Dianna Rogers (also known as Tiana or Talihina Rogers, 1790s – November 4, 1838) was an Old Settler Cherokee who emigrated from Tennessee to the Arkansas Territory in 1817. Her first husband was killed in the Osage wars with the Cherokee people. Forced to move further west in 1828 into what would become Indian Territory her extended family, which included John Rogers and John Jolly, lived in what is now the northeastern part of Oklahoma, along the Arkansas border. In 1829, she married Sam Houston and operated a trading post with him near Fort Gibson. She also tended their small farm and the slaves who assisted them. After Houston left for Texas in 1833, Dianna remarried. She left no living children. Many myths and fanciful stories have been told of her and Houston's relationship, their meeting, and eventual parting, but very little is actually known. A body purported to be hers, but disputed by several historians, was exhumed and buried at the Fort Gibson National Cemetery in 1904. The tombstone bears the name Talahina, which according to legal documents and historians' analysis was never her name.
Early life and education Dianna Rogers, was likely born in the 1790s, in the Cherokee Country (now Meigs County, Tennessee) to Jennie (née Due) and John Rogers, known as Hell-Fire Jack. She was one-sixteenth Cherokee. According to Cherokee historian and physician Emmet Starr, her mother was the daughter of Elizabeth Emory and Robert Due (or Dews). Elizabeth's second husband was Hell-Fire Jack, with whom she had five children. Sororal polygamy (or polygyny) was common among the Cherokee, but discouraged by the Moravian missionaries who worked among them and who were shocked that Dianna's mother and grandmother were both married to the same man. Her father was born around 1749, and was of Scottish, or English heritage. He served as a British captain in the American Revolution. He worked as a trader in Indian country, for the Muscogee people and then lived among the Cherokee for thirty years before moving to Arkansas. He operated a ferry on the Clinch River in Tennessee and had a large plantation where he grew corn and cotton with slave laborers.
Dianna grew up in a large family. Her half-brothers and uncles were Charles (b. ca. 1774), John Jr. (1779–1846), and James. Her half-sisters and aunts were Aky and Nanny. Her full siblings were Annie, Joseph (d. 1834–1836), William, and Susannah. Dianna was the penultimate sibling. She signed documents with an "X", as was customary among Cherokees rather than a sign of illiteracy. Even Sequoyah refused to affix his Cherokee signature "to a white man's document". Although Jennings C. Wise, stated that Dianna was "mission-educated", and historians Jack Gregory and Rennard Strickland stated that family tradition held that she was educated at a Moravian mission school in Tennessee, "perhaps at Brainerd", Brainerd Mission was not founded until 1817. The records of Springplace Mission, located near James Vann's plantation at what is now Spring Place, Georgia and founded in 1800, make numerous mentions of Dianna's father, but state that Rogers' children in 1807 were attending the school of Mr. Blacke, near their home. Prior to that, Rogers had employed George Barbee Davis, who also tutored John Ross, to tutor his children at home.
Hell-Fire Jack's property was located on Roger's Creek, at the confluence of the Hiwassee and Tennessee Rivers, a few miles from Hiwassee Island, where John Jolly lived. Jolly had adopted young Sam Houston in 1809 when he ran away from his home near Maryville, Tennessee and crossed the river to live with the Cherokee community on Hiwassee Island. There is little doubt, per Gregory and Strickland, that Dianna knew Houston as he lived with her uncle, and he became close friends with her brothers John and James. Her brothers and uncles served in the Creek War, participating in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend during the War of 1812 with Houston. Some sources claim that Houston and Dianna fell in love during his time with Jolly, while other stories tell that Dianna lived with Jolly as a child and Houston helped her with her lessons. Gregory and Strickland found no evidence of the nature of any relationship between Dianna and Houston in Tennessee. After three years, Houston returned to Maryville in 1812.
Married life Dianna married David Gentry, a blacksmith, whose first wife was her mother's sister, Mary Due. Gentry's father was likely Nathaniel Gentry of Spartanburg and Greenville Counties in South Carolina. Newlyweds David Gentry and Mary Due are found in the 1800 census of Greenville County, South Carolina. Dianna and David had two children, Gabriel and Joanna Gentry, who were half-siblings and nephew and niece to Mary Due's children, Elizabeth, Isabel, and Patience. In 1817, her father led a group of thirty-one Cherokees to what would become the Arkansas Territory. Dianna and David settled around Dardanelle, where David's business thrived. Their goal in moving was to avoid the White encroachment on their lands and evade attempts to force the Cherokee to assimilate to White culture. From the time of the Cherokee arrival in Arkansas, skirmishes began with the Osage Nation, who viewed the Cherokees as intruders on their lands. War between the two peoples continued through the 1830s. In 1825, the United States entered into a treaty with the Osage Nation, who agreed to cede land that established the western boundary of Arkansas as the 100th meridian. Thereafter, the policy of the United States was to relocate Native people to these lands west of any organized territory or state. A treaty with the Cherokee living in the west was agreed in 1828, providing that the lands in Arkansas Territory be given up in favor of a permanent home to the west in what would later become Indian Territory. In exchange for them leaving Arkansas Territory, the tribe was granted seven million acres of land, indemnification of losses to relocate, food to tide them over until a new crop and harvest could be realized, and a formal delineation of their promised land.
