Celebrating Native American Heritage Month: Sam Sixkiller, Cherokee Deputy US Marshal, Oklahoma territory

Samuel Sixkiller, born in 1842 in the Cherokee Nation, which is now Adair County in Oklahoma, was the first Captain of the United States Indian Police in Muskogee.  He supported the Confederacy in the Civil War and became a private in the 1st Cherokee Cavalry.  At 19, he switched sides and fought for the Union with his father, 1st Lt. Red Bird Sixkiller.

In 1875, he was appointed to High Sheriff of the Cherokee Nation and Warden of the National Penitentiary.  The position gave him authority of the Cherokee Nation and he became a Deputy US Marshall.  In 1880, he became the first Captain of the United States Indian Police in Muskogee.  

In 1886, he was murdered by two men on Christmas Eve.  In March 1887, President Grover Cleveland signed a bill that made assault against an Indian policeman a federal offense. 

Celebrating Black History Month: O.W Gurley, Founding Father Of Black Wall Street

O. W. Gurley, a wealthy black landowner from Arkansas, traveled to Indian Territory to participate in the 1889 Oklahoma Land Run.  He had just resigned from a presidential appointment under President Grover Cleveland.

In 1906, he moved to Tulsa and purchased 40 acres of land which he declared was only to be sold to other black people.  He opened a rooming hosue on Greenwood Avenue, and it became very popular for blacks fleeing oppression in Mississippi.  In Gurley's building they could escape the racial persecution.

Gurley, J. B. Stradford, and several other prominent black people pooled resources and created a self-sustaining exclusive black enclave, which later became known as "Black Wall Street".  Unfortunately, Gurley lost everything in the Tulsa Race Riots in 1921. 

His fate is not know because he vanishes from history after that.