The Keetoowah Nighthawk Society was a secret society dedicated to the preservation of Cherokee culture and tradition in the face of forced assimilation. This image was published in Emmet Starr's 1922 History of the Cherokee Indians, where its caption is given as "The Council of the Keetoowah Nighthawk Society, 1916." The man standing in the foreground had been identified as Redbird Smith (1850-1918), chief of the Keetoowahs.
with--3 related real-photo postcards circa 1904 to 1918 depicting an overturned train, a crude prison, and a man hanging by a noose from a tree--the apparent victim of a lynching. The consignor states that these photographs were the property of his grandfather David Quinton, a Cherokee lawman in Adair County, Oklahoma. Family tradition recalls that the man who caused the train wreck was forcibly removed through the roof of the jail to be lynched.