Chester Poe Cornelius

Chester Poe Cornelius
Chester Poe Cornelius
Born	September 7, 1869 (1869-09-07) Oneida Nation of Wisconsin
Died	November 30, 1933 (1933-12-01) (aged 64)
Occupation	Native American lawyer and activist

Chester Poe Cornelius ("Geyna") (September 7, 1869 – November 30, 1933) was an Oneida lawyer, scholar, activist and visionary. Cornelius, a descendent of distinguished Oneida leaders, collaborated with his sister Laura Cornelius Kellogg and her visionary "Lolomi Plan," a Progressive Era alternative to Bureau of Indian Affairs control, and presaged subsequent 20th-century movements to hold the federal government accountable to American Indians to preserve culture and communal lands in a protective sovereignty, to institute tribal self-government, and reclaim communal lands and promote economic development. Cornelius, a chief of the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin, devoted much of his time to national Indian affairs and tribal organizations in the State of Oklahoma.

Chester Poe Cornelius was born on the Oneida Indian Reservation at Oneida, Wisconsin, on September 7, 1869, the eldest son of five children of Adam Poe and Celicia Bread Cornelius. Kellogg came from a distinguished lineage of Indian tribal leaders. His paternal grandfather was John Cornelius, Oneida chief and brother of Jacob Cornelius, also a chief, and his great-grandfather was Chief Dagoawi. His maternal grandfather was Chief Daniel Bread, known as Dehowyadilou “Great Eagle” (1800–1873), who helped find land for his people after the Oneidas were forcibly removed from New York State to Wisconsin in the early nineteenth century and averting their removal west of the Mississippi. When Dagoawi died he was still fighting to obtain land claim monies for Oneidas.

In late 1880's, Cornelius attended the Carlisle Indian School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He pursued higher education at Dickinson College in Carlisle, and later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He attended summer sessions at Harvard University and finally enrolled in the Eastman Business College in Poughkeepsie, New York, from which he received a diploma. In 1890, Cornelius was an Assistant Disciplinarian at the Carlisle Indian School. That year, speaking at the Mohonk Conference in New York, Kellogg remarked, "The way to exterminate the Indian is to absorb him into American civilization. Sometime during the 1890s, Cornelius moved west to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, and worked as a school teacher in the Indian Service at the Darlington Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian Reservation in El Reno, Oklahoma. In 1896, Cornelius presented a paper on the issue of Indian citizenship to a national teachers conference. On June 9, 1899, Kellogg married Laura Gertrude Smith in El Reno, and was reported to hold a position in the Indian Service in Oklahoma.