Cherokee Female Seminary


The Cherokee Female Seminary,, serves as the centerpiece of Northeastern State University, located in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, United States. The building was constructed to replace the original Cherokee Female Seminary that burnt to the ground Easter Sunday 1887. The Cherokee Council chose to rebuild the school on a site north of Tahlequah, near Hendricks Spring. Two years later, on May 7, 1889, the dedication ceremonies were held in honor of the new building. The Female Seminary was owned and operated by the Cherokee Nation until March 6, 1909 when the State Legislature of Oklahoma passed an act providing for the creation and location of Northeastern State Normal School at Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and for the purchase from the Cherokee Tribal Government of the building, land, and equipment of the Cherokee Female Seminary. At the start of the next academic year, on September 14, the first classes were held at the newly created Northeastern State Normal School, now Northeastern State University.
Female seminaries were a larger cultural movement across the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, by which time they had taken over the role played traditionally by the boarding school, which had offered a more family-like atmosphere.

Northeastern State University

Seminary Hall is the oldest building on NSU's campus and in 1994 the building was completely restored. The building now houses classrooms along with academic and faculty offices. It was the first campus classroom building wired for multimedia instruction. At the main entrance of the building is featured three Indian murals painted in the 1930s as a WPA project by Kiowa artists Stephen Mopope and Jack Hokeah and Pawnee artist Albin Jake.