Ruth Margaret Muskrat was born on October 3 , 1897 in White Water , on the Delaware Nation Reservation in Indian Territory to Ida Lenora ( née Kelly ) , an Irish-English transplant from Missouri , and James Ezekial Muskrat , a Cherokee . His ancestors had traveled the Trail of Tears from Georgia to Indian Territory in the late 1830s during Indian Removal . When she was ten years old , she witnessed the disruption caused to the lives of her nation when the Curtis Act of 1898 , an amendment of the Dawes Act , applied allotment of communal lands to the Five Civilized Tribes . At the age of fourteen , Muskrat enrolled in preparatory school at the Oklahoma Institute of Technology in Tonkawa , graduating in 1916 . She furthered her education at Henry Kendall College in Tulsa and at Northeastern State Teachers College . Financial hardship forced her to stop classes , and she taught for two years to earn sufficient funds to continue her schooling
Trail of Tears
Trail of Tears
Ruth Muskrat Bronson