The current series is the First Woman, and this episode was supposed to be subtitled first woman chief of a Native American Nation. But it turns out that the Internet overstated the case when it said that (what else is new), so I’ve toned it down.
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We have very little idea who ran Native American tribes in pre-colonial times, or even during colonial times. The written records we have are English, French, or Spanish, and they were famous for misunderstanding the indigenous people they were writing about. The Native American oral records have passed through multiple generations and many traumatic culture-destroying events by now, and that always worries a historian who is trained to worry about accuracy at the end of what amounts to a centuries-long game of Telephone.
Even so, there are female leaders mentioned, such as the 17th century Weetamoo, a leader of the Pocasset people in what is now Rhode Island, and a woman known quite simply as Woman Chief, who led some of the Crow people in the 19th century. This is not an exclusive list.
But for the most part, Europeans recorded that they were dealing with groups of people led by men. That would be right in keeping with the rest of world history if it were true, and perhaps it largely was true. Or perhaps Europeans thought that because they expected to see men as leaders. They might have met a female chief and completely failed to notice her status. One reason the treaties fell through so often was that Europeans were often asking native leaders to sign away rights and property that those leaders had no right to sign away. It simply never occurred to most Europeans that the native power structures might not look like European power structures.
There were a lot of other reasons those treaties fell through, as well. I’m not saying greed, dishonesty, and sadistic abuse didn’t play a role. I’m just saying that ignorance and miscommunication also played a role, even when intentions were good, which they often weren’t.
The Cherokee
The Cherokee are mentioned in the colonial records quite early on because they lived in the east. Present-day North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee all had Cherokee people living in them. It was a big tribe with many bands, who were not always unified, which is another reason that the claim to chief is complicated. Chief of what, exactly? A small band? All of the Cherokee? Even today there are actually three federally recognized Cherokee groups, and there were certainly more divisions in the past. No doubt the Cherokee understood what was going on, but the White people who wrote things down definitely didn’t. There wasn’t necessarily any one person of any gender filling a chief executive role for all of the Cherokee.
Like every other tribe, the Cherokee suffered terribly from disease, loss of land, armed conflict, and many other horrors, but they were still there in the 19ᵗʰ century. Many had intermarried with White people, and many had been changed a lot by their interactions. The Cherokee had some agriculture before contact with Europeans, but by the 19th century, some of them now ran homesteads the way White people did, up to and including the enslavement of Black people.
They also developed a written form of the Cherokee language. It was the first native language to have one, north of Central America. The Cherokee had a printing press and a government modeled on the US Constitution.
All of these accommodations were exactly what many White people claimed to want from Native Americans. That is to say, let’s remake Indians in our image because it seems more ethical than simply exterminating them. But somehow, it still wasn’t enough.
Between 1830 and 1850, the Cherokee were evicted from their homes and driven along the Trail of Tears. There is much that could be said about this period; it has been compared to the Holocaust (Krupat), but for today I am mentioning it only to explain why the Cherokee Nation is now in Oklahoma: They were driven there, against their will.
The struggle to rebuild their lives in a strange land was not helped by the Civil War, nor by subsequent legislation which frequently wiped out or threatened to wipe out key pieces of Cherokee authority and traditions, only to reinstate some of them later (sort of), and then work hard to wipe them out again. Nothing was ever certain for long.
A Cherokee Girl in the 20th Century
That was the unsettled situation in November 1945 when a girl named Wilma was born. Her father was a full-blooded Cherokee named Charley Mankiller. That name was not earned by his personal actions. It was a hereditary surname, and like many people’s hereditary surnames, it derived from an ancestor’s profession, similar to Smith or Baker or Potter. A Mankiller was a title for someone designated to guard the village (Mankiller and Wallis, xxi). It was not an unusual name among the Cherokee. No one in their community thought it was funny or even worth commenting on.
Wilma’s home had no electricity or indoor plumbing. Wilma’s mother and older sisters used a gas-powered wringer washer for laundry and hauled water a quarter of a mile. That water spring doubled as their refrigerator, for you could lower a sealed box into it to keep things cool. Clothing was hand-me-downs or made from flour sacks, and school was a three-mile walk each way (Mankiller and Wallis, 32-36). The only person they knew with a television set was one of the schoolteachers (Mankiller, Voices of Oklahoma).
The Mankillers grew strawberries and peanuts for cash, but most of their food came from their garden or from hunting. Sometimes the men of the family took jobs cutting railroad ties or harvesting broomcorn (Mankiller and Wallis, 34-35).
