Lasting Impressions: Jennie Ross Cobb, First Female American Indian Photographer, Framed Cherokee Life in Indian Territory
A sepia-toned portrait of Jennie Ross Cobb taken about 1945. She wears a light colored blouse with a v-neck ruffled collar and is smiling softly.

Jennie Ross Cobb circa 1945.

Courtesy of Hunter’s Home, Oklahoma Historical Society

Jennie Ross Cobb circa 1945.

Courtesy of Hunter’s Home, Oklahoma Historical Society

Jennie Cobb's brown camera box sits open, angled on a studio backdrop

Years after Jennie Ross Cobb had married and left her former residence of Hunter’s Home, she found this camera that she had left there years earlier still in the attic.

Photo by Jeremy Charles. Courtesy of Hunter’s Home, Oklahoma Historical Society

Years after Jennie Ross Cobb had married and left her former residence of Hunter’s Home, she found this camera that she had left there years earlier still in the attic.

Photo by Jeremy Charles. Courtesy of Hunter’s Home, Oklahoma Historical Society

The Ross family sits on the steps to the front porch of a white house. The image is sepia-toned.

This photo of the Ross family, possibly taken by then Jennie Ross around 1900, includes her parents, Fannie Thornton and Robert Bruce Ross, who are seated in the center row.

Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

This photo of the Ross family, possibly taken by then Jennie Ross around 1900, includes her parents, Fannie Thornton and Robert Bruce Ross, who are seated in the center row.

Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

A group of well-dressed women in large frilly hats poses outside of a school building. The image is black and white.
Cherokee National Female Seminary

The Cherokee Nation built this school for young women in the tribe’s capital city of Tahlequah in 1889, replacing the original building, which burned down two years prior. The Cherokee Nation managed it until 1909, two years after Oklahoma became a state. Today, it is Northeastern State University. Here is the Cherokee National Female Seminary graduating class of 1902.

Photo by Jennie Ross Cobb, Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

Cherokee National Female Seminary

The Cherokee Nation built this school for young women in the tribe’s capital city of Tahlequah in 1889, replacing the original building, which burned down two years prior. The Cherokee Nation managed it until 1909, two years after Oklahoma became a state. Today, it is Northeastern State University. Here is the Cherokee National Female Seminary graduating class of 1902.

Photo by Jennie Ross Cobb, Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

Two seminary women balance on wooden train tracks. The photo is in black and white.

Students from the Cherokee National Female Seminary walk along the newly laid train tracks in Tahlequah.

Photo by Jennie Ross Cobb, Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

Students from the Cherokee National Female Seminary walk along the newly laid train tracks in Tahlequah.

Photo by Jennie Ross Cobb, Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

A black and white image of a rustic wooden single-room school house. A group of children and a young woman stand out front.
Cherokee Life

By the turn of the 20th century, the Cherokee Nation had reestablished itself in northeastern Oklahoma— then part of Indian Territory. Though some Cherokee people maintained their language and many traditional practices, other aspects of life—the buildings in their community and style of clothing—reflected western influences.

After graduating from the Cherokee National Female Seminary in 1900, Jennie Ross worked as a schoolteacher in the Cherokee Nation. Here, she photographed her students in front of their schoolhouse.

Photo by Jennie Ross Cobb, Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

Cherokee Life

By the turn of the 20th century, the Cherokee Nation had reestablished itself in northeastern Oklahoma— then part of Indian Territory. Though some Cherokee people maintained their language and many traditional practices, other aspects of life—the buildings in their community and style of clothing—reflected western influences.

After graduating from the Cherokee National Female Seminary in 1900, Jennie Ross worked as a schoolteacher in the Cherokee Nation. Here, she photographed her students in front of their schoolhouse.

Photo by Jennie Ross Cobb, Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

A group of women and a man lean and sit against a wooden fence enjoying watermelon. The image is black and white.

Friends enjoy watermelon slices on a summer afternoon near Park Hill, a community within the Cherokee Nation.

Photo by Jennie Ross Cobb, Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

Friends enjoy watermelon slices on a summer afternoon near Park Hill, a community within the Cherokee Nation.

Photo by Jennie Ross Cobb, Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

A black and white photograph of a young boy with a dead turkey slung over his shoulder.

Some historians believe Blake Ross, Cobb’s nephew, is the boy shown here carrying a dead turkey behind Hunter’s Home.

Photo by Jennie Ross Cobb, Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

Some historians believe Blake Ross, Cobb’s nephew, is the boy shown here carrying a dead turkey behind Hunter’s Home.

Photo by Jennie Ross Cobb, Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

A black and white photograph of a parade procession with men in uniform on horseback pulling a decorated carriage.

The Williams Hardware Co.’s entry in a parade in Tahlequah, Indian Territory.

Photo by Jennie Ross Cobb, Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

The Williams Hardware Co.’s entry in a parade in Tahlequah, Indian Territory.

