Samuel Houston Mayes

Samuel Houston Mayes (1845-1927) of Scots/English-Cherokee descent, was elected as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), serving from 1895 to 1899. His maternal grandfather belonged to the Deer clan, and his father was allied with members of the Cherokee Treaty Party in the 1830s, such as the Adair men, Elias Boudinot, and Major Ridge. In the late nineteenth century, his older brother Joel B. Mayes was elected to two terms as Chief of the Cherokee.

Born in Indian Territory, Mayes attended a Cherokee school, served with the Confederacy during the American Civil War, and become a cattle rancher before entering politics. He was elected as the United States was dissolving tribal governments and communal lands, and making allotments in severalty to individual households of Native Americans, in an effort to force assimilation, under the Dawes and Curtis acts.

Samuel Houston Mayes was born May 11, 1845, near Stilwell, Oklahoma to Samuel and Nancy (Adair) Mayes. His mother Nancy Adair was of Scots-Cherokee descent, a granddaughter of Ga-hoga, a full-blood Cherokee woman of the Deer clan. Her father was of mixed race and belonged to his mother's clan, as the Cherokee were a matrilineal society, and children took their status from the mother. With his marriage, Samuel Mayes (1803-1858) was taken into the Adair family and the Cherokee community. His son Samuel was named for his father's friend Samuel Houston, a notable acquaintance from Tennessee. The Mayes migrated early to Indian Territory, together with the Adairs, Boudinots, Ridges and others of the Treaty Party.

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