The Bureau of Indian Affairs constructed the Union Indian Agency Building in the 1870s to house the Superintendent of the Five Civilized Tribes -- the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee (Creek), and Seminole. It was the first consolidated agency for the tribes, who had previously maintained separate offices. The building later served as a school and orphanage for Creek Freedmen under the ownership of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. In 1909, the City of Muskogee took possession. After World War I, the building reinvented itself as "The Chateau," a popular dance hall where locals came to listen and sway to live bands. But after World War II, the music stopped, and the building fell into disrepair. It sat abandoned until the Da-Co-Tah Indian Club decided it deserved a second life.

The Da-Co-Tah Indian Club's founding women, all of Native American ancestry, chose red and gold as their club colors -- symbols of friendship, steadfast ideals, and ambition for the future. They were federated in 1930 and spent decades performing charitable works: donating food and clothing to the Murrow Orphanage, raising money for the Salvation Army, funding drought and unemployment relief. When they turned their attention to the derelict agency building, they raised every dollar for its restoration from individual donors. On April 26, 1966, they opened the doors of the Five Civilized Tribes Museum to the public, fulfilling a vision that Grant Foreman had articulated in a letter: honoring those "pioneer Indians whose courage and fortitude, perseverance and achievement... earned for them the name of The Five Civilized Tribes, and who laid the foundation for the State of Oklahoma."

The museum holds an extensive collection of art produced by Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole artists, including works by Fred Beaver, Johnny Tiger, and Joan Hill. Its crown jewel is the world's largest collection of Jerome Tiger originals. Tiger, a Muscogee-Seminole artist who died tragically young in 1967, created paintings that blend traditional Native imagery with a modern sensibility that still feels urgent. His only major sculpture, "Stickballer," stands on permanent display in the gallery. Each year the museum hosts juried competitions in painting, pottery, gourd art, and sculpture, and every April, the Art Under The Oaks market fills the grounds with vendors from all five tribes, traditional singing, and dancing.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the museum building is itself an artifact -- a physical remnant of the federal government's complex relationship with the tribes it displaced. Downstairs, rotating exhibitions explore facets of life, history, and culture across all five nations. Upstairs, the permanent collection mingles with works from current competitions. The student art show each year invites seventh through twelfth graders with descent from one of the Five Tribes to compete, ensuring that the artistic traditions the Da-Co-Tah women fought to preserve continue to evolve. The museum stands in Muskogee as proof that culture survives not in spite of displacement and hardship, but through the determined hands of those who refuse to let it fade.