Susan (Hampton) Tiger

Susan (Hampton) Tiger  
(10/12/1870 – 01/25/1962) 

Muscogee (Creek) Nation 

By Abby Rush (TU, MA Class of 2024) 

Susan (Hampton) Tiger is one of at least two alumnae of the Presbyterian School for Indian Girls to have been interviewed for the Indian-Pioneer History Project (abbreviated on the PSIG web site as IPP), the other one being Ann (Peterson) Shortall. The transcript of her interview, conducted in 1937 by a field worker named Grace Kelly, provides details about her childhood, her time at PSIG, schools at which she taught, and her personal life. The Indian-Pioneer Papers Oral History Collection includes transcripts of interviews conducted in the 1930s by government workers with thousands of individuals in Oklahoma. The transcripts contain first-hand accounts of life in Indian Territory and then the state of Oklahoma from 1861 to the 1930s.

Early History
Susan (Hampton) Tiger, also called “Susie” and “Sue,” was born in 1870 to Susan Sitey (Mvskoke) and John Hampton near Okmulgee, Indian Territory. Her mother died when Susan was eleven days old, and her father died in 1879. Following the death of Susan’s father, Judge Napoleon Bonaparte Moore became her guardian.1 Judge Moore was of Irish and Mvskoke descent and played an active role in the affairs of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation during his lifetime, performing an array of duties including that of a Lighthorseman police officer, Judge of the Supreme Court, and Treasurer of the Nation.2  

School
Shortly after Judge Moore became her guardian in 1879, Susan was sent to Tullahassee Manual Labor School (Tullahassee Mission). In her IPP interview she explained, “As he was a single man he sent me to the Tallahassee [sic] school. He had a home but as I was a girl he had no one to take care of me.” On November 20, 1882, Judge Moore married Augusta Robertson, who in the following years would become the first Superintendent of Nuyaka Mission. 

The connection between Alice Robertson, who eventually became Superintendent of the Presbyterian School for Indian Girls (PSIG), and Susan (Hampton) Tiger was already forming, as Augusta and Alice Robertson were sisters and had both been connected to the Tullahassee Mission in previous years as well.3 Alice’s and Augusta’s parents were Ann Eliza (Worcester) Robertson and William Schenck Robertson, Presbyterian missionaries and educators who oversaw the Tullahassee Mission for many years and also translated songs, poems, and scriptures into Mvskoke.4 

In her IPP interview, Susan reported that while at the Tullahassee Mission, she met a teacher named Miss Green. Having grown fond of Susan, Miss Green asked Susan to move to Iowa with her, as Miss Green thought Susan could provide companionship to Green’s parents and, as Susan put it, to “have a good home.” It was some time after the Tullahassee Mission burned down in 1880 that Susan went to live in Iowa. She would have been approximately nine years old. Susan also says in the interview that she experienced bouts of poor health and returned to Indian Territory after living in Iowa for four years. It was during Susan’s time in Iowa that Judge Moore married Augusta Robertson. By the time Susan returned from Iowa, Augusta’s sister Alice Robertson had been appointed Superintendent of the Presbyterian School for Indian Girls (PSIG), and Susan was sent there to continue her education (c. 1884-1885). 

Susan said in her interview that Alice “really tried to be a mother to all of us.” Elaborating on Alice’s treatment of the students, Susan related: 

We had prayer every night and after prayer she would kiss each of us goodnight before we went up to bed. Not one was left out! She said that the Indians weren’t civilized until they learned to kiss and be loving. The Indians as a rule are not affectionate. All the girls liked the school and I guess it was because it was a Christian school and the teachers and workers were kind to them.

As warmly as Susan recalls these memories, it is important to note that these details not only provide some testimonial of the “kind” approaches of the PSIG staff but also remind readers that PSIG was part of a colonizing effort to “civilize” through religious and cultural training. 

This interview contains additional details about life at PSIG, including references to music lessons, her former teachers, and the expected duties of students. Noting that there were approximately twenty students during her time there, Susan explained: 

[T]he girls would take turns about doing the dishes, making the beds, and the other work but they didn’t teach Home Economics as they do now. They thought, and I think, that it was right to teach children to work when they are young and then when they are older and had to work for a living that they wouldn’t mind working and would be successful. Girls had to know how to work in order to make their marriage successful. We had our study hours the same as public school has.5  

Susan also described what Sundays were like for students at PSIG, remarking, “we had church, Sunday school in the morning and in the afternoon there was singing and the teachers read stories to us, then church at night and it didn’t occur to us not to want to go. It was just as natural and right as breathing.” She also recalled that PSIG students did not wear uniforms, instead wearing “what we thought pretty and wanted to wear.” The sources of clothing varied, for “when the children’s parents could afford them they bought their clothes, but boxes and barrels of clothes and material were sent to the school, I imagine from New York, and that way there was always something nice for the ones who couldn’t afford them.”6 Susan was a member of the PSIG class of 1889, taking part in a celebratory program with others in her graduating class.7 

