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The Tulsa Beacon

 

Rosemary Durham

What would it be like without the Louisiana Purchase?

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] Why is Thomas Jefferson’s Purchase of the Louisiana Territory significant? Even Jefferson could not begin to comprehend what would happen in the next 30 years. In their later years of life Jefferson wrote in a letter to his friend and political enemy, former…

Thomas Jefferson was a true friend of Native Americans

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] Why is Thomas Jefferson significant as a friend of Native Americans? We tend to think of history as a sequence of unrelated events, but it is the confluence of numerous parallel ventures. Most unconsciously think that history began the day they were born,…

19th Century pastors believed in ‘God, guns and guts’

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] Why is Brainerd Mission, Tennessee, significant to our culture and religion? Samuel Austin and Ann Worcester were sent there after his graduation and ordination in 1825. The young couple were going to the cultural home of his associate and right-hand Elias Boudinot, born…

Samuel Austin Worcester, the printer, played a key role

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] Sequoyah deciphered the Cherokee language, but how was his artistry moved from calligraphy to print in newspaper, books, and pamphlets? We have already discussed articles relevant to Samuel Austin Worcester at Union Mission and his talented, storied grand-daughter Alice M. Robertson. But there…

Sequoyah, the untrained polymath, had a great impact

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] How does an untrained person, who cannot read, does not know an alphabet, and speaks only one language, create a written language to educate his people? Sequoyah was a self-taught linguist. In his first language attempt, he tried to use pictographs for each…

Who is the most recognized person in Cherokee history?

Tulsa Beacon

[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.] Who is the most noted Cherokee man in history? Intriguingly, who was his father and where was he born remain questions. The culture did little to aid in tracking. The Cherokee people, as most Native Americans, at the time of the American Revolution…

Ancient life was very difficult for the American Indians

Tulsa Beacon

Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes. Why would someone get an academic education to leave home and live in and assist another less-developed culture? Understanding and accepting a different culture and the context of their world is one of the most difficult things about history and living with people….

Missionaries were intellectual firebrands, distrupters

Tulsa Beacon

We are continuing to look at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes. What do intellectual, inquisitive, impassioned young firebrands do when spending four-months on a cramped sailing-ship at sea, in the days before electronics? No television, no radio, no-internet, no phones, no computers, no communications, just time and a few books…

Oklahoma History: Six college freshmen had short lives but a long influence

Tulsa Beacon

We are continuing to look at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes. What became of the world-shattering six college freshmen, who subsequently founded the first American education-mission group, which sent the first emissaries to India and to the newly emerging Indian Territory? All graduated from the Congregationalist (Puritan) Andover Theological Seminary…