
thing of that great struggle, I had
heard about the cracked bell and
that great city hall and my young
sympathetic heart had gone out to
those poor soldiers who had left
their blood stained tracks on the
snow at Valley Forge but to see
someone with my own eyes who
would soon be mingling with the
throngs of people in honor of those
historical events was certainly very
fascinating, and as I gazed with
wonder and admiration at that tall,
straight, broadshouldered, hand-
some, learned woman who was the
head of a school where I hoped to
soon go I should have no matter how
much I have failed to succeed,
hitched my chariot to a very high
star.
Miss Florence Wilson was not
what you would call the popular
type of the modern woman. She was
no brilliant club woman but with an
indomitable courage and a great
executive ability she could have
commanded the combined clubs of
the world. She was no suffragette,
while she kept informed on all
questions of the day she believed
that woman's great political rights
began and ended in the home. She
was no sentimentalist, but with a
broad and liberal view of conditions
she accepted them as they came.
She made no great outward show of
religion, but she believed in God as
the Creator and' Supreme Ruler and
Law Giver of the universe. She
loved the Bible and was an exponent,
of its great principles. She was a
member of the Cumberland Presby-
terian Church and by the example
and precepts of her life she, taught j
a religion for every day in the week.
She was no society woman. You
would seldom find her type in the
ball room but should you have
found her there you would have
found her deporting herself as be-
coming a general. She knew no
more about the ace of spades than
the modern woman knows how to
solve a problem in Euclid. She spent
her time in moulding, building up
and immortalizing the character that
you are honoring today. She was
not a woman of many words but
what flowed from her mouth were
expressions of the great truth, de-
termination and light living that
were crowned in her hearth. You
could not say that she was over
charitable, you did not know. She
did not let her left hand know what
her right hand was doing but if the
burned books of the old firm of
John W. Stapler & Son could be
resurrected today you would find
that she paid for item after item
that went to relieve the poor. In
her association with the Cherokees
or in the management of their school
she had no favorites, however if
there was one class that excited her
sympathy more it was the fullbloods
for whom she always exhibited the
kindest regards. The poor old full-
blood woman with her basket on her
arm was just as welcome in these
halls and at this door as the most
richly dressed lesser blood, and by
(Continued on page 7)
GATES OF TRADE
All Important Problem Which
Now Confronts Congress,
Says President.
SHIPS OUR GREATEST NEED
America Fear  No Nation and Is Am-
ply Able to Defend Itself—Great
Task Ahead In Helping to
Restore Peace—Economy
Is Strongly Urged.
Washington, Dec. 8.—President Wil-
son today delivered his annual address
to congress. Problems brought out by
the great conflict in Europe engaged
the greater part of his attention. The
message follows:
Gentlemen of the Congress:
The session upon which you are now
entering will be the closing session of
the Sixty-third congress, a congress, I
venture to say, which will long be re-
membered for the great body of
thoughtful and constructive work
which it has done, in loya'. response
to the thought and needs of the coun-
try. I should like in this address to re-
view the notable record and try to
make adequate assessment of It; but
no doubt we stand too near the work
that has been done and are ourselves
too much part of It to play the part of
historians toward it. Moreover, our
thoughts are now more of the future
than of the past.
While wo have worked at our tasks
of peace the circumstances of the
whole age have been altered by war.
What we have done for our own land
and our own people we did with the
best that was in us, whether of char-
acter or of intelligence, with sobe*
enthusiasm and a confidence in the
principles upon which we were acting
which sustained us at every step of
the difficult undertaking; but it Is
done. It has passed from our hands.
It is now an established part of the
legislation of the country. Its useful-
ness, its effects, will disclose them-
selves ill experience. What chief!)
strikes us now, as we look about us
during these closing days of a year
which will be forever memorable in
the history of the world, Is that wc
face new tasks, have been facing them
these six months, must face them in
the months to come—face them with-
out partisan feeling, like men who
have forgotten everything but a com-
mon duty and the fact that we are
representatives of a great people
whose thought is not of us but of what
America owes to herself and to all
mankind in such circumstances as
these upon which we look amazed and
anxious.
Europe Will Meed Our Help.
War has interrupted the means of
trade not only but also the processes
of production. In Europe it is destroy-
ing men and resources wholesale and
upon a scale unprecedented and ap-
palling. There is reason to fear that
the time is near, if it be not already
at hand, when several of the coun-
tries of Europe will find it difficult to
do for their people what they have
hitherto been always easily able to do,
many essential and fundamental
things. At any rate they will need our
help and our manifold services as they
have never needed them before; and
we should be ready, more fit and
ready th#n we have ever been.
It is of equal consequence that the
nations whom Europe has usually sup-
plied with innumerable articles of
manufacture and commerce of which
they are in constant need and without
which their economic development
halts and stands still can now get only
a small part of what they formerly im-
ported and eagerly look to us to supply
their all but empty markets. This is
particularly true of our own neighbors,
the states, great and small, of Central
and South America. Their lines of
trade have hitherto run chiefly athwart
the seas, not to our ports, but to the
ports of Great Britain and of the older
(Continued to Page 8.)