Mildred Cleghorn

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Mildred Imoch Cleghorn (December 11,1910- April 15, 1997) was born a prisoner of war at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. She lived 86 years and served as Tribal chairwoman of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe for 18 years until her retirement in 1995. Mildred was one of the few surviving Prisoners of War of the Fort Sill Apaches. She created dolls that reflected tradition clothing of women from forty different tribes and taught for sixteen years as a home economics teacher at Fort Sill Indian School in Lawton and Riverside Indian School in Anadarko. She exhibited her work at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

The Fort Sill Apaches were members of Geronimo's band, who negociated an oral treaty on Sept. 5, 1886. The U.S. government ordered all Apache People whose affiliation was with the Chiricahua band, young and old, be loaded into railroad cattle boxcars and shipped to Florida as prisoners of war. All the Apache people who were related to the Chiricahua band from all the southwest reservations were forced to walk to the Nogales, AZ Station for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Many of the young and old did not survive the long walk or the sequential cattle car trip. When forced to choose between allotments of farmland in Oklahoma or sharing the Mescalero reservation in southeastern New Mexico, of the 271 remaining tribe members, 187 went to Mescalero and 84 chose to remain in Oklahoma. The last of the Apache prisoners were released in 1914 after 28 years as U.S. prisoners of war. The smaller group who chose to remain in Oklahoma are called the Fort Sill Apache. Three generations would pass before the Apache U.S. prisoners of wars were pardoned.

Before they were released, the Fort Sill Apaches were required to accept 160-acre allotments with a house, a well and a year's rations. Only two families received 158 acres, while most received 80 or less. In a 1996 interview, Cleghorn remembered her first moments of freedom when her family left Fort Sill in a horse-drawn wagon. She was 3 years old when her family settled on a 40-acre plot near Apache, Oklahoma.

"The families weren't allowed to live together," Cleghorn said. "So they scattered us all over. If we wanted to go visit someone, it would be an all-day trip. I guess they were afraid of another uprising."

Mildred Cleghorn attended school in Apache, Oklahoma, at Haskell Institute in Kansas, and at Oklahoma State University, where she received a degree in home economics in 1941.

In 1996, only 372 Fort Sill Apaches remained on the tribal roll from a tribal population that once numbered 1,000. That year, fewer than 115 members were still in Oklahoma. Mildred became one of the lead plaintiffs in the class action suit against the mismanagement of Indian money held in trust by the U.S. Government. The suit charged that the federal government had mismanaged Indian money and destroyed important documents. Filers of the suit hoped to get a reliable accounting of hundreds of millions of dollars in Indian trust funds, which has still not been forthcoming.

"There was nothing we could do," said Cleghorn, who retired in the fall of 1995, after 18 years as tribal chairwoman. "We just accepted it and went on, but they could never make up for what happened to us."

The suit was filed in federal court in the District of Columbia by tribal members who say the Interior Department has lost track of money that it was supposed to be investing and guarding for American Indians. Mildred Cleghorn, filed on behalf of more than 300,000 Indians who have trust fund accounts with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

BIBLIOGRAPHY by Dianna Everett © Oklahoma Historical Society: Julie L. Abner, "Mildred Imoch Cleghorn," in Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Gretchen M. Bataille and Laurie Lisa (New York: Routledge, 2000). "Mildred Cleghorn," Vertical File, Research Division, Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. H. Henrietta Stockel, Women of the Apache Nation: Voices of Truth (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991). H. Henrietta Stockel, Chiricahua Apache Women and Children: Safekeepers of the Heritage (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000). http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/C/CL010.html

information provided by John Berry, Oklahoma - Quotes by AP and The Daily Oklahoman