Family and Nation: Cherokee Orphan Care, 1835–1903

On November 17, 1903, fifteen miles from the nearest railway station and fifty miles northwest of the capital of the Cherokee Nation in Tahlequah, a fire engulfed the Cherokee Orphan Asylum. After the fire the Cherokee Nation relocated the homeless children to the nation's Insane Asylum in Tahlequah, where Sequoyah School stands today. The assumption of orphan care by the nation coincided with the development of political and social institutions in the years after Cherokee removal from the Southeast just as the destruction of the orphanage paralleled the demise of the late-nineteenth-century Cherokee Nation. This article discusses how the orphan asylum demonstrated the nation's ability to transform ancient familial responsibilities into modern social institutions in a way that adhered to Cherokee cultural values while meeting the needs of the modern world. (Contains 121 notes.)