Oklahoma's Cultural Heartland: Tulsa, Cherokee Nation & Five Civilized Tribes

Eastern Oklahoma holds one of the most significant concentrations of Native American cultural heritage in North America, a consequence of the Indian Territory created in the 1830s when five southeastern tribes — Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole — were forcibly removed from their ancestral lands and resettled in what is now Oklahoma. Tulsa anchors the first day with its Art Deco architecture and world-class museum holdings; Tahlequah on day two is the capital of the Cherokee Nation, the largest tribe by enrollment in the country; and Muskogee on day three holds the Five Civilized Tribes Museum on the grounds of the Union Indian Agency, the federal office that administered all five tribes' relations with Washington. This is Oklahoma's most coherent cultural itinerary and one of the most historically important in the American interior.