Dianna and David moved west and lived near Frog Bayou, which is now in Crawford County, Arkansas, near Mountainburg. Her extended family lived in scattered settlements within a fifty-mile radius of Fort Smith. The family members visited each other often, according to council minutes, store records, and letters. At some point after moving to Frog Bayou, but before 1829, David was killed in the Osage wars. Both of her children with David died without marrying or having children. In July 1829, Houston came back into her life. He had married Eliza Allen in January, while serving as Governor of Tennessee, but the couple separated within three months. No explanation for their separation was ever given, but Houston resigned his governorship and headed to the western Cherokee country, where his friend Jolly was living. Jolly's home was located on a bluff overlooking the confluence of the Arkansas River and Illinois Rivers at Tahlonteeskee, near present-day Gore, Oklahoma, and about thirty miles south of Fort Gibson. Many fanciful stories tell of Houston and Dianna's meeting. Gregory and Strickland state "perhaps the most reliable [account] is found in Williams". Alfred M. Williams published "General Houston's Indian Life" in 1883, at a time when there were still people living who knew Jolly and Houston. Williams stated that regular stickball games were held in the field behind the council house at Tahlonteeskee, followed by a night of dancing; at one of these events, Dianna and Houston began their relationship.
They moved in together at a cabin Houston built on the opposite bank of the Grand River from Fort Gibson. Rogers' family tradition holds that the couple were married in a civil service at the home of Captain John Rogers, on Spavinaw Creek (now in Mayes County, Oklahoma) in 1830. Historian Grant Foreman stated he had never been able to find a record of their marriage, but that their relationship was sanctioned by the tribe. Cherokee law, which required an official service for marriage to a White man, would not likely have applied to Houston. He had been formally granted Cherokee citizenship by adoption of a resolution by the Cherokee Council on October 21, 1829. Founding a home together was all that was required to establish a common law marriage for the Cherokee. That Houston was still married to Eliza Allen, and would not divorce her until 1833, was of no consequence, as Cherokee law accepted that when a couple no longer resided together they were divorced. Regardless of how their union came to be, the couple were recognized by the tribe and family as husband and wife, and Dianna drew up legal documents reflecting her name as Dianna Houston.
They called their home Wigwam Neosho, lived in a small log cabin, and had a small herd of cattle, a garden, and planted a pear orchard. Dianna supervised the farming operations and the slaves, also helping run the trading post. Wigwam Neosho was located on the Texas Road and Houston ran a trading post there, taking advantage of the numerous caravans of settlers passing. Gregory and Strickland recognized that life with Houston must have been a significant change from the aristocratic setting of her youth. Both her father and Jolly lived in mansions, described as "almost palaces...with large porticos and yards tended by slaves". Houston's home was a one-room, rough-hewn cabin and Fort Gibson, they said, was not a place that someone with Dianna's background would likely have visited. The Fort was called the "Hellhole of the Southwest" and frequented by adventurers, soldiers and gamblers who played poker nightly and drank heavily. Her family had been known as gracious hosts who threw lavish celebrations. Gregory and Strickland said that entertaining the rough traders, stray soldiers, gamblers, and Native people who visited them and were rowdy and drunk, would have been trying for "any well-bred woman", and "must have been offensive" to Dianna. On the other hand, they also entertained figures like Matthew Arbuckle Jr., Auguste Pierre Chouteau, and Washington Irving, among others, and she may have traveled with Houston when he was on official business.
Houston often drank whiskey at nearby Fort Gibson and increasingly returned home in a state of drunkenness. Williams reported that Houston sought the "stupification" that liquor provided so that he did not have to dwell on his regret and failures. Despite this, when asked to accompany Cherokee leaders to Washington, D.C. to present their grievances, Houston sobered up. The delegation left in December 1831 and arrived in Washington in early 1832. Houston was accused of profiting from his relationship with the Cherokee and a court case ensued, which he won. Andrew Jackson, who at that time was president, then sent Houston as an envoy to the Comanche people of Texas. Houston did not return to the Cherokee until May 1833. On June 27, he drafted a power of attorney to represent Dianna in her claims for property lost in the removal from Arkansas, but was back in Texas by July. Many legends exist about Dianna and Houston's parting – she died in his arms; she threw herself off a cliff; she died in the Choctaw Nation and the town of Talihina was named after her; and she accompanied Houston to Wilson's Rock, (near present day Muldrow, Oklahoma), where they parted ways. Williams gives no information about their parting, but stated that after Houston had established himself in Texas, he sent for Dianna. She refused to join him, preferring to remain with her family. On April 1, 1836, Dianna married Samuel D. McGrady. McGrady was a whiskey runner, who operated between Fort Gibson and Fort Smith. Whether she remained married to McGrady, remained at Wigwan Neosho, or left the area are unknown, according to Gregory and Strickland.
Death and legacy