Tuskahoma is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in northern Pushmataha County, Oklahoma, United States, four miles east of Clayton.

It was named after Nunih Waiyah, a sacred mound in Mississippi where the Choctaw brought the bones of their ancestors to rest and established the tribe.

Later, during a period of constitutional experimentation, the Choctaw shifted their capital from Nanih Waiyah to Doaksville, Skullyville, Fort Towson and Boggy Depot.

[8] After the Choctaw Nation decided to make Tuskahoma the permanent capital, it constructed an appropriate building to house the government.

But when the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway built its tracks through the Kiamichi River valley in the mid-1880s, they ran two miles to the south of the capitol.

Business flocked to the vicinity of the new Tuskahoma railroad station and the Capitol precinct was abandoned, except during sessions of the government.

Tuskahoma Female Academy [or Institute] opened in 1892 at nearby Lyceum, with Peter J. Hudson serving as superintendent.

[Noted Choctaw educator Anna Lewis, who had attended the school, bought the site and used materials from the ruins to build her family home, which she called Nunih Waiyah.

Banks, hotels, stores, churches, a school, and numerous homes lined its commercial district and residential streets.

The Kiamichi River, important as a source of water, is not navigable at Tuskahoma and has never played a role in local transportation.

To the north of Tuskahoma lies McKinley Rocks, a series of massive white boulders seemingly strewn across the top of a mountain.

Access is difficult, causing a WPA survey crew to recommend during the 1930s that the site, while abounding in scenic beauty, should not become a state park due to lack of roads.

[14] The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma holds its annual Labor Day Festival (pow-wow) in Tuskahoma on the grounds of the Capitol building.