Shades of Brown, and of Native America, in Tulsa....

In recent weeks I have had a rare and fleeting sense of Native Americans that goes beyond the generic, the quick nod to the landmark event - e.g., the Trail of Tears - and, on a recent visit to Tulsa, Oklahoma - to the honors I have seen of Native America such as its state's license plate, when I have wondered how deep and sincere they are.

With two encounters I was privileged to have in a local coffeehouse - Shades of Brown - seen here in the Brookside neighborhood....

I now see more of how those celebrations can have meaning, partly as, while I have often spoken "Indian" - from the "Cuyahoga" River in my native Northeastern Ohio to a "Wawa" convenience store in my long-time hometown of Philadelphia - I have almost never met an "Indian", at least that I have known as such.

In the fashionable section of Brookside, part of a very red state, I was not exactly thinking outside the Anglo-American mold, or conscious of multiculturalism, at times, while the relative diversity of Shades of Brown, with a crowd that in part was gay as well as straight, black as well as white, etc., helped to pave the way for a mix I do not meet very much - Oklahoma's theme of mixed-blood among at least some of its "White" and "Native American" residents.

On Saturday, March 5, I was working on my laptop near the front door of "Shades..." when I met Margaret Swimmer as she waited for her husband Ross, and started to tell her about my visit being largely to see Tulsa's Art Deco and other sights. While I am often a "buildings" person, meeting people is very much where it's at for me, and I was privileged to meet Ross Swimmer, seen here....

and learn, if more so since our brief talk, that he has not been just another Oklahoma citizen, or one of perhaps many Oklahomans who have lived in both white and native worlds, but was the head of the "BIA" (the Federal Bureau of Indian Affairs) from 1985-89, and prior to that, the Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1975-85, centered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, about 60 miles east of Tulsa, where he was succeeded as chief by the memorably-named Wilma Mankiller.

Mr. Swimmer volunteered some basic information on Indian land rights including aspects of the "Indian Allotment" which started in large part as an agreement that Natives would be allowed to own parcels of land in the early 1900's if they did not contest the U.S. takeover of their ancestral lands in general. Over time, he explained that management of these "portionings" (my word) descended into a nightmare, logistically, legally and otherwise, with original lands so extremely subdivided that it was costing much more than it was worth to oversee transfers, etc.

He presented the scenario that "around 1900 say, one Native American might get 160 acres, but over time, 2000 people might inherit the land, so one of the owners might get 5 cents, or a penny [in a land transfer]" - and even that penny might at times represent a rounding-up of the value of an individual's land. Swimmer, a long-time lawyer, noted that "we had to probate estates where the total value was $5000", as an average cost.

I also asked him about what I thought was a remarkable statistic I had read before coming to Tulsa, that 6% of Tulsa County (which includes the city) was Native American, which seemed like a lot to me compared to my guess as to East Coast demographics. He suggested that that total group of residents would not be based on a "blood quantum", i.e., individuals having a high percentage of Cherokee (biology, basically), but on whether or not one has officially been on the "Dawes Rolls" of recognized members of the Cherokee nation as of 1906, when this epochal list, at least for Oklahoma, was closed shortly before statehood. He said that you could be 1/4000 Cherokee at this point and still be on the list.

The next day, at the same table at "Shades", I met another enrolled member of the nation, Fred Kirk....

and was grateful to receive his insights into having an Indian background.

As he became acquainted with other people of Cherokee background when he was a boy, he observed that "[t]hey were darker-skinned and looked Indian", with his being told he was Cherokee but his sensing that as "I looked in the mirror [I] couldn't see that aspect".

Still, as he "grew up, you begin to understand that we mixed a lot over the history, so now, when I go to any Indian-related Cherokee organization or meetings, events and stuff, and you look around them, most of the people look more like me than (stereotypically Indian)".

Fred said he is 1/8 Cherokee and that his grandfather on his father's side, Albert Kirk, was half-Indian.

Showing me his Cherokee identification card, with excerpts seen here....

he noted it is a more "upscale" version of two paper cards which used to identify your tribal enrollment. When he went to Tahlequah to obtain his I.D. card, "they had the Dawes Roll there and he thought 'I gotta see my grandfather's name'". [Footnote 1 if interested in the Cherokee-language heading on the top of the card's front side.]

I am glad that he did find his name, and thankful to both of these Tulsans for their time and sharing, with hopes that I return again to Native America, in reality as well as in learning.

