James R. Newell, PhD

At age 52, Joseph “Stick” Ross testified before the Commission to the Five Civilized Tribes in Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, in April 1901. Ross enrolled himself, his wife Nancy and his five youngest children as Cherokee Freedmen (shown here).

In his interview with the commission, Ross talked about his children, identified his post office address as the Tahlequah District and said that he’d always lived in the Cherokee Nation.

Ross, enslaved with his parents by Principal Chief John Ross, was freed after the 1866 Treaty abolished slavery in the Cherokee Nation. Ross was allotted land, now known as Stick Ross Mountain, and went on to serve on the Cherokee National Council in 1893.

Stick Ross died in 1930, but his legacy lives on in the Cherokee Nation.

Image courtesy of the National Archives at Fort Worth, Texas

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