Narcissa Clark Owen (née Chisholm; October 3, 1831 – July 11, 1911) was a Native American educator, memoirist, and artist of the late 19th and early 20th century.
She was the daughter of Old Settler Cherokee Chief Thomas Chisholm, wife of Virginia state senator Robert L. Owen Sr. and mother of U.S.
[1] Narcissa Owen is most recognized for her Memoirs written in 1907, where she narrates accounts of her life along with the stories and culture of her Cherokee relatives.
Narcissa Owen's father, Thomas Chisholm, a landowner and slave owner, moved his family to Beattie's Prairie (near present-day Jay, Oklahoma) in 1828.
Young Narcissa also learned about her Cherokee heritage from "Granny Jenny," her father's former nurse and the daughter of enslaved Black people.
Narcissa Chisholm moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas, in 1846 to live with her decade-older sister Jane and attended an academy there run by Melvin Lynde.
[5] They moved near the Clinch River while her husband continued his survey work, and then to Lynchburg, where Owen became President of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad.
[3] In Lynchburg, the Owen family and their slaves lived at Point of Honor, a mansion overlooking the James River and various railroad lines serving the city.
[4] During the American Civil War, Robert Owen ran the railroad (a crucial supply and troop line for the Confederacy) and his wife and Mrs. Thomas J. Kirkpatrick led the women of St. Paul's Episcopal Church who sewed uniforms and otherwise assisted the same cause.
Lynchburg never fell to Union forces, which withdrew after false reports (for some of which Narcissa Owen later took credit) of Confederate troop strength in the town.
[4] In 1895, the 62-year old Narcissa Owen retired from teaching, devoting herself to art and refuting misconceptions of Native Americans as primitive and uncouth.
In 1808, Owen's father Thomas Chisholm receives the Silver Peace and Friendship Medal from Jefferson for his efforts to unite the Eastern and Western Cherokees.
[8] As a sign of further admiration, Owen later named her ranch near the Little Caney River "Monticello," after Jefferson's home in Virginia.
[3] In 1900, her son Robert L. Owen began a six-year legal battle in Oklahoma and Washington, D.C., which ultimately led to a judgment for the balance due the Cherokee from the 1835 treaty ($5 million including interest from 1838).
Narcissa Owen moved to Washington, D. C., where she acted as her son's hostess, and continued working to refute misconceptions of Native Americans.
[11] As Owen's modern editor has noted, the Memoirs combine traditional storytelling modes (and humor, including trickster imagery) and Native perspectives deriving back to Sarah Winnemucca's Life Among the Piutes (1883) and Lucinda Lowery Hoyt Keys' Historical Sketches of the Cherokees (1889).
Her remains were returned to Lynchburg, Virginia, for a funeral at St. Paul's Church, and burial beside her husband at Spring Hill cemetery (where her son Robert would later also be buried).