Shades of Brown (near the center of this view), from S. Peoria Avenue & E. 33rd St., Mon., March 7, 2016

Footnote

1. The first line at the top of the front side of Fred Kirk's card means "Cherokee Nation", as per an e-mail from him on March 15 regarding a note he received from what appears to be a Communications Department for the Nation; a staffer in any event informed him that, in reference to the characters at the top, "The syllabary is tsalagi(hi) ahyeli, meaning Cherokee Nation".


Sources consulted

Dawes Rolls - http://www.okhistory.org/research/dawes 
and 
http://www.archives.gov/research/native-americans/dawes/dawes-how-to.pdf

Native American land ownership - reform of record-keeping - See https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/migrated/ost/press_room/upload/2007-02-26FederalTimesInterview-RossSwimmer.pdf, including a passage which confirms one of Mr. Swimmer's observations to me that, in reference to an office set up in Lenexa, Kansas that...."[d]ue to a law that divides land rights among descendants of beneficiaries, the office grapples with the proliferation of tiny, nearly worthless land shares that must be tracked despite costing far more to administer than they will ever pay out".

Mr. Swimmer told me that he was a special federal trustee to oversee the "Indian allotment" for eight years starting in 2001.

Native American population - Tulsa County - While I have not retrieved the statistic I saw before my Tulsa trip, here is a more recent one from 2015, also of 6%, towards the upper right at: http://okpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/Tulsa-2015.pdf?997616.


Oklahoma statehood -  https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/oklahoma/ 
and
http://www.okterritorialmuseum.org/STATEHOOD.html, with the latter including a picture of a flag presented to the state in 1908 by the City of Philadelphia.



Swimmer, Ross - http://www.cherokee.org/AboutTheNation/History/Chiefs/RossSwimmer.aspx 
and 
http://www.allgov.com/officials/swimmer-ross?officialid=28532 regarding his serving as the Cherokee chief.

In reference to his heading the BIA, see...
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2003/11/10/interview-ross-swimmer-89563
and
https://books.google.com/books?id=lT2AU3ZnK2wC&pg=PA257&lpg=PA257&dq=Ross+Swimmer+head+of+BIA&source=bl&ots=P2-lYhKGLD&sig=rB3R_S5qU8XNM46onw1H3XNXkTc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjywuz66rfLAhXB4SYKHSn0DY4Q6AEINzAE#v=onepage&q=Ross%20Swimmer%20head%20of%20BIA&f=false,
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Indian_Affairs#Heads_of_the_Bureau_of_Indian_Affairs



Tahlequah, Oklahoma - See http://www.cherokee.org/OurGovernment.aspx, which notes the Cherokee capital as being near Tahlequah.

Tulsa - a new place

[Most of the following was written on Saturday, March 5, in the "first bloom" of my days here in Tulsa....While I am finally eager to post it, I hope to modify it slightly in the next few days....JS, 3/8/16]

I am really lucky to be on my first visit to a place that in a way has been for me like a "world city" - e.g., Paris - would be for many other people. I assume that is partly because I originally come from a "second-tier" metropolitan region so that I am more likely to notice the assets of such an urban area.

For Tulsa, the key asset in terms of the urban and architectural heritage which I often pursue is arguably its Art Deco, and for years I have been hearing that it is a great place, at least in clusters and in particular landmarks, for that genre.

On a broader and deeper note, I was thinking of titling this article in part "New Simplicities and New Complexities", as Tulsa and so much of "fly-over country" is seen as simple, unsophisticated and uninvolved, and indeed, in its auto-dominance to a great extent, in the simplicity of all of the architecture outside of the Art Deco et al:), e.g., the place that people fly into after they have (flown over!)....

waiting area in the lobby of "TUL" (Tulsa Airport, March 4, 2016)

...it is simple as is so much of my native region of Greater Cleveland, as compared with larger chunks of the cities I have become more used to like my long-time home of Philadelphia, like San Francisco (after my visit there recently), and so on.

The complexities are those, to my mind, of any big city, not just an "old one" like Philadelphia, Boston, etc. including Tulsa's world-class elements, its unexpected turns and its cultural subtleties and also what challenges one's own values and comfort zones, and I hope to introduce these elements here, while I may note one of the "subtleties" of regional culture in a second blog.

