Volume 9 , Issue 21

August, 1905 - Election Held Among Cherokees

This August, 1905 article appeared in The Oklahoman, dated Aug. 8, 1905, page 2, under the headlines of Election Held Among Cherokees - Senators and Representatives Elected Yesterday In Cherokee Nation - Politics In It -- Vinita, I. T., Aug. 7, 1905 -- "A general Cherokee election was held in all of the districts of the Cherokee Nation today for the purpose of electing eighteen senators and forty representatives for the new national council which is to convene in accordance with the constitution and laws of the Cherokee nation at Tahlequah on the first Monday in November.

Chief Rogers, of the Cherokee Nation, refused to call the election, as the law requires giving the usual forty days' notice, and upon his refusal to call the election, the leaders among the Cherokees held a convention and resolved to hold the election anyway, as the Cherokee law provides that, if no election officers are appointed, the electors may at each precinct select the officers and proceed with the election, and it is under this provision of the law that the people are taking the matter in hand.

Chief Rogers argued that it would be too expensive to hold an election because the newly elected officers could only serve until March 4, 1906, when the tribal government became extinct, but the opposite party takes a different view from the chief, and they argue that the real motvie for not calling the election was that Chief Rogers was afraid that the political party opposed to him would get into power.

Now that he has failed to call the election, the officers elected today will all be opposed to Rogers, and it is very likely that, if they are recognized at the covening of the national council in November, that they will prefer impeachment charges against the chief and attempt to oust him from office and elect a Cherokee chief of their own political faith. At any rate, lively times are expected about legislative headquarters in the Cherokee nation early in November.
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