Samuel Houston Mayes, Date of Birth, Date of Death

Samuel Houston Mayes

19th century Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation

Date of Birth: 11-May-1845

Date of Death: 12-Dec-1927

Zodiac Sign: Taurus

Samuel Houston Mayes (May 11, 1845 – December 12, 1927) of Scots/English-Cherokee descent, was elected as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), serving from 1895 to 1899.
His maternal grandfather belonged to the Deer clan, and his father was allied with members of the Cherokee Treaty Party in the 1830s, such as the Adair men, Elias Boudinot, and Major Ridge.
In the late nineteenth century, his older brother Joel B.
Mayes was elected to two terms as Chief of the Cherokee. Born in Indian Territory, Mayes attended a Cherokee school, served with the Confederacy during the American Civil War, and become a cattle rancher before entering politics.
He was elected as the United States was dissolving tribal governments and communal lands, and making allotments in severalty to individual households of Native Americans, in an effort to force assimilation, under the Dawes and Curtis acts.