As to the world-class, it seems that the Gilcrease Museum might be the main example, as it is heralded in many places for its American and Native American heritage in the arts and humanities, and here (at the base of this next picture) in my "Brookside" neighborhood bed-and-breakfast literature....

I hope to see if it is indeed at the top of its cultural game, given in part that I have moved from "Philadelphocentrism" to "Tulcentrism", but I have heard references to its collection, especially its Frederick Remington paintings, for many years now.

In architecture, the holy of holies is the Boston Avenue Methodist Church, one of those rare structures which is in the more protected "preservation" category of "National Historic Landmarks" and what first suggested a visit to Tulsa for me in the early 1980's.

This image of its 258-foot high tower, from my cab ride into town yesterday, is so bad and bleak it is good, as it is guaranteed to not give away the exuberance and glory of this edifice, where I may be attending church tomorrow morning.....

tower of the Boston Ave. Methodist Church (looking west from near 13th and Peoria)

With no unexpected turns on that cab ride, the main one so far - had I not known about it before my trip - would have been that this very inland city seems to have developed a port for not just truck but river traffic as well, in the nearby town of Catoosa, as heralded in an ad at the airport seen when I came in....

Elsewhere, and much closer to where I am sitting in the only bed-and-breakfast in Tulsa City (part of Tulsa County), my prior "Tulsalogy" discovered the expected and sometimes open turns of Tulsa's tunnel system, which I hope to see and share in the next few days, and which was happily shared by a lady I met at the airport, proud of the city she has lived in "on and off" since 1963.

She recounted what I had begun to read, that in the 1920's, with the fears engendered by Prohibition-era violence and the prominence and potential target of vast new wealth in America, Tulsa oil barons - and perhaps most famously Waite Phillips - began to build tunnels under downtown Tulsa office buildings, such as his connection between his "Philtower" and "Philcade" buildings.

She noted that very recent interest in the tunnels, some of which are fairly accessible during the week,  led to 1300 people expressing interest in a tour of them when event planners expected 3-400 responses, and organizers cutting off the list of participants at around 900.

Deeper than the tunnels, and more challenging to a lover of renewables, is how the beauties of this city, of San Antonio (in reference partly to my blog of a visit there over a year ago), and so many places in Oklahoma, Texas and elsewhere) were built by the oil that is still a duke if not the king in this region and many others. That local hero is widely promoted - literally - in a 1966 mural once owned by the Smithsonian near the main entrance to the airport, titled "The Panorama of Petroleum", seen here aside from the glowing light coming from the outside yesterday....

There is no doubt that this mural is different to some extent from the ones that I recently celebrated at San Francisco's Coit Tower - with their clearly honoring the "worker" and this one honoring men who reached the top of the oil industry both here and nationally, while doing so as it portrays them in earlier roles on their way to top positions....

This section, near the lower left side of the 56 by 13 foot mural, is "keyed" just below as with at least three other sections, so that one can see, starting at the left, two of the main geologists for the Pan-American Petroleum Company - Harold Morley and Lewis Mossburg....

Elsewhere in this proud portrayal you have the skyline of Tulsa 50 years ago, in the rear center just below (and in the upper right portion of the giant painting)....

reinforced and modified here in a 1979 view within my B & B bedroom....

...and as seen yesterday in one of my first views of the real thing, which, like so many cities, has - respectfully speaking - seen the less-innovative presences of the international style and urban renewal, but also maintains beauties such as the 320 South Boston Building, originally opened as the offices of the National Bank of Tulsa in the late 1920's and still rising with its beautifully slender tip, which should be obvious below....

For now, I'll just give a brief taste of a few other sites from my first 24 hours or so here....

For starters - and enders right now....

I have begun to hang out in the Brookside neighborhood, a small part of whose attractive Peoria Avenue core is below, in what appears to be a former movie theater....

and businesses including the eatery "Brookside by Day" at the left just below, where I came into a happily crowded gathering of families, couples and others this morning for breakfast, just inside this view of its patio to the left side in this stretch....

I also give thanks for what will hopefully be a non-daily ride, as opposed to daily bread, and the vehicle that got me to Brookside from the airport in this sometimes public bus-challenged city....

