The relationship of his father with "Annie" was not clearly cited in the book by Starr, and acknowledging the practice of plural marriage was a controversial subject.

One genealogy website forum, as a way of mocking the genealogist's conclusion as Samuel Mayes being like Howard Hughes with a plane to do so much.

In 2017, the Cherokee Phoenix covered the Trail of Tears survivor ceremony for Ahnawake at her grave in Oklahoma.

[7] He edited a small weekly newspaper there called the Sequoyah Memorial, with the motto: "Truth, Justice, Freedom of Speech and Cherokee Improvement.

In 1863, Mayes married Martha McNair (another Female Seminary Class of 1856 graduate) in Rusk County, Texas, but she died near Durant in the Choctaw country in 1866.

The daughter of David and Martha (McNair) Vann of the Saline District and also a Female Seminary graduate, brought a son George N. Drew (1861–1878).

[12] During the war, his family and other Confederate Cherokee took refuge in Rusk and Smith counties of east Texas, where Mayes married for the second time.

[13] His cousin, Joel Mayes Bryan (1809–1898), operated crucial saltworks in Adair County beginning in the 1840s.

However, Chief Dennis Bushyhead acknowledged Mayes as his successor and retired in January 1888, after the Downing party seized the tribal offices at Tahlequah.

U.S. Judge James M. Shackelford, established the first U.S. District Court in what had been Indian Territory at Muskogee on April 1, 1889.

Thomas M. Buffington briefly served as interim chief until the tribal council convened and elected C. J. Harris his successor on December 23, 1891.