Photo by Jennie Ross Cobb, Courtesy of Oklahoma Historical Society

Jennie Cobb, now in her old age, stands to the right of a display case at the base of the stairs in Hunter Home. The photo is black and white.
Hunter’s Home

Built around 1838 by wealthy merchant George M. Murrell and his Cherokee wife, Minerva Ross Murrell, Hunter’s Home is the only pre–Civil War plantation home still standing in Oklahoma. It is now a historic site managed by the Oklahoma Historic Society and open to the public.

After the state of Oklahoma purchased Hunter’s Home in 1948 to preserve the site, Jennie Cobb returned to her former homestead and campaigned to become its caretaker and curator.

Courtesy of Hunter’s Home, Oklahoma Historical Society

Hunter’s Home

Built around 1838 by wealthy merchant George M. Murrell and his Cherokee wife, Minerva Ross Murrell, Hunter’s Home is the only pre–Civil War plantation home still standing in Oklahoma. It is now a historic site managed by the Oklahoma Historic Society and open to the public.

After the state of Oklahoma purchased Hunter’s Home in 1948 to preserve the site, Jennie Cobb returned to her former homestead and campaigned to become its caretaker and curator.

Courtesy of Hunter’s Home, Oklahoma Historical Society

A faded black and white image of the Hunter's Home façade in winter. The ground is covered in snow.

When Cobb returned to Hunter’s Home, she found not only a camera but also glass plate negatives of images she had once taken. Here is one of those images, a photo she took of Hunter’s Home during winter.

Courtesy of Hunter’s Home, Oklahoma Historical Society

When Cobb returned to Hunter’s Home, she found not only a camera but also glass plate negatives of images she had once taken. Here is one of those images, a photo she took of Hunter’s Home during winter.

Courtesy of Hunter’s Home, Oklahoma Historical Society

Cobb sits in a wooden rocking chair besides the Hunter's Home fireplace. The image is black and white.

Cobb remained curator of Hunter’s Home until her death at age 77 in 1959.

Courtesy of Hunter’s Home, Oklahoma Historical Society

Cobb remained curator of Hunter’s Home until her death at age 77 in 1959.

Courtesy of Hunter’s Home, Oklahoma Historical Society

By the time Jennie Ross was born on December 26, 1881, the Park Hill community in Cherokee Nation’s Tahlequah District had already seen its heyday as home to some of Cherokee Nation’s most notable leaders and privileged families. A group of Cherokees known as the “Old Settlers” had arrived in what is now eastern Oklahoma during the late 1820s. These members of the Cherokee Nation had left their ancestral lands in the southeastern United States to escape growing encroachment of white colonizers on Cherokee lands. They negotiated with the U.S. government and initially settled in Arkansas Territory before renegotiating for land in what would later become known as Indian Territory. Cherokee Nation West, as it was called, established its own government and capital, now known as Tahlequah.

The Cherokee peoples remaining in the East elected Cherokee Nation Principal Chief John Ross for the first time in 1828. In the decade following, factions among Cherokees emerged over how best to preserve tribal sovereignty under extraordinary pressure to leave. In 1835, a group of prominent tribal community members signed the Treaty of New Echota, ceding the last remaining Cherokee land east of the Mississippi River in exchange for land out West. Principal Chief Ross and most Cherokee people protested the treaty as fraudulently signed, yet it was ratified in the U.S. Senate by one vote. The forced removal of the Cherokee people in 1838–1839 was part of a decades-long Indian Removal campaign signed into law in 1830, which effectively forced tribes east of the Mississippi to give up their traditional homelands.

John Ross was still principal chief when he arrived in Indian Territory with the last detachment of Cherokees to depart the East. He made his home in Park Hill where other affluent Cherokee peoples settled and began rebuilding their lives. More accurately, these Cherokee families—often bicultural and mixed race—depended on the labor of enslaved Africans to rebuild homes and businesses in the years after their removal from their lands in the East.

Park Hill was considered the cultural center of a new Cherokee Nation, with schools, churches, shops and stately houses anchoring new plantations. Among them, Hunter’s Home was built in 1845 by George Murrell, a white businessman who married into the Ross family. Unlike many Park Hill properties, Hunter’s Home survived the Civil War and today is the only preantebellum mansion that still stands in Oklahoma. After the Murrells left, a series of Ross family relatives managed the house. John Ross’s grandson, Robert Bruce Ross, took up the task sometime in the 1890s. He and his wife, Fannie, brought their youngest children, including Jennie, to live at Hunter’s Home. There, Jennie received her first camera.

Little detail is available about Jennie’s life in general. While we likely will never know if she asked for a camera, it’s been told that her father gave her one as a gift when she was about 15 years old. This coincides with innovations in photographic processes making cameras smaller, lighter and more accessible to amateurs. As seen in magazine ads of the day, photography was marketed as an exciting new hobby for young women. It was also considered a suitable activity that wouldn’t interfere with the expected demands of women’s domestic life. Even photo processing could be done in the confines of the home.

