Samuel Houston Mayes

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.

Samuel Houston Mayes was born May 11, 1845, near Stilwell, Oklahoma to Samuel and Nancy (Adair) Mayes. His mother Nancy Adair was of Scots-Cherokee descent, a granddaughter of Ga-hoga, a full-blood Cherokee woman of the Deer clan. Her father was of mixed race and belonged to his mother's clan, as the Cherokee were a matrilineal society, and children took their status from the mother. With his marriage, Samuel Mayes (1803–1858) was taken into the Adair family and the Cherokee community. His son Samuel was named for his father's friend Samuel Houston, a notable acquaintance from Tennessee. The Mayes migrated early to Indian Territory, together with the Adairs, Boudinots, Ridges and others of the Treaty Party.

Samuel's older brother was Joel B. Mayes (1833–1891), who was elected chief of the Cherokee in 1887 and 1891. Another older brother, Francis, was killed returning from California. Samuel attended the Muddy Springs School, located about three miles from the family's home in Stilwell. The school was part of the Cherokee public school system and one of his teachers there was the noted Cherokee educator Carrie Bushyhead. All of his younger brothers attended this school before each obtained their high schooling at the Cherokee Male Seminary in Tahlequah.

At age 16, Samuel Mayes volunteered for the Confederate Army in the American Civil War, serving in Company K, under Capt. Benjamin F. Carter and in the 2nd Cherokee Regiment under Col. Clem Vann through the war. Afterward he worked in Texas, then returned to Indian Territory, where he started to get involved in the stock business. He and his brother both worked in the cattle business, which was expanding with the use of Texas longhorn cattle and drives to get the cattle to the northern railroad heads.

Mayes married Martha Elizabeth Vann (1852–1907) on November 9, 1871. From another prominent Cherokee family, she also was of mixed race. They had three children who survived: William Lucullis, Joseph Francis (who became a doctor), and M. Carrie Mayes, who married Clarence Samuels.

After his wife's death, on February 18, 1913, Mayes married Minnie Harrison née Ball, a widow, who survived him.

In 1880 Mayes was first elected to office, as sheriff of Coo-wee-scoo-wee District. From 1885 to 1891, he served as senator from the same district. He ran on the same party as his brother had, the Downing ticket, and was elected as chief in 1895.