For all that, Wilma did not know she was poor. Her neighbors were no better off than she was. But older people noticed, and it made them uncomfortable. In the 1950s politicians were still trying to “solve” what they still called the “Indian problem.” The latest and greatest schemes were less violent than those of previous generations, but still involved remaking Indians in the image of White people (Mankiller and Wallis, 63).
In practical terms, that meant convincing Native Americans that they’d be better off if they moved to one of America’s major cities. That way they could be cut off from their land and their community and homogenized into the great throng of other urban poor people. The recruiters didn’t say that, of course. Instead they offered relocation assistance and showed pictures of lots of smiling Native Americans to convince you that life was great in the city. They also ensured you weren’t getting much financial assistance if you tried to stay put (Mankiller and Wallis, 63, 69). They definitely engaged in some guilt-tripping to parents, on the order of: how could you be so cruel as to deny your children of this wonderful opportunity? (Mankiller, Voices of Oklahoma).
So at the age of 11, Wilma was informed that her family would move to San Francisco. She called it her own personal Trail of Tears (Mankiller and Wallis, 69). Even so, Charley Mankiller refused to sell his land in Oklahoma. He kept it, though no one lived on it and it wasn’t maintained (Mankiller, Voices of Oklahoma).
As you have probably guessed, the reality of San Francisco was less than what the Mankillers had been promised. A man like Charley Mankiller could get only a very low paying job and expenses were much higher than they had been in Oklahoma. You also couldn’t supplement the food supply by hunting. Or even gardening because there wasn’t much space. For Wilma, this was constant humiliation. She now knew she was poor. She was also desperately behind in school, and everyone laughed at her name. Their home was in an area where Black young men fought Samoan young men in the streets, and no ambulance would visit after dark (Mankiller and Wallis, 109).
One bright spot was the Indian Center, where people of many tribes gathered for community, worship, healing, tutoring, and refuge. It kept their identity alive when they realized that yet another set of government promises had come up mostly empty (Mankiller and Wallis, 111-112).
Wilma graduated high school, and no one suggested college. It never occurred to anyone that college was for a girl like her. She got a job with a finance company, and she got married the following fall. No one said she was too young, even though she was not even 18 yet. No one told her how to prevent pregnancy. She just assumed it wouldn’t happen to her, not yet anyway, and she was wrong (Mankiller and Wallis, 149-150).
A Gradual Awakening
But she was also slowly beginning to find herself.
In the late 60s, she started taking courses at the local college and then came 1969.
The whole past decade had been one of turmoil in the US over civil rights. When we learn about it in history class, most of the focus is placed on the struggle for African American rights. But Native Americans also had grievances, and they were part of this Civil Rights movement too.
In 1969, the beloved San Francisco Indian Center mysteriously burned down. Concerned government officials offered the community space in the Presidio. Wilma drily comments that “I suppose they did not realize the irony of Native Americans retreating to an army fort” (Mankiller and Wallis, 190). The government’s offer was refused.
On November 9, 1969, fourteen native people went to Alcatraz Island, and they formally declared it as theirs under the terms of an 1868 treaty that said any native adult male could file for a homestead on abandoned or unused federal property, which is what Alcatraz was at the time. The famous prison there had long since closed, and the tourist site was not yet open, though a big financial transaction with a tycoon who wanted to build a tourist site was in the offing (Mankiller and Wallis, 188-191).
When officials protested that they’d never heard of that treaty and also that filing for a homestead is different than squatting, the native people generously offered to pay for the land. Specifically, they offered twenty-four dollars’ worth of glass beads and red cloth, the same price paid to natives of the island of Manhattan back in the day (Mankiller and Wallis, 191).
The Coast Guard pulled these fourteen people away from the island, only to have eighty-nine more move in the next day. This began a nineteen-month standoff.
For Wilma, this event was a new beginning. She did not move to Alcatraz herself, but many of her siblings did. She stayed on shore and organized food, clothing, communications, and publicity. She later wrote “Ironically, the occupation of Alcatraz—a former prison—was extremely liberating for me. … [It] excited me like nothing ever had before. It helped to center me and caused me to focus on my own rich and valuable Cherokee heritage” (Mankiller and Wallis, 192-193)
Sadly, Wilma’s husband was not in favor of her activism. He continued to not be in favor even when the Alcatraz occupation ended, and Wilma moved on to found the Native American Youth Center and later to organize a legal defense fund for the local Pit River people (Mankiller and Wallis, 201-203).
