Cherokee National Female Seminary

The Cherokee Female Seminary was built by the Cherokee Nation in 1889 near Tahlequah, Indian Territory. It replaced their original girls' seminary, the first Cherokee Female Seminary, that had burned down on Easter Sunday two years before. The Seminary was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. The Cherokee Council chose to rebuild the school on a 40-acre (160,000 m2) site north of Tahlequah, Oklahoma near Hendricks Spring. Two years later, on May 7, 1889, the dedication ceremonies were held in honor of the new building. The school was modeled after other female seminaries of the time.The Female Seminary was owned and operated by the Cherokee Nation until March 6, 1909, after Oklahoma had been admitted as a state as in 1907, and tribal land claims were extinguished. At this point, the state converted the seminary into a normal school. The Cherokee Nation ran both a male and female seminary in this territory, showing the importance placed on education within the Nation. Female seminaries were a larger cultural movement across the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, by which time they had taken over the role played traditionally by the boarding school, which had offered a more family-like atmosphere.