AND its driver, the interesting but (hidden:)) Eni. This man was a Nigerian native (of the Ibo tribe), who, learning of my interest in a "heritage pilgrimage" here, spoke of the Boston Avenue Methodist Church as designed by "Floyd Wright" (a wrong name for a "Wright" architect who I had not known of as the designer of "Boston Avenue...") but with Frank Lloyd Wright being a visitor to this region for sure, and designer of at least one existing structure in this city. 

Eni also responded that he has been in Tulsa for 25 years, if I understood correctly, and 10 years in Washington before that.  He commented that "Tulsa is 100 times better than DC" and when I asked why he felt that way, he said it is a "fair city", further explaining that that was the case because "it is an easy city to be in without too much hassle" and capping that "fair city" label with the statement that Shakespeare uses the term, perhaps in "Othello", to mean the same basic thing.

...........

Writing this last segment in my fourth full day in Tulsa, I can say that my main accommodation so far, noted above, and now fondly remembered as I have moved to a new place, was itself easy to be in. It is known as the "Mackintosh Inn" and is in part a loving memorial to the one-time pet, now in heaven I assume, of the B & B's owners, Ken and Judy Bailey (with my hoping to add a photo of them here shortly).

Their late dog was a Scottish terrier, with members of his "clan" pictured here on the east wall of my room at the "Inn", along with that Deco-famous Boston Avenue Methodist tower near the upper left....

Had Ken and Judy's late pet been just a matter of canine affection, I would not be quite as into this matter, but "C.R. Mackintosh Buster Bailey" (his official name) was an homage to what happens to be a mutual interest of Judy and me - the great Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928), famous somewhat like Frank Lloyd Wright for his designs not just of buildings but of elements within them. I am more into the urban history angle on Mackintosh's city of Glasgow, and Judy is passionate about Mackintosh partly because she has been a long-time designer of jackets, greeting cards etc.

I am glad that the three of us had at least brief discussions, once in their beautiful outdoor seating spot, seen closer to the lower right here....

...and I hope to lift another wine glass with them someday...

I'll end with two sites which are likely to mark the beginning AND end of Tulsa iconography during my trip - a collage at the airport saturated with the popular culture of Tulsa, including places along its share of the great automotive way of "Route 66"....

and a 1912 "pusher plane" once owned by Tulsa-area flight pioneer Billy Parker, who may have had the 44th license to fly in the U.S. - with an undated article I received at "TUL" at least noting that he had "license 44"....

Sources

This is meant to be the briefest introduction to a few sources I have consulted here.....


Boston Avenue Methodist Church - http://tulsapreservationcommission.org/buildings/boston-avenue-methodist-church/ and an article on National Historic Landmarks in Oklahoma, at http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=NA010.

"Fair city" as a Shakespeare reference - A quick google here did not reveal if indeed this phrase is used in "Othello" but led to an interesting reference to Venice as a "fair city" according to Shakespeare scholars, regarding a study titled "Cosmopolitanism and the Literary Imagination" at https://books.google.com/books?id=4zkTBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT36&lpg=PT36&dq=fair+city+Shakespeare+Othello&source=bl&ots=QCDtbRMPCD&sig=HNqwRFJq8k2G9RiQ9k86PD62EIQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEiPnP06rLAhVnroMKHVbYAFQQ6AEIMTAD#v=onepage&q=fair%20city%20Shakespeare%20Othello&f=false.

Mackintosh, Charles Rennie (1868-1928) - http://www.scotcities.com/mackintosh/ and http://www.dwr.com/category/designers/m-p/charles-rennie-mackintosh.do.

"Pusher planes" - Beyond my pay (and time) grade, but the article here at least suggests that this label refers to planes whose engines are so mounted and operational that they push the plane forward even though "Jet engines are by their very nature push-engines" as per http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/3306/why-are-push-propellers-so-rare-yet-they-are-still-around].

320 South Boston Building - http://www.emporis.com/buildings/122915/320-south-boston-building-tulsa-ok-usa and http://skyscrapercenter.com/building/320-south-boston-building/12668. My brief look-up here has suggested the completion of the tower in either 1928 or 1929.

Tulsa downtown tunnels - http://livingarts.org/short-history-underground-tulsa-tunnel-system-written-urbane-chaos.

Waite Phillips - http://www.tulsapeople.com/Tulsa-People/November-2013/The-legacy-of-Waite-Phillips/

I plan to visit Phillips' one-time mansion, which has had a long-time role as a Tulsa art museum. [See https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Philbrook.jpg for that glory! - or google "Philbrook Museum".]