Seger Colony Ledger

Colony was founded in 1886 by John Homer Seger as a settlement for Arapaho after conflicts with white settlement on their lands. Seger had arrived in the region in 1872 to work at the Indian agency on the Cheyenne and Arapaho reservation. Seven years after founding Colony, he began an industrial training school which largely taught farming and agriculture to the Native American residents (who included Arapaho and Cheyenne but also members of other tribes).

The ledger records purchases by over 200 mostly Native American people. A tabbed alphabetical index in the front identifies the page numbers where details on that person's purchases can be found. Among the items purchased were sugar, coffee, eggs, vegetables, meat, shoes, clothing, fabric, tobacco, candles, rope, buckets, etc.

Represented in the ledger are notable members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho community, including Left Hand, (Henry) Roman Nose, and Packer, likely the same Cheyenne and Arapaho men who had been held as prisoners at Ft. Marion in Florida following the Red River Wars of the 1870s. Appointed in 1891, Little Big Jake was the first Cheyenne tribal chief after allotment and frequently visited Washington, D.C. to advocate for the tribe. George Bent was the son of a Cheyenne mother and an Anglo father who fought with the Confederates in the Civil War, survived the massacre at Sand Creek, fought with the Cheyenne against the whites, and eventually worked for the U.S. government. Grant Left Hand was a prominent Arapaho Chief and an early student at Carlisle Indian School. Jock Bull Bear was, according to a history of Cloud Chief, a "local favorite" who made a living by boxing and wrestling in the East over the winter and spent his summers hunting and fishing on the Washita River.