Narcissa Chisholm Owen

Narcissa Clark Owen ( Chisholm; October 3, 1831 – July 11, 1911) was a Native American educator, memoirist, and artist of the late 19th and early 20th century. She was the daughter of Old Settler Cherokee Chief Thomas Chisholm, wife of Virginia state senator Robert L. Owen Sr. and mother of U.S. Senator Robert Latham Owen Jr. and Major William Otway Owen. Narcissa Owen is most recognized for her Memoirs written in 1907, where she narrates accounts of her life along with the stories and culture of her Cherokee relatives.

Early life and family background Narcissa Clark Chisholm was born on October 3, 1831, in a log cabin near Webbers Falls (in what was then Arkansas Territory, to become Indian Territory and later Oklahoma) to Cherokee sub-chief Thomas H. Chisholm (1790–1834) and his Virginia-born wife Malinda Wharton (1803–1864) (great-granddaughter of British Jacobite politician Philip Wharton, 1st Duke of Wharton).

Her paternal great-grandfather, John Beamor, emigrated from England to the Carolinas to missionize Cherokees. In 1699, the 23-year-old colonist married 16-year-old Quatsis (Cherokee), sister of Chief Caulunna. Rev. Beamor joined South Carolina's House of Burgesses and owned a plantation and at least 10 enslaved Black people. Around 1730 Beamor traveled with a group of Cherokees to England, where he signed a treaty that was opposed by a Cherokee group led by Oconostota (Cherokee, – 1783), a war chief prior to the Revolutionary War and an ancestor to Narcissa.

In 1838, US federal government forced the majority of Cherokee into Indian Territory along the Trail of Tears. Owen witnessed Cherokees, supervised by the US Army, camp on her mother's farm in January 1839. In her memoir, she noted the cruelty of herding human beings accustomed to warm winters through the cold and wind. She described how many refugees were sick, dozens died, and were buried in what had been the family graveyard.

Education and family life Having lost her father early, Narcissa Chisholm was transferred between family members during her youth. Initially, her elder sister and brothers were educated at Dwight Mission School while her mother raised her. She returned to Fort Smith in 1848 and attended a female academy, Mrs. Sawyer's School, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. After graduating with a degree in music and art in 1850, she replaced her music teacher for a year.

Shortly after the war ended, Robert Owen resigned as president of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad, after losing a fight against merging the railroad with several owned by former Confederate General William Mahone. Robert Owen served a term in the Virginia Senate, then purchased a plantation near Norfolk, Virginia, from a former surveyor buddy, where he died unexpectedly shortly before the Panic of 1873. Her husband's death left Narcissa Owen with young children to raise, and what little financial security remained after Robert Owen's death soon vanished. Narcissa Owen returned to teaching to send her sons to college. Her younger son Robert L. Owen Jr. had graduated from Washington and Lee University in 1887, and had already moved to Okhahoma to continue a teaching career as orphanage principal, as well as to read law and begin a legal career. Her self-portrait of 1896 displayed above indicates her Victorian-era respectability and wealth. Owen also displayed tapestries at the Oklahoma Territory's pavilion, for she did not believe in hierarchies of artistic medium.

Her painting "Thomas Jefferson and His Descendants" won a medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1904. Displayed in the Indian Territory Building throughout the exposition, Narcissa's portraits showcased six generations of Jefferson's descendants: Thomas Jefferson himself, his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph, his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph, his great-granddaughter Mrs. R. G. H. Kean, his other great-granddaughter Mrs. John S. Morris, and Adelaide and Pattie Morris. Narcissa's interest in honoring Thomas Jefferson comes from her family's history and friendship with him. In 1808, Owen's father Thomas Chisholm receives the Silver Peace and Friendship Medal from Jefferson for his efforts to unite the Eastern and Western Cherokees. As Owen's modern editor has noted, the Memoirs combine traditional storytelling modes (and humor, including trickster imagery) and Native perspectives deriving back to Sarah Winnemucca's Life Among the Piutes (1883) and Lucinda Lowery Hoyt Keys' Historical Sketches of the Cherokees (1889).

Death and legacy Owen died in Guthrie, Oklahoma, on July 12, 1911, aged 79 (far from her ranch as well as Bartlesville). Her remains were returned to Lynchburg, Virginia, for a funeral at St. Paul's Church, and burial beside her husband at Spring Hill cemetery (where her son Robert would later also be buried).

Her former home, Point of Honor is on the National Register of Historic Places, as is the Cherokee Female Seminary. The former is now a city museum for Lynchburg; the latter is a coeducational state university.

Her painting of Thomas Jefferson is now in the collection of the University of Virginia. Her painting of Sequoyah (a copy of a painting by Charles Bird King) is owned by the Oklahoma Historical Society, which allows its display at the Oklahoma Judicial Center; the Society also has her self-portrait of 1896 depicted above and gold medal. Several of her other paintings are in the collection of the Oklahoma Museum of Art and Gilcrease Museum.