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Cemeteries - Creek
date: July 21, 1937
burial ground: Yahola Harjo Burial Plot
founded: 1913 by: Yahola Harjo
present owner: John McGilbray
address: Yahola, Oklahoma
# of graves: 1
condition: cared for
legal location: Muskogee County - SE NW SE, Section 28, T15N, R16E
field workers: James S. Buchanan - Carl Sherwood

This burial plot consisted of one grave is the last resting place of Yahola HARJO, fullblood Creek and the most prominent and beloved medicineman in legendary history of the Creek tribe. In council with friends and relatives previous to the illness that resulted in his death, he express the desire to be buried on his own home place and designated the place for the grave about thirty feet west of his log cabin. It is situated at the foot of the southeastern slope of the high hill upon which was the old Yahola stamp ground.

When he was buried in 1913, a number of his relatives erected a concrete vault over his grave, which was bitterly opposed by another faction of his relatives, due to the fact they were of another religious faith and contended the concrete vault should not be placed over the grave because Yahola Harjo could not escape from the grave on resurrection day. In later years the vault has become broken and destroyed and a marble marker placed at the grave which brought a satisfactory conclusion of the matter to both factions.

Thus Yahola Harjo, the sage of the Creeks, sleeps as he lived, alone on the land he knew and loved as his home through so many years, the original claim he established in the early days of the Creek Nation in the then untamed Indian Territory. Though he sleeps in the mystery sleep called death, spiritually he will live forever sacred in the memory of the Creeks.

Yahola Harjo, died June 22, 1913, age 90 years

Submitted to OKGenWeb by Gay Wall, February 2000.