All of this was an education for Wilma, but the primary thing she learned was about herself: She was an extremely capable organizer, fund raiser, manager, and leader. And she wanted to use those skills to help her own people on their own land. She wanted to go home, to Oklahoma. Her mother had already moved back there, after her father had died.
Wilma’s marriage was already strained and had been so for years. After a very nasty divorce, she loaded a U-haul with all her belongings, her two daughters, a dog, and a guinea pig. “We covered the same territory my family had traveled across twenty years before when we had been relocated by the federal government. When we arrived at my mother’s place, I had twenty dollars to my name, no car, no job, and few, if any prospects. But we were happy. At last I was home to stay” (Mankiller and Wallis, 215).
Working for the Cherokee Nation
In October, Wilma got a job with the Cherokee Nation as an economic stimulus coordinator. All was not perfect. The Nation was a huge bureaucracy, and it was dominated by men (Mankiller and Wallis, 217). But once those men discovered that Wilma worked hard and knew how to write a successful grant proposal, she began to find her feet there. She also finished her BS in social work.
She suffered serious setbacks from her health. She was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, and she was also in a very serious car crash that involved seventeen surgeries (Mankiller and Wallis, 222-228).
But by 1981 she was back at her post with the Cherokee Nation. In particular, she organized a project to revitalize the town of Bell, where 350 Cherokee lived in a dying community. Wilma put together grants and labor provided by the Bell residents themselves to lay a new water system and rehabilitate homes that were literally falling apart (Mankiller and Wallis, 234).
The project was so successful that it made national news. Foundation executives who worked on Third World projects came to learn how this was done.
It also brought Wilma to the attention of Principal Chief Ross Swimmer, who asked Wilma to be his running mate in the 1983 elections. Wilma was so surprised she said no before she even thought about it. But on reflection, she realized she was being given a chance. There were so many communities like Bell, and so many problems to solve. She called Ross Swimmer back and asked if she could change her mind.
Despite her (by now) long experience with people, Wilma was surprised by the reaction at large to her candidacy. She thought people might object because she was a registered Democrat, while Swimmer was a registered Republican. She thought they might object to her history of rocking the boat with activism.
But nobody complained on those grounds. What they complained about was … her gender. She wrote, “I heard all sorts of things—some people claimed that my running for office was an affront to God. Others said having a female run our tribe would make the Cherokees the laughingstock of the tribal world. I heard it all. Every time I was given yet another silly reason why I should not help run our government, I was certain that I had made the correct decision” (Mankiller and Wallis, 241).
But it wasn’t easy. Wilma received death threats and had her tires slashed (Mankiller and Wallis, 241). Apparently, politics is dirty no matter what culture we practice it in.
But they won.
Chief of the Cherokee
On August 14, 1983, Wilma took office as the Deputy Chief of the Cherokee Nation.
That was unusual in and of itself, but she became still more unusual two years later when Ross Swimmer was asked to take a role at the federal level in the Bureau of Indian Affairs. According to the Cherokee Constitution, if a Principal Chief stepped down during his term of office, the Deputy Chief took over for the remainder of the term. So on December 5, 1985, Wilma took the oath of office as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.
In 1987 she ran on her own and won the election. She did so again in 1991, which means that for a solid decade (1985 to 1995), she led the Cherokee Nation as Principal Chief, the first one elected to that office in modern times, though as I’ve said, she was far from the first Native American woman to have a leadership role.
Being Principal Chief made her an instant celebrity nationwide, celebrated by People Magazine, Ms. Magazine, various women’s halls of fame, and universities who hand out honorary degrees.
But all that is less important than what she did for the Cherokee people. During her tenure, Wilma encouraged businesses and grant money to come into the Nation, and then she plowed that money back into the community in the form of job-training programs, renovation of the high school, community development programs like the one in Bell, a hydro-electric plant, a horticultural operation, a health care initiative, and land claims settlements. She declined an offer to store nuclear waste on Cherokee land, but after much consideration about the implications of gambling, she did allow bingo operations. She also participated in many summits and multi-tribal conferences to improve conditions for all Native Americans. The Encyclopedia of Great Plains Indians calls her “the most influential principal chief since John Ross of the nineteenth century” (Justice, 121). John Ross, bear in mind, was chief in 1838, during the Trail of Tears.
