Carrie Bushyhead Quarles

Carrie Bushyhead Quarles (Cherokee, March 17, 1834 – February 23, 1909) was a Native American, graduated in the first class of students from the First Cherokee Female Seminary and was a teacher to Native American children for nearly forty years. Born in Tennessee to biracial parents of Cherokee and Scottish heritage, she came to Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears. She graduated in 1855 as valedictorian of the inaugural class of the Cherokee Female Seminary and began teaching at the school the following year. During her career, which lasted until 1893, she trained numerous Native American leaders, such as Alice Brown Davis, Samuel Houston Mayes, and Thomas Buffington.

When the United States government passed the Curtis Act of 1898, which forced allotments, enrollment of tribal members, and dissolution of the Cherokee government, Quarles was enrolled in the Cherokee Nation and received an allotment in Baptist, Indian Territory in 1903. All of the Cherokee living in Oklahoma had been made US citizens in 1901 and were made citizens of the State of Oklahoma in 1907. A play, Under the Cherokee Moon by Laurette Willis, which was performed annually between 2007 and 2011 at the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, Oklahoma, featured Quarles as the principal character. She told the story of the Cherokee people from their removal to the post-Civil War period.