Mount Tabor Indian Community

This article is about contemporary nonprofit organization. For 19th-century Texas Cherokee community, see Texas Cherokees. For 19th-century Texas Choctaw community, see Yowani Choctaws.

The Mount Tabor Indian Community (also Texas Cherokees and Associate Bands of the Mount Tabor Indian Community) is a cultural heritage group located in Rusk County, Texas. There was a historical Mount Tabor Indian Community dating from the 19th century. The current organization established a nonprofit organization in Texas in 2015.

Mount Tabor Indian Community

Named after	Mount Tabor
Type	501(c)(3) organization
Tax ID no.	EIN 92-2886370 Defunct EIN 47-2350957
Purpose	A23: Cultural, Ethnic Awareness
Headquarters	Mineola, Texas
Location	United States
Official language	English
President	J.C. Thomson (2018)
Website	mounttaborcommunity.org

The modern community identifies as being of Cherokee descent as well as Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Muscogee descent.

1972 to present

In 1972, as the Cherokee Nation was reorganizing and grew more politically distant from the Mount Tabor Community. Keeler had been reappointed Principal Chief by every U.S. President from Truman to Nixon. In anticipation of more changes and with Native American activism focused on local control, he resigned as Chairman of the Texas Cherokees and Associate Bands. Foster Bean assumed all responsibilities, making the TCAB again reflect only a local Texas organization. With the approval of the 1975 Cherokee Nation constitution, the TCAB ceased to exist in Oklahoma without a vote. Since, it has been active only in Texas. Some Oklahoma Cherokee have continued to serve on the Executive Committee, such as Mack Starr and George Bell, but after 1980 all Executive Committee members have been tied to Mount Tabor in Texas only.

Judge Foster Bean served as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the TCAB until 1988. J.C. Thompson was appointed by the Committee to replace him. Bean remained a member of the Executive Committee, which included Billy Bob Crim, R. Nicholas Hearne, and Saunders Gregg.

Thompson first addressed the community's standing as a recognized tribe. The Mount Tabor Community was never like larger bands or nations with a constitutional government or council. The Executive Committee acted as the sole government for day to day activities, the General Assembly, all blood descendants in this loose organization as compared to the larger tribes like the Cherokee or Choctaw Nations. Although some minimal bylaws were developed in the 70s, it was not until the 1998 constitution was passed that the government of the community changed. Secondly, he suggested changes to the name of the organization. The organization no longer used "Mount Tabor" and was only known as the Texas Cherokees and Associate Bands, Texas Cherokees or Texas Band. Since the Executive Committee saw that the TCAB as the dual state organization, which after 1975 only remained viable in Texas. The committee proposed the name" Texas Band of Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians". That, and the proposed "Texas Band of Cherokee Indians" were both rejected by the General Assembly, made up of all adult members.

The Choctaw descendants were offended by the latter proposal, they felt slighted, even though many are both Choctaw and Cherokee. The compromise in 1992 was to return to the band's original name, plus retaining the TCAB title. Since then the official name has been the Texas Cherokees and Associate Bands of the Mount Tabor Indian Community. With the explosion of fraudulent groups claiming to be "Cherokee Tribes", the Executive Committee in 1998 no longer referred to the community by the TCAB title, but as Mount Tabor. The Executive Committee and General Assembly do not consider the community to be a Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, or Muscogee-Creek tribe or band, but rather a combination of peoples who have are an interrelated band by blood, marriage and history.

J.C. Thompson served as Chairman until 1998, when Terry Jean Easterly was selected as the first woman to lead the community. Easterly is also the first leader who has not had Cherokee ancestry. She is Choctaw, Chickasaw and Creek, a descendant of both the Thompson-McCoy and Jones families through Arthur Thompson, brother of William C. Thompson. She served from 1998 to 2000 and was succeeded by Peggy Dean-Atwood, a descendant of Archibald Thompson, who also had no Cherokee ancestry. Atwood served through 2001. After her resignation, J.C. Thompson became Chairman for the second time. He served until August 2018, when he was succeeded by William Ellis "Billy" Bean, the great-grandson of Chief John Ellis Bean. Chairman Bean served only 13 months ending on September 2, 2019. He was succeeded by Cheryl Aleane Giordano, the third woman to hold the position. Ms. Giordano is a descendant of the Thompson-McCoy family and is of Choctaw and Chickasaw descent. She had previously served as Operations Coordinator on the Mount Tabor Executive Committee.

Modern Mount Tabor Indian Community

In 1978 the band set up its first bylaws that were distinct from the 1925 Texas Cherokee and Associate Band by-laws. In 1998, the band approved a new constitution as part of their effort to meet federal standards for self-government and to gain federal recognition as a tribe by the Secretary of Interior in their Federal Acknowledgment Project. The band started seeking federal recognition in 1990 but the project was tabled in 1992, in part due to a misunderstanding of the criteria established by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (in consultation with tribes). The band revived its current Federal project in 2015.

In the early 21st century, the band holds an annual reunion usually in either Kilgore or Troup. It maintains connections to three of their traditional cemeteries, the Asbury Cemetery near Overton; the Thompson Cemetery at Laird Hill; and the Mount Tabor Indian Cemetery in rural Rusk County. Additionally, the band publishes a quarterly newspaper, The Mount Tabor Phoenix.

Nonprofit organization

In 2015, Jerry C. Thompson registered the Mount Tabor Indian Heritage Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, based in Kilgore, Texas. It was registered in 2023 in Mineaola, Texas.

Leadership

A brief meeting was held in 2005 and then restructured in 2015 and held again annually since. With the 1998 constitution, the government became three tiered with a seven-member Executive Committee, initially with a Chief Justice, that position held by Saunders Gregg alone. In 2017 the change to a three-member tribunal brought the current tribal government into its present order. Prior to 1998, the organization made two attempts at drafting by-laws.

In 1990 it was discussed the need to officially take one name that reflected the entire community, in particular the "Associate Bands". Initially the Texas Band of Cherokee, Choctaw, and Chickasaw was considered. The final decision that was approved by the General Assembly was one that reflected the traditional original name of the community, yet maintained the Texas tie to the TCAB. Thus the official name of the community was adopted as the Texas Cherokees an Associate Bands of the Mount Tabor Indian Community. However, while that was the legal name, due to the number of fraudulent groups calling themselves Cherokee tribes, it was determined to only utilize the Mount Tabor Indian Community, the traditional name given the community in 1853 by John Adair Bell, this didn't distinguish any particular tribe but showed how the four tribes became one. The name has remained the same since that time.

Texas resolutions

• Texas Senate Resolution 384, a congratulatory resolution, passed March 17, 2015
• Texas Senate Concurrent Resolution 25, a congratulatory resolution, passed May 10, 2017
• Texas Senate Bill 2363, sponsored by Senator Bryan Hughes (R), to establish state-recognition for the Mount Tabor Indian Community, introduced on March 8, 2019, died March 21, 2019