Bacone College, formerly Bacone Indian University, is a private tribal college in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Founded in 1880 as the Indian University by missionary Almon C. Bacone, it was originally affiliated with the mission arm of what is now American Baptist Churches USA. Renamed as Bacone College in the early 20th century, it is the oldest continuously operated institution of higher education in Oklahoma. The liberal arts college has had strong historic ties to several tribal nations, including the Muscogee and Cherokee. The Bacone College Historic District has been on the National Register of Historic Places listings in Muskogee County, Oklahoma since 2014. In 2018, the college was struggling financially. Several tribal nations agreed that year to a consortium and chartered it as a tribal college. This action secured federal funding under the government's treaty obligations to support Native American education. The college's current president is Dr. Ferlin Clark (Navajo Nation), a graduate of the University of Arizona. History Some accounts credit Almon C. Bacone, a missionary teacher in Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, with asking the American Baptist Home Mission Society for support to start a school in the Cherokee Baptist Mission at their capital, Tahlequah in 1867. Bacone had previously taught at the Cherokee Male Seminary established in Indian Territory. According to historian John Bartlett Meserve, Bacone College can be traced to a Baptist mission school at Valley Town in western North Carolina, which was part of Cherokee homelands. Evan Jones, one of the earliest missionaries to the Cherokee, led the school. After most of the Cherokee were removed to Indian Territory in the late 1830s, the Valley Town school moved to a site near what developed as present-day Westville, Oklahoma. In 1867, Evan Jones' son, John B. Jones, moved the school to Talequah in the Cherokee Nation. In 1885 the mission school moved to Muskogee, Creek Nation, and changed its name to Bacone, after its first teacher. When Bacone College was founded (at the time more of a seminary or academy in curriculum level) in 1867, Almon C Bacone was the sole faculty and three students were enrolled. By the end of the first semester, students had increased to 12. By the end of the first year, the student population was 56 and the faculty numbered three. Bacone appealed to the Muscogee Creek Nation's Tribal Council to donate (a section) of land for the college in nearby Muskogee. It