Douglas H. Johnston

In 1882, Johnston was appointed as Superintendent of the Bloomfield Seminary, a missionary boarding school for Chickasaw girls, completing the term of the previous Superintendent, Robert Boyd. It had been modeled on Mt. Holyoke Seminary of Massachusetts.[3] During his tenure, the school prospered. Johnston helped popularize European-American style education among the Chickasaw.[3] [lower-alpha 1]

In 1898 the Chickasaw National Party nominated Johnston as its candidate for governor. He won a decisive victory over Hindman H. Burris, serving as governor of the Chickasaw Nation until 1902. His mansion near the present community of Emet, Oklahoma, served as the "Chickasaw White House." Although his political critics claimed that he lived lavishly at tribal expense and indicted him in 1905, he was acquitted of the charge.[5]

In 1897, during Johnston's term, the Chickasaw Nation ratified the Atoka Agreement, to allow allotment of communal lands to individual households of tribal members under the Dawes Act. This was part of the United States plan to extinguish tribal land claims in order to assimilate Native Americans to the majority model and to enable admission of the territory as a state.

Johnston lobbied Washington politicians into passing the Supplemental Agreement of 1902 to modify this treaty, in order to allow the Chickasaw and Choctaw to review tribal citizenship cases that had been accepted by the Dawes Commission. The Citizenship Court rejected nearly four thousand claims that it found false and saved the two nations about $20 million.[5] When it came time to allot tribal lands to individuals, Johnston had to review and sign each claim. Former Oklahoma Governor William H. Murray in his eulogy of Johnston on June 29, 1939, said:[6]

Every allotment, every town lot, every parcel of land sold or transferred from the Nation from west of Duncan and Chickasha to Arkansas, every foot of land south of the Canadian River bears the name of Douglas H. Johnston as grantor, representing sovereignty of that soil. That, in itself, is a monument.

Johnston was reelected to office in 1904. This was the last election under the traditional Chickasaw Nation government. When the Chickasaw Nation was dissolved in 1906 as a prelude to Oklahoma being admitted as a state, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him as governor of his people. He served in that position until his death in 1939. In 1907, the legislature of the newly created state of Oklahoma tried to nullify a provision of the Atoka Agreement that prohibited taxing for 21 years the lands allotted to Native American heads of household. Johnston led the court fight against the state. The US Supreme Court upheld the provision in 1912.[5]

In 1924, the Johnston administration won permission to sue the Federal government in the United States Court of Claims and recover money that it had obtained illegally from tribal resources.[5]