Adult Life
Once she graduated from PSIG, Susan attended Emory University in Oxford, Georgia for a year with three other PSIG alumnae, before returning to Indian Territory after her freshman year, stating, “I didn’t finish there for I quit when I was a freshman and came back and taught for three years.” The first school at which she taught was called Greenleaf School, and she recollected her time there with significant affinity. The section in which she described this school is even titled in the interview transcription, “My first and favorite school,” where she taught forty Native students in “a log house daubed with dirt, with one window and a fireplace. It had been a dwelling.” She also recalled that “the books were furnished by the school and the Trustees were so saving with them that I couldn’t let a child take a book home at night for fear they might tear or lose it. All lessons had to be prepared at school.” While working there, she stayed with a Native family. In her IPP interview she also noted that she could not speak Mvskoke and felt that if she had been able to speak the language, it would have aided in her teaching.8 

After leaving Greenleaf School, Susan moved on to her second and third schools in the early 1890’s, both of which she described briefly. Her “second school was east of Okmulgee and didn’t have any name.” This school initially taught only Native students, but later admitted white students as well. “[T]he third and last school,” also unnamed, “was near the McDermott place which had one store.” While working there, Susan stayed with a white family about a mile away from the school.9 

Once the academic year ended at this third school, in approximately 1894, she married George W. Tiger, the eldest son of former Muscogee (Creek) Chief Motey Tiger.10 After Susan and George were married, they moved ten miles outside of Okmulgee onto the Tiger Flats.11 The location of the allotment where Susan and George resided was in Township 12 North, Range 12 East, Section 3.12 In the IPP interview, Susan also noted that they lived in town when her husband clerked at the Captain Severs Store for about four years. She recalled, “Okmulgee was very small until the railroad came through and then it began to grow.” Susan and George also lived on a nearby farm for a time, before moving east of Okmulgee when her husband George was made the superintendent of the Orphan’s Home there. 

Susan recalls how the working and studying the students did at the Orphan’s Home was similar to that of the other Mission schools she had known. There, in addition to their work and studies, about 50 students attended Sunday services each week with the sermons preached by a Methodist pastor. George was Superintendent there for four years. In her recollection of this time in her life, she observed, “I would rather have been in my own home on the farm.”13 

Susan and George had six children together, including Eugene (1894-1912), DeWitt (1897- ca.1975), Helen (1901-1994), William Bryan Tiger (1904-1987), Mary Alice (1906-1995), and Grace (1908-1931). Prior to his marriage to Susan, George had been married to a woman named Rose Tiger, with whom he had had two children, Ada and Ida Tiger. Two of their children, Grace and Eugene, both died in early adulthood.14  

 
Susan’s daughter, Helen (Tiger) Prevett, was featured in the Henryetta Daily Free-Lance in June of 1986. That article mentions that Susan “was a stern disciplinarian, demanding her children respect their elders and mind their manners. She read the Bible daily to the children. Being a former schoolteacher, Susan desired that her children receive as much formal education as possible.”15 In 1937, when Susan was approximately 67 years old, she stated in her IPP interview, “we have four living children, DeWitt, Helen, William Bryan, and Mary Alice.”16 

Death and Legacy  
Susan’s husband George Tiger passed away in 1908 and was buried alongside two of their late children, Eugene and Grace Tiger on Tiger Flats.17 After the death of her husband, Susan lived between Okmulgee and Henryetta in Schulter, Oklahoma. According to a 1910 U.S. Federal Census, her residence and enumeration district was listed as Schulter Township.18  In addition to her impact as a student, educator, and family matriarch, she described herself as having “always been a retiring sort of person.”19 Susan lived a long life, dying in a local Henryetta hospital on January 1, 1962, at the age of 91. Her funeral services were held at the Immanuel Baptist Church in Henryetta, officiated by Rev. Kenneth Romines. She was buried at Wilson Cemetery in Henryetta, Oklahoma. According to Susan’s obituary, at the time of her death she was survived by two sons, four daughters, twenty-seven grandchildren, and forty-five great grandchildren.20  

The Dawes Roll Number of Susan (Hampton) Tiger is c6035.21 

Endnotes   

1. Susan Hampton Tiger, Interview by Grace Kelly, June 11, 1937, Henryetta, transcript, The Indian Pioneer Papers Collection, The University of Oklahoma Digital Collections,  https://digital.libraries.ou.edu/cdm/ref/collection/indianpp/id/5339. [Hereafter cited as Tiger, IPP Interview], p. 111. 

