John M. Oskison - Unconquerable: The Story of John Ross, Chief of the Cherokees, 1828–1866

Unconquerable helps us understand the career and contributions of a key figure of early twentieth-century Native American literature who is too often dismissed. Larr has become an authority on Oskison and his body of work, and this book further develops resources for those interested in this writerand Cherokee and Oklahoma studies more broadly.

Lindsey Claire Smith, author of Indians, Environment, and Identity on the Borders of American Literature: From Faulkner and Morrison to Walker and Silko

Unconquerable is important on a number of levels. It offers a welcomed Cherokee perspective on John Ross and all of the crises he helped his nation negotiate. The editor makes it even more important by virtue of the introduction, which gives readers an opportunity to engage the politics of history writing.

Daniel M. Cobb, author of Native Activism in Cold War America: The Struggle for Sovereignty

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John M. Oskison

Edited and with an introduction by Lionel Larr

University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln

2022 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska

Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; cover image Glasshouse Images / Alamy Stock Photo.

Frontispieces: Title page of the original manuscript, with a portrait of John Ross (under his name, Oskison had typed, between brackets and quotation marks, the word Tsalagi, which means Cherokee in the Cherokee language, before he crossed it out), and title of the manuscript, handwritten by Oskison.

All rights reserved

The University of Nebraska Press is part of a land-grant institution with campuses and programs on the past, present, and future homelands of the Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe-Missouria, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Kaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Peoples, as well as those of the relocated Ho-Chunk, Sac and Fox, and Iowa Peoples.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Oskison, John M. (John Milton), 18741947, author. | Larr, Lionel, editor.

Title: Unconquerable: the story of John Ross, Chief of the Cherokees, 18281866 / John M. Oskison; edited and with an introduction by Lionel Larr.

Other titles: Story of John Ross, Chief of the Cherokees, 18281866

Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021057676

ISBN 9781496230966 (hardback)

ISBN 9781496231482 (paperback)

ISBN 9781496232120 (epub)

ISBN 9781496232137 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH : Ross, John, 17901866. | Cherokee IndiansKings and rulersBiography | Cherokee IndiansHistory. | BISAC : SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / American / Native American Studies

Classification: LCC E 99. C 5 O 77 2022 | DDC 305.89/97557092 [B]dc23/eng/20220204

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021057676

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Lionel Larr

I am grateful for the help I received from the staff in the Department of Special Collections of McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa, where the original manuscript of Oskisons biography of John Ross is preserved.

I am also grateful to the reviewers who carefully read the manuscript and approved of its publication. Their constructive criticism and encouragements were crucial. I am grateful also to University of Nebraska Press, especially Matt Bokovoy and Heather Stauffer, for their help and their renewed trust.

And I am grateful to my university, Bordeaux Montaigne University, and research department, CLIMAS , for their financial help that made this publication possible. Finally, thank you to LeAnn Stevens-Larr, Rachel Myers Moore, and Aaron Carr for your careful proofreading.

Lionel Larr

John Milton Oskison was born in 1874 in Indian Territory to an English father and a Cherokee mother. and in an autobiography left unfinished when he died in 1947. The latter was published in 2012, along with many of the short stories and essays, in Tales of the Old Indian Territory and Essays on the Indian Condition.

Oskison also wrote three biographies: one of Sam Houston, A Texas Titan, published in 1929, one of Shawnee leader Tecumseh, Tecumseh and His Times, published in 1938, and one of John Ross, which remained unpublished until now. During my research for the publication of Tales of the Old Indian Territory, I came across the typed manuscript, corrected in places by what appeared to be Oskisons handwriting, of Unconquerable: The Story of John Ross, Chief of the Cherokees, 18281866. It was, and still is, carefully preserved at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the Special Collections of McFarlin Library. The manuscript was too long to be included in Tales of the Old Indian Territory. Yet, the theme of the unpublished book fits nicely within Oskisons oeuvre.

Oskison probably wrote Unconquerable between his third novel, Brothers Three (published in 1935), and his biography of Tecumseh (1938). In the University of Oklahoma Press Collection, held by the Western History Collections at the University of Oklahoma, there are documents dated 1933 regarding the rejection of the manuscript by OU Press. An analysis of these documents, and of the reasons why the project was rejected, may be an appropriate starting point to explain todays publication of Oskisons biography of John Ross.

The director of the press at the time was Joseph A. Brandt, who was on friendly terms with Oskison, judging by the tone of their correspondence. The manuscript was reviewed by three readers: eminent Oklahoma historians Grant Foreman and Morris L. Wardell, as well as James Julian Hill, an assistant librarian who would also collaborate with the press on a 1968 edition of Emmet Starrs Old Cherokee Families. Foreman had just published his Indian Removal (1932) and would publish The Five Civilized Tribes in 1934. Wardell would publish A Political History of the Cherokee Nation, 18381907 in 1938.

There seems to have been, among the reviewers, some disagreement about Oskisons manuscript and even some controversy about John Ross, perhaps accounting for some delay in the directors response to the author. In a short letter dated April 7, 1933, found along with all further letters cited pertaining to the Unconquerable manuscript in the Oklahoma University Press Collection, Oskison asked Brandt about the status of his manuscript:

Dear Joe:

The John Ross ms. hasnt been sent to me, has it, and been lost in the mails? It was a long time ago that you said you hoped to get it back to me next week! Im aware that theres nothing pressing, only I should like to know its present statusif you can spare a moment to write.