Original Keetoowah Society

The Original Keetoowah Society is a 21st-century Keetoowah religious organization dedicated to preserving the culture and teachings of the Keetoowah Nighthawk Society (Cherokee: ᎩᏚᏩ ᎤᎾᏙᏢᎯ) in Oklahoma. It has been described as the surviving core of the Cherokee movement of religious nationalism originally led by Redbird Smith in the mid-nineteenth century. After the Cherokee were forced to move to Indian Territory, various groups associated with the Keetoowah Society worked to preserve traditional culture and its teachings.

The group now known as The Original Keetoowah Society is believed to have developed from an early 20th-century group known as the Keetoowah Nighthawk Society (or the Nighthawk Keetoowahs). One of the earliest records of the Keetoowah Movement post-Indian Removal is dated August 15, 1888.

Origin of name

The term Keetoowah has been applied to various groups of Cherokee, and is sometimes thought to be an alternative term that the early indigenous people used for themselves as an autonym. Ethnologist James Mooney, in the following extract of a 1902 report for the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology, noted some background on the names by which the Cherokee peoples knew themselves, and were known by others, which included "Ani'-Kitu'hwagi", meaning "people of Kitu'hwa [Keetoowa]":

The proper name by which the Cherokee call themselves is ... Ani'-Yun'wiya' in the third person, signifying "real people," or "principal people"... The word properly denotes "Indians," as distinguished from people of other races, but in usage it is restricted to mean members of the Cherokee tribe, those of other tribes being designated as Creek, Catawba, etc., as the case may be. On ceremonial occasions they frequently speak of themselves as Ani'-Kitu'hwagi, or "people of Kitu'hwa," an ancient settlement on the Tuckasegee River and apparently the original nucleus of the tribe.