Jennie Ross turned a living room closet inside Hunter’s Home into a darkroom where she processed glass plate negatives. These “worked very well except during hot weather,” she is said to have told a Tulsa World reporter who interviewed her many years later. Even using one of her preferred brands—Eastman Kodak Photographic Dry Plates or Hammer Dry Plate Co.’s Photographic Dry Plates—summer’s heat worked against her. Film emulsion wouldn’t adhere to the glass if the solution was too warm, as was the case with several photos she said she took (according to the same Tulsa World reporter) of a young Cherokee cowboy named Will Rogers, who would soon grace the silver screen.

Future international entertainers aside, Jennie Ross’s photographic eye turned homeward. Among the few images credited to her is a collection of Hunter’s Home photographs made from glass plate negatives in the Oklahoma Historical Society archives. By the time her family took up residence, the house was already a half-century old, evident in its worn furnishings and soot-stained walls. Outside photos show damaged porch rails, chipping paint, buckling siding and unkempt landscapes. She framed her shots to take in details such as certificates on walls, a building’s reflection in a pond, even a tiny kitten under the dining table. More notably in this same photo, she captures two women treading the back staircase. Several of her photos around the home include family and friends in informal settings and poses that are closer to what is seen on social media platforms than what we might expect to see in early photography. Jennie Ross began her studies at the Cherokee National Female Seminary in nearby Tahlequah during the mid-1890s. With her camera, she captured seminary friends strolling Tahlequah’s wooden sidewalks, stepping along newly laid railroad tracks and enjoying watermelon slices with friends. After graduating the seminary in 1900, she worked as a teacher at several Cherokee Nation public schools. She photographed her students in front of their schoolhouse in Christie, west of Tahlequah.

Her subjects, however, extended beyond her family, home, peers and students. Her known work includes photos of the Cherokee National Supreme Court Building façade, a temperance society meeting on the town square and a town parade. In the Cherokee Nation capital, Jennie Ross’s “amateur” work appears to have reached a higher calling and quality, perhaps the effect of experience and a keener eye for perspective. This, however, assumes an order to the images that cannot be determined as they are not dated.

In 1905, at age 23, Jennie wed Jesse Cobb. The U.S. government hired Jesse to survey tribal lands in Indian Territory to break them into allotments. Unlike Cherokee tradition, in which tribal lands are held communally, allotments often divided families and communities. It was a measured blow against Cherokee Nation self-governance. If Jennie Ross Cobb was conflicted over marrying a man employed by the U.S. government—which was striving to end tribal sovereignty—that record is lost to time. The local newspaper, the Tahlequah Daily Arrow, reported the details of her wedding, stating that “the bride is one of the most popular and best known [sic] young ladies of the city. . . .  She is one of those young women of sterling qualities, of whose graces, charms and talents Tahlequah is justly proud.”

The Cobbs eventually left the new Cherokee Nation that had been established in Oklahoma and settled in Arlington, Texas. There, they raised their daughter, and Jennie Cobb operated her own floral shop. Whether she continued to pursue her passion of photography is unknown.

After the State of Oklahoma purchased Hunter’s Home in 1948 to preserve the site, Jennie Cobb campaigned to become its caretaker and curator. She was appointed to the post and discovered one of her old cameras in the attic with some of her glass plate negatives. Those negatives were used in the state’s restoration of the historic site and are now part of the Oklahoma Historic Society’s collection. She remained curator of Hunter’s Home until her death at age 77 in 1959.

Jennie Cobb’s photos were invaluable in accurately restoring Hunter’s Home said Susan Teska, Hunter’s Home site director. “As a curator, I tend to look at the backgrounds of the photos. I tend to notice what the wallpaper looks like and what sorts of things are on the mantels or what the furniture on the porch looks like,” she said. Cobb “started the process of returning the house back to the time of George and Minerva. Today, we are just continuing what she began.”

Cobb’s legacy, however, goes further than the walls of that historic home. Her images tell a story of a segment of Cherokee people largely assimilated in dress, custom, language and religion to European-American ways. Yet, their Cherokee heritage was part of a fundamental identity uniting all Cherokee people, traditional and progressive, even as their government was soon to be dismantled to make way for Oklahoma statehood.

“While only taking up the hobby for a few years, Cobb’s images are unique and document the Cherokee Nation at a critical point when establishing itself in the Oklahoma Territory,” said Michelle Delaney, a photo historian and assistant director of history and research for the National Museum of the American Indian. “These images establish a significant legacy for her in the history of the Cherokee Nation and in the history of American photography.”

Just as the Cherokee Nation and its people survived U.S. attempts to dissolve its government and recovered to become the strong sovereign body it is today, Jennie Cobb’s work withstands the ages. As a photographic record of life, they defy simplified attempts to define the Cherokee experience. As a collection of Cobb’s memories, her photos reveal a dimension of humanity connecting Cherokee people today to their shared past.