Chatah Hopake Holissochi: Dr. Anna Lewis, Choctaw Historian

Chatah Hopake Holissochi:

Dr. Anna Lewis,

Choctaw Historian

The purpose of this site is to showcase the life and work of Dr. Anna Lewis who, in her 39 years at the Oklahoma College for Women, contributed in the classroom as well as to the knowledge of the Southwestern United States. To achieve this purpose, we digitized several documents from the Anna Lewis Collection housed in the University Archives. Most documents have been digitized but have not been posted to this site either out privacy concerns, in the case of student papers, or because we were unable to confidently transcribe Anna Lewis' handwriting with any accuracy. The untranscribed documents, as well as the transcribed items remain a rich source of material for researchers studying women's history, the history of education (especially women's education), the Southwest, and Oklahoma. The Anna Lewis Collection is open to researchers.

Why did we name the site Chatah Hopake Holissochi?

Chatah Hopake Holissochi is roughly translated as "Choctaw Historian" although there is no word in the Choctaw language that means "historian". With the help of Dr. Lee Hester, Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at USAO, and Richard Adams, head of the Choctaw Nation language program, the following words were used to describe Anna Lewis. Chatah means "Choctaw", Hopake means "long ago", and Holissochi is "one who writes". Taken together, this means "One who writes about the long-ago Choctaws." It can also mean "Choctaw who writes about long-ago things." Dr. Lewis' life and work grandly met all of these meanings.

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