Thomas Buffington

Thomas Mitchell Buffington (1855-1938) was a Cherokee Nation politician and an elected district judge.

He was born October 15, 1855, in Going Snake District of the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory, now in Adair County, Oklahoma.

His parents were Ezekiel Buffington, who was born in Georgia in 1807 and settled in Oklahoma Territory in 1835 as part of the Cherokee diaspora.

He was appointed as a delegate to Washington, D.C. to represent the Cherokee Nation before the United States Congress.

There he supported passage of the Curtis Act of 1898, which weakened tribal governments, brought all persons in the territory under federal law, and facilitated land allotments.