Sulphur Springs was a Choctaw Indian community formerly existing in the

Choctaw Nation The Choctaw Nation ( Choctaw: ''Chahta Okla'') is a Native American territory covering about , occupying portions of southeastern Oklahoma in the United States. The Choctaw Nation is the third-largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...

Indian Territory The Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States Government for the relocation of Native Americans who held aboriginal title to their land as a sovereign ...

. It was located 3/4 mile south-southeast of the highway intersection of OK 3 and OK 93 in present-day

Rattan Rattan, also spelled ratan, is the name for roughly 600 species of Old World climbing palms belonging to subfamily Calamoideae. The greatest diversity of rattan palm species and genera are in the closed- canopy old-growth tropical forest ...

, in

Pushmataha County, Oklahoma Pushmataha County is a county in the southeastern part of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2010 census, the population was 11,572. Its county seat is Antlers. The county was created at statehood from part of the former territory of the ...

. Prior to establishment of a

United States Post Office The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U ...

in 1910 with the name “Rattan”, the area was called Sulphur Springs. Sulphur Springs was county seat of

Cedar County Cedar County may refer to: * Cedar County, Iowa * Cedar County, Missouri * Cedar County, Nebraska * Cedar County, Choctaw Nation * Cedar County, Washington, a proposed county made up of part of King County * Cedar County, Utah Territory, a f ...

in the Choctaw Nation. It was established by the Choctaw's Doaksville Constitution of 1860 and, in the manner of most Choctaw county seats, served a part-time role as legal and political center. It was never a sizeable settlement and boasted almost no mercantile or retail stores.

County court A county court is a court based in or with a jurisdiction covering one or more county, counties, which are administrative divisions (subnational entities) within a country, not to be confused with the medieval system of ''county courts'' held by t ...

met on the first Monday of each month and was called Probate Court, even though it was more similar to modern-day county court proceedings than a modern

probate court A probate court (sometimes called a surrogate court) is a court that has competence in a jurisdiction to deal with matters of probate and the administration of estates. In some jurisdictions, such courts may be referred to as Orphans' Courts o ...

. The court met in a large

log house A log house, or log building, is a structure built with horizontal logs interlocked at the corners by notching. Logs may be round, squared or hewn to other shapes, either handcrafted or milled. The term "log cabin" generally refers to a sma ...

, constructed of long, straight logs, serving as both an Indian Methodist church and

court house A courthouse or court house is a building that is home to a local court of law and often the regional county government as well, although this is not the case in some larger cities. The term is common in North America. In most other English-s ...

. The Cedar County Court House was torn down by white

settlers A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established a permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. A settler who migrates to an area previously uninhabited or sparsely inhabited may be described as a pioneer. Settl ...

sometime after the dissolution of the Choctaw Nation as a sovereign entity upon Oklahoma's statehood in 1907. A

tree stump After a tree has been cut and felled, the stump or tree stump is usually a small remaining portion of the trunk with the roots still in the ground. Stumps may show the age-defining rings of a tree. The study of these rings is known as dendrochron ...

said to be preserved from the tree used as a whipping post—the preferred form of punishment doled out by the Choctaw Nation judicial system—is now held by the Pushmataha County Historical Society in

Antlers, Oklahoma Antlers is a city in and the county seat of Pushmataha County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 2,453 at the 2010 census, a 3.9 percent decline from 2,552 in 2000. The town was named for a kind of tree that becomes festooned with antle ...

. Sulphur Springs took its name from several sulphur

springs Spring(s) may refer to: Common uses * Spring (season), a season of the year * Spring (device), a mechanical device that stores energy * Spring (hydrology), a natural source of water * Spring (mathematics), a geometric surface in the shape of a he ...

located in the vicinity. A number of Choctaw families living around the Cedar County Court House used them as well as visitors to county court and meetings of the

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related Christian denomination, denominations of Protestantism, Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John W ...

congregation.''Ibid''., "Harrison Frazier".

References

Indian Territory