Wilma also found time to raise her daughters, to get married again, and to attend both a Christian church and her native ceremonial dances.
Life after Being Chief
After two terms of her own, Wilma decided it was time to move on (Mankiller and Wallis, 260). That is how she phrased it when speaking of her decision not to run a third time. She did not say it was for health reasons, though many other people said it for her.
The elections were ugly, and her chosen successor did not win. The man who did win accused her of all kinds of improper handling of her office. Her memoir leaves the reader in no doubt that the feeling was mutual (Mankiller and Wallis, 263-267).
Wilma accepted a Fellowship at Dartmouth College to teach and discuss Native American issues, but her failing kidneys and her cancer did not allow her to stay long. It was a low period of her life, but she says that she “read the Dalai Lama and the Bible, and [used the] eagle wing for prayer” (Mankiller and Wallis, 273).
She did get better, but even during her treatments, she was working for her people. She raised funds for several worthy causes, helped establish a Boys and Girls Club in the Cherokee Nation, co-edited a women’s history book, and co-wrote a memoir (Mankiller and Wallis, 274).
At the end of that memoir, she wrote, “Who knows what the future will bring? I have always heard that the best way to make the Creator laugh is to plan for the future… I intend to live fully for as long as I am granted this precious gift called life” (Mankiller and Wallis, 275).
Wilma Mankiller died in 2010 of pancreatic cancer.
In an interview, Wilma once said that:
“When I think of the Cherokee Nation I don’t think of the government necessarily, or the structures, or the institutions, but I think of the people. And my thought is that if Cherokee People have survived such unspeakable tragedy over and over and over again throughout history, and they’ve managed to pick themselves up and keep moving forward and keep their vision fixed on the future, then I think future generations will do that. A simpler way of saying that is – that if you want to see our future, look at our past. If we’ve survived all that, and we’re still standing in 2009. We’ll be different 25 or 50 years from now. We’re different than we were 25 or 50 years ago, but we’ll still be here” (Mankiller, Voices of Oklahoma).
It hasn’t quite been 25 years since Wilma said that in 2009, but the Cherokee are certainly still here. At 450,000 members (Cherokee Nation Frequently Asked Questions), they are generally called the second largest tribe in the United States, after the Navajo. They have not yet elected a second woman to serve as Principal Chief. But plenty of other Native American nations have. So if we can’t fully claim Wilma as the first Native American woman chief, at least we can be sure she was not the last.
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Selected Sources
Brando, Elizabeth. “Wilma Mankiller.” National Women’s History Museum, 2021, https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/wilma-mankiller. Accessed 2 Aug. 2026.
Carrillo, Sequoia. “Just Doing ‘What I Could,’ Wilma Mankiller Changed Native America.” SmithsonianNMAI, Smithsonian Magazine, 11 Aug. 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/national-museum-american-indian/2017/08/11/just-doing-what-i-could-wilma-mankiller-changed-native-america/. Accessed 3 Aug. 2026.
Cherokee Nation. “Cherokee Nation Frequently Asked Questions.” Cherokee Nation.
https://www.cherokee.org/about-the-nation/frequently-asked-questions/common-questions/?term=&page=2&pageSize=7
Duncan, Shanna. “Wilma Mankiller: An American Hero, an Interview With Gale Anne Hurd.” WomensHistory.Org, 14 Nov. 2017.
Krupat, Arnold. “Representing Cherokee Dispossession.” Studies in American Indian Literatures, vol. 17, no. 1, 2005, pp. 16–41, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20737242. Accessed 6 Aug. 2026.
Mankiller, Wilma. “Wilma Mankiller: Former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.” Voices of Oklahoma, 13 Aug. 2009, https://www.voicesofoklahoma.com/interviews/mankiller-wilma. Accessed 2 Aug. 2026.
Mankiller, Wilma, and Michael Wallis. Mankiller : A Chief and Her People. New York, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000.
“Mankiller, Wilma (B. 1945).” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains Indians, by Daniel Heath Justice, University of Nebraska Press, 2007, http://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.32942792.108. Accessed 6 Aug. 2026.
Press, Associated. “Navajo Nation Surpasses Cherokee as Most Populous Tribe in U.S..” KNAU – Arizona Public Radio, 19 May 2021.
Ramirez, Sarah. “Wilma Mankiller Led as the First Woman Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.” Smithsonian Institution, 6 June 2022.
https://womenshistory.si.edu/blog/wilma-mankiller-led-first-woman-principal-chief-cherokee-nation