Inductees 2012

Cyrus Harris was born August 22, 1817, to Elizabeth Oxberry and James Harris near Pontotoc, Mississippi, on the estate of his grandmother Molly Colbert Gunn. His grandfather was General William Colbert, a renowned leader of the Chickasaws. In 1827, he was sent to Monroe Mission School and later an Indian school in Giles County, Tennessee. In 1830, he returned to Mississippi to live with his grandmother, mother and later his uncle Martin Colbert.

Levi Colbert, or Itawambe Miko (Bench Chief), was an early leader of the Chickasaw Nation. He was honorable, true and faithful to the Chickasaw people from his youth to the date of his death. He was born in the Chickasaw Nation, east of the Tennessee River in Alabama, in 1759.

Charles Guy Tate was born on February 9, 1940, in Ardmore, Oklahoma, to Ernest W. Tate and Juanita J. Keel Tate. Charles is a descendant of Edmund Pickens, first elected Chickasaw chief in Indian Territory, and Cyrus Harris, the first elected Chickasaw governor.

Towana Spivey is the descendent of several generations of Chickasaws who came to Indian Territory in 1837 from northern Mississippi. He was born in Madill, Oklahoma, and still lives on the original 140-acre Chickasaw allotment of his grandparents Henry “Buck” Russell and Gladys Rogers.