2. Benedict, John Downing. “Biography of Judge Napoleon Bonaparte Moore.” Access Genealogy, January 9, 2012. https://accessgenealogy.com/alabama/biography-of-judge-napoleon-bonaparte-moore.htm (accessed on February 3, 2024). 

3.  Tiger, IPP Interview, p. 112. 

4. Logsdon, Guy Williams. The University of Tulsa: A History, 1882-1972 (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977), 10. 

5. Tiger, IPP Interview, pp. 113-114. 

6. Tiger, IPP Interview, p. 114. 

7. “Closing Concert” Program Document. 1931.001.3.8.1.3. Papers of the Robertson and Worcester Families, 1815-1932, Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK. 

8. Tiger, IPP Interview, pp. 114-115. 

9. Tiger, IPP Interview, pp. 116-117. 

10. “George Washington Tiger.” myheritage.com, July 7, 2021. https://www.myheritage.com/person-1500531_794387601_794387601/george-washington-tigerhttps://www.myheritage.com/person-1500531_794387601_794387601/george-washington-tiger (accessed February 3, 2024). 

11. Tiger, IPP Interview, p. 117. 

12. Hastain, E. Hastain’s Township Plats of the Creek Nation. Muskogee, OK: Model Printing Co., 1910. https://archive.org/details/hastainstownship00hast/page/n3/mode/2uphttps://archive.org/details/hastainstownship00hast/page/n3/mode/2up (accessed February 3, 2024).  

13. Tiger, IPP Interview, pp. 117-118. 

14. “George Washington Tiger.”  

15. “Pioneer Resident Featured in History Book,” Henryetta Daily Free-Lance. June 20, 1986. P. 12. https://www.newspapers.com/image/863689631/?match=1https://www.newspapers.com/image/863689631/?match=1 (accessed February 3, 2024).  

16. Tiger, IPP Interview, p. 118. 

17. Find a Grave, memorial page for George Washington Tiger (20 Mar 1866–27 Nov 1908), Find a Grave Memorial ID 13813419, citing Tiger Family Cemetery, Okmulgee County, Oklahoma, USA; Maintained by Far Beyond Our Past (contributor 47649939). https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13813419/george-washington-tiger (accessed 15 December 2023). 

        18. Susie H. Tiger, U.S. Census Bureau, 1910 United States Federal Census, Shulter, Okmulgee, Oklahoma; Roll T624_1267; Page 28a; Enumeration District 0155. 

        19. Tiger, IPP Interview, p. 118. 

20. “Mrs. Susan Hampton Tiger,” Okmulgee Daily Times, January 27, 1962, p. 2. https://www.newspapers.com/article/okmulgee-daily-times-obituary-for-susan/130191728/ (accessed December 15, 2023). 

21. Native American Enrollment Cards for the Five Civilized Tribes, 1898-1914,  NARA Microfilm, Publication M1186, 93 rolls; NAID: 251747; Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75; National Archives in Washington, D.C. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/251747 (accessed February 3, 2024).  

Bibliography  

Benedict, John Downing. “Biography of Judge Napoleon Bonaparte Moore.” Access Genealogy. 2012.  

Department of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs. (Office of the Commissioner to the Five Civilized Tribes). Enrollment Cards, 1898-1914. NAID: 251747; Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75; National Archives, Washington, D.C. 

“George Washington Tiger.” myheritage.com. 2021.  

Hastain, E. Hastain’s Township Plats of the Creek Nation. Muskogee, OK: Model Printing Co., 1910.  

Logsdon, Guy Williams. The University of Tulsa: A History, 1882-1972. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1977. 

“Mrs. Susie Hampton Tiger.” Okmulgee Daily Times, January 27, 1962. Newspapers.com. 

Oklahoma Historical Society Research Division, ed. Indians - Creek L. to R.: 1. Dewitt Talmadge Tiger, 2. Susan Hampton, Mrs. George Tiger, 3. Grace Tiger, 4. Ada Tiger, Back: 1. Ida Tiger, 2. Helen Mae Tiger Preuett, 3. Mary Alice Tiger, 4. Bryan Tiger. Photograph. Oklahoma City, July 22, 2015. Oklahoma Historical Society. 

Papers of the Robertson and Worcester Families, 1815-1932, 1931-001. Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK.  

“Pioneer Resident Featured in History Book.” Henryetta Daily Free-Lance. June 20, 1986. Newspapers.com.

Tiger, Susan Hampton. “I was reared in a Missionary School and Home.” Interview  

By Grace Kelly, June 11, 1937, Henryetta, Oklahoma. Transcript. Indian-Pioneer Oral  

History Project, The University of Oklahoma, Western History Collection, Norman, OK.

U.S. Census Bureau; Ancestry, 1910 United States Federal Census, Shulter, Okmulgee, Oklahoma; Roll: T624_1267; Page: 28a; Enumeration District: 0155; FHL microfilm: 1375280.