First Female Chief of Cherokee Nation Dead at Age 64

By Alicia Cruz
The Black Urban Times

Flags flew at half-staff outside the Cherokee Nation's Headquarters in Talequah, Oklahoma Tuesday after the first woman chief of the Native American Tribe passed away after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Wilma Pearl Mankiller-Soap, served as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, the second-largest U.S. tribe, for ten years. Mankiller's surname is a traditional Cherokee military rank and is Asgaya-dihi in Cherokee, which is alternatively spelled Outacity or Outacite.

Her service to her tribe began in 1983 when she was elected deputy chief of the Nation. Then, in 1985, then Chief of the Nation, Ross Swimmer resigned to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs, paving the way for Mankiller to assume the role of the Nation’s first female principal chief.

She would go on to be freely elected in 1987 and with 83 percent of the vote, Mankiller was re-elected again in 1991. The onset of health problems led Mankiller to pass on seeking re-election in 1995. Mankiller did not remain idle for long. After deciding not to seek re-election, she became an instructor at Dartmouth College.

Mankiller launched precedent making decision during her tenure as chief of the Nation. At the time of her election, the Nation was male-dominated. This did little to discourage Mankiller from making great strides.

Her focus during her term was on the relationship between men and women within the Cherokee Nation community. She fostered the genders working together for the common good of the Nation.

With the help of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Federal Government and the United Keetoowah Band, Mankiller's administration helped others open tribally owned businesses, having running water in the community of Bell, Oklahoma and building a hydroelectric facility. Members opened horticultural operations and plants that landed government defense contracts.

Chief Mankiller with former President, Bill Clinton

Under the U.S. Federal policy of Native American self-determination, Mankiller improved federal-tribal negotiations, which is one of the principal reason the Cherokee Nation has a Government-to-Government relationship with the US Federal Government today.

Another example of the extensive progress Mankiller made during her tenure as chief is evident in the revival of Sequoyah High School in Tahlequah, the founding of the Cherokee Nation Community Development Department and a population increase of Cherokee Nation citizens from 55,000 to 156,000.

While her administration has been credited with improving health care, education, tribal governance her term was not without dissension.

Mankiller established a law limiting tribal membership, which excluded the Freedmen section of Cherokee Indians listed on the Dawes Rolls, thus giving birth to the Cherokee Freedmen controversy. In 2006, the law was ruled unconstitutional by the Cherokee Nation's Judicial Appeals Tribunal, which is now called the Cherokee Supreme Court.

Then strife with the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians (UKB), the other Cherokee tribe headquartered in Tahlequah, began to brew after Mankiller questioned the jurisdiction of the UKB causing their smoke shops to desist.

During her last term in office, allegations of embezzlement led to the filing of a lawsuit by the Cherokee Nation against Chief Mankiller when she was accused of paying out $300,000 to tribal officials and department heads. The case, titled Cherokee Nation v. Mankiller, was vacated by a vote of the tribal council in 1995.

In her younger years, Mankiller's family lived on Charley’s allotment lands of Mankiller Flats near Rocky Mountain, Oklahoma, but in 1942 the U.S. Army acquired approximately 32,000 acres of restricted land held by Cherokee Indians through condemnation, forcing 45 Cherokee families off the land order to expand Camp Gruber. Mankiller's family willingly left the land under the Resettlement Administration or the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Indian Relocation Program. They settled in San Francisco in 1956.

Mankiller, the sixth of eleven children, married in 1963 at age 17 and gave birth to two children, daughters Felicia Olaya, in 1964 and Gina Olaya, in 1966. While attending college at San Francisco State University, this trailblazer became immersed in Native American affairs at San Francisco’s Indian Center. In the late 1960s, Mankiller joined the activist movement and was a driving force in the Occupation of Alcatraz Island in 1969.

After calling Oakland, California home for several years, Mankiller returned to Oklahoma following her 1977 divorce where she took an entry-level job at the Cherokee Nation's community development agency.


Mankiller, who has authored many books, was recognized with several awards throughout her life. In 1987, she was named Ms. Magazine's Woman of the Year; she was the recipient of the Elizabeth Blackwell Award as well as the John W. Gardner Leadership Award. The in 1993, Mankiller was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. The following year, she and late country singer Patsy Cline were inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas.

Her first book, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People, an autobiography, became a national bestseller.

Her successor, Chad Smith, called Mankiller "the iconic leader of the tribe."

"She captured what we firmly believed was true leadership. She believed in our history, our culture. And she understood the position of a woman, and that is to lead her people, and she did so with grace, humility, and decisiveness and with vision. We all are better people for the leadership of Wilma Mankiller,” said Smith.

Mankiller once said, "prior to my election, young Cherokee girls would never have thought that they might grow up and become chief." She was right. Thanks to women like Mankiller, the road to new leadership, change and hope doesn't have such a rocky, bleak outlook.

Mankiller married longtime companion, Charlie Lee Soap, a full-blood Cherokee traditionalist and fluent Cherokee speaker, in 1986 and lived on her ancestral land at Mankiller Flats. In March 2010 it was announced that Mankiller was seriously ill with pancreatic cancer. She died quietly at her home in rural Adair County, Oklahoma Tuesday morning. Her husband and two daughters survive her. At the time of her death, Wilma Pearl Mankiller-Soap was 64-years-old.


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