Harley Institute, aka Chickasaw Manual Training School for Boys at Tishomingo

This undated photograph from the J. Harley collection of the Oklahoma Historical Society depicts the dormitory of the Chickasaw Manual Training School for Boys, later known as the Harley Institute, just north of the Chickasaw Capital Building in Tishomingo, now in Johnston County.

I'm not sure of the exact date it was established, but by 1868, the Chickasaw Manual Training School for Boys at Tishomingo was administered by Joshua and Lucretia Harley. The Indian Journal of 1877 noted that "Prof. Harley is one of the most successful educators in the territory." By the 1890s, the school became known as the Harley Institute.

The earliest mention of the "Chickasaw boys school near Tishomingo" that I could find was in the Cherokee Advocate of 1876, when a contingent of American and English "friends of the Cherokees" visited Indian Territory. They went to Tahlequah to see the academies for Cherokee boys and girls, then to Armstrong Academy (boys) of the Choctaw Nation, then to the school at Tishomingo. The report by the "friends of the Cherokees" explained that there was a large "amount of sickness prevailing among them," though what sickness is unknown -- I assume it was yellow fever due to other reports about Indian Territory from the era.

The friends wrote that the "Chickasaws have four public and twelve district school, and spend about $45,000 or eight dollars per head for each man, woman, and child. In proportion to their means probably no class in any country are doing more."

The school's final session closed in June 1906. Graduation ceremonies were always well attended by dignitaries and very grand, and this one was especially poignant as the impending statehood of Oklahoma made public education a state-funded endeavor. A quarter century prior, the Atoka Independent admonished to "let the Indians alone when they are doing so well," and this was echoed by Judge Kemp, who gave one of the addresses in the 1906 graduation ceremony, "expressing his regret that the Chickasaw people would be deprived of the right to conduct their own schools."

Nothing remains of the Harley Institute. Its location is now the northern end of Tishomingo's golf course, although the entry in the Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History places it south of Tishomingo.

Lucretia and Joshua Harley and other teachers flank their students in front of the classroom building at the Harley Academy, formerly the Chickasaw Boys High School or Manual Training School for Boys, in this photograph from 1891 (Harley Collection, OHS).

A 1901 USGS map indicates that the Harley Institute was located north of Tishomingo...

... which the superimposed satellite image explains is now the location of the Tishomingo Golf and Recreation Club.

The final ceremony for the school occurred in June of 1906, as recounted by the Chickasaw Capital newspaper. Upon statehood, many (if not most) of the schools administered by the Indian nations closed, and the Harley institute was one such victim.