Chilocco Indian Agricultural School
historic school near Newkirk, Oklahoma, United States
Chilocco Indian School (/ʃɪˈlɑkoʊ/) was an agricultural school for Native Americans on reserved land in north-central Oklahoma from 1884 to 1980. It was approximately 20 miles north of Ponca City, Oklahoma and seven miles north of Newkirk, Oklahoma, near the Kansas border. The name "Chilocco" is apparently derived from the Creek eco rakko, which literally meant "big deer" but typically referred to a horse.
In 1912, the Oklahoma Supreme Court heard a case over an election dispute involving whisky and whether the Chilocco reservation was part of Kay County and the state of Oklahoma or "Indian Territory". The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school land was not an Indian Reservation, that the school was an off-reservation entity, and that the word reservation had various meanings and the area was not reserved as Indian territory.
Background
The U.S. Congress in 1882 authorized the creation of five non-reservation boarding schools. Chilocco was one of the five which also included Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas, Chemawa Indian School in Oregon, and Fort Simcoe in Washington. Major James M. Haworth, first Superintendent of Indian Schools, selected a site for the school along Chilocco Creek. The Indian Territory land was set aside for the school by an 1884 executive order signed by 21st President of the United States Chester Arthur. Chilocco was located in the Cherokee Outlet or Cherokee Strip and the Cherokee provided 8,640 acres (35 km2) of land to help Chilocco fulfill its mandate for agricultural education.
The public source identifies “Chilocco Indian Agricultural School” as historic school near Newkirk, Oklahoma, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Chilocco, Indian and Agricultural.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5099140. VIAF identifies the subject as 138357629. The Library of Congress control number is n78092180. Authority coordinates are 36.985, -97.063. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1884, 1980, 1912 and 1882.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chilocco Indian Agricultural School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.