Native lodges: Joseph Brant (Mohawk) and Cherokee Lodge No. 21 at Tahlequah (London, 1776; Tahlequah, 1848)

SUMMARYNative lodges: Joseph Brant (Mohawk) and Cherokee Lodge No. 21 at Tahlequah (London, 1776; Tahlequah, 1848) [Connections: Masonic color line, asylums, castles, wight, Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDThe Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon lists Joseph Brant as initiated in "1776" in "Hiram's Cliftonian Lodge" (printed "No. 47"). He was raised on "April 26, 1776" in "Lodge No 417 at the Falcons, Leicester Fields, London." He was founding Master in 1798 of a lodge at Brantford. The same page calls the story of Brant sparing a captured Mason, Capt. John McKinstry, possibly "apocryphal." The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture says: "On November 7, 1848, the Grand Lodge of Arkansas granted a charter to the Cherokee Lodge Number 21 (the first lodge in I.T.) at Tahlequah." Between 1850 and 1855 more lodges formed at Fort Gibson, Doaksville, Flint and the Creek Agency. T.S. Akers, citing Creager's History of Freemasonry in Oklahoma (1935), pp. 20–28, gives the date as 9 November 1848. He names the first Lodge Secretary as William P. Ross (Cherokee), made a Mason at Federal Lodge No. 1, Washington, D.C., in 1848

PATTERNNative nations were inside Masonry from the 1770s. In Indian Territory, lodges sat at the nations' capitals before the Civil War

LENS (WW9)The nations were not outside the lodge looking in. They held their own lodges at their own council fires

OPENThe Oklahoma encyclopedia also names other Five Tribes leaders as Masons. They are not named here until lodge returns are checked. Settle 7 vs 9 November 1848 and Brant's "No. 47" vs "No. 417" against the UGLE register. Did the Indian Territory lodges admit Black Freedmen?

SOURCEGrand Lodge of BC & Yukon: Joseph Brant; Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History: Fraternal Orders (L.D. Wilson); Freemasonry Among the Five Tribes (T.S. Akers).