Cherokee Principal Chief J.B. Milam cared deeply for his tribe, its history, and its potential, and he was a bridge to a new era of Native American nationhood. At the time of his confirmation by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941, Milam had already been named Chief by the National Council of Cherokees – a significant step.
In 1898, the federal government had dismantled tribal governments. For a half century following that, only the President of the United States could appoint a Principal Chief, many of them holding the title for only one day to sign documents and perform duties required by the U.S. federal government. Cherokee citizens found this arrangement unsatisfactory, so the nascent National Council held its own election naming Milam, who was a Cherokee based on the lineage of his mother, Sarah Ellen Couch Milam. Both President Roosevelt and President Harry S. Truman continued to reconfirm his appointment until Milam’s death in 1949.
Already a banker and oilman, Milam was a devoted Cherokee. As chief, he wanted to reconstruct the tribal government and renew tribal claims against the federal government. To this end, he helped found the National Congress of American Indians and established elections for a Cherokee tribal council, which was designed to rebuild the Cherokee Nation’s government. In 1946, he began purchasing land for the Cherokee Nation and two years later convened a national convention to pursue Cherokee rights to the Indian Land Claims Commission and to elect a Cherokee National Assembly.
He also wanted to repatriate items culturally and historically significant to the tribe, according to the Cherokee Heritage Center. He worked with representatives from the University of Oklahoma, in Norman, Oklahoma, Northeastern State University, in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and the Tahlequah Carnegie Library to obtain items to be held by the Oklahoma Historical Society. He actively researched Cherokee history, culture, and legal issues, a mission that he had begun in the 1920s.
During that decade, he paid a writer to produce several books on the Cherokees, and he paid for an expedition to find Sequoyah’s birthplace. He located the original mold for the Cherokee syllabary and began working to get type made to publish materials in the Cherokee language. He also worked to establish Cherokee language classes in area school and universities. Perhaps one of his greatest achievements was to begin planning a Cherokee Heritage Center, which was implemented by Principal Chief W.W. Keeler after Milam’s death.
Born in Texas, Milam’s family moved to Chelsea, Oklahoma, when he was only three years old. He attended school in Chelsea and went on to the Cherokee National Male Seminary in Tahlequah and then to a business college in Dallas. He started his career in his father’s hardware store and later became the first president of the Bank of Chelsea, the first bank in the Cherokee Nation. He also was a founder and first president of the Rogers County Bank in Claremore. With his brother-in-law, he formed Phillips and Milam Oil Company, which had more than 1,000 producing wells by the early 1930s.
His active mind and business acumen were not limited to his commercial interests. He developed an extensive personal library, which he maintained with card catalogs. His books and papers included the History of the Indian Tribes of the United States from 1851, and a copy of the Final Rolls of the Five Civilized Tribes, along with allotment maps.
His eldest daughter, Mildred Milam Viles, added a room to her home to keep the library intact after her father’s death. In 1989, the family chose The University of Tulsa as the recipient and caretaker of these important historical documents, which would become part of the library’s Special Collections. J.B. Milam’s papers and correspondence from his time as Principal Chief were included in the donation.
The Milam Library helped fill the gaps of TU’s existing Native American collections. The University and the Milam Family elected to sell any duplicates existing in the university library, and the resulting income was used to establish the J.B. Milam Library Endowment Fund. Income from the endowment was designated to support acquisitions to build the collection, or to support exhibitions or publications about the collection. Funds could also be used to help underwrite the tuition of history majors, with a preference for students of Cherokee ancestry.
J.B. Milam’s grandson, Philip H. Viles, Jr., has continued to contribute to this endowment fund. An author and essayist, he worked with the U.S. Department of Interior administering a loan fund for tribes and individual Native Americans. Philip Viles has been affiliated with The University of Tulsa for more than 50 years as a student, an employee (Director of Annual Giving), a donor, and an adjunct faculty member. Through his gifts and his work, he is sustaining his grandfather’s legacy.
The University of Tulsa and the staff of McFarlin Library are deeply grateful to the Milam and Viles families for selecting TU as the steward of this historic and irreplaceable gift.
