Home / Oklahoma / The Wichita Mountains & the Southwest / Southern Plains Indian Museum
The low brick Southern Plains Indian Museum building in Anadarko.U.S. Department of the Interior / public domain via Wikimedia Commons
🎭Cultural

Southern Plains Indian Museum

Part ofThe Wichita Mountains & the Southwest

A free federal museum in Anadarko, open since the late 1940s, showing the clothing, shields, cradleboards and art of the Kiowa, Comanche, Wichita, Caddo, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Delaware and Apache nations.

⏱
Duration
One hour.
🎟
Admission
Free.
📅
Best Season
Year round, Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; closed weekends.

The Story

Anadarko has been an agency town since the Wichita Agency was rebuilt north of the Washita in 1871 to deal with the Wichita, Caddo and other nations; in 1878 it took over Fort Sill's Kiowa-Comanche agency as well. On August 6, 1901, after the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache reservation was allotted, the government auctioned 1,129 town lots here to crowds camped in a tent city on the east edge of town. The nations stayed: in 2000 the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Indian Health Service and tribal offices in Anadarko employed 540 people.

The Southern Plains Indian Museum belongs to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the Interior Department, not to a nation, and was founded in 1947-48 by the federal and Oklahoma governments working together. It shows the arts of the western Oklahoma nations: Kiowa, Comanche, Plains Apache, Southern Cheyenne, Southern Arapaho, Wichita, Caddo, Delaware and Fort Sill Apache. Historic clothing, shields, weapons, baby carriers and toys fill the main exhibits, and changing sales shows introduce working Native artists.

A $1 million gallery opened on December 15, 2001, enlarging the museum from 4,351 to 5,951 square feet. Its collection holds work by Blackbear Bosin, T. C. Cannon, Allan Houser, Mary Tiger, Solomon McCombs and Mildred Imach Cleghorn, the Fort Sill Apache leader born a prisoner of war.

Visitor Info

⏱
Time Needed
One hour.
🎟
Admission
Free.
📅
Best Season
Year round, Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; closed weekends.
🛣️
Highway
US-62

On the Map

Nearby

The closest stops worth working into your route

cultural33 mi away
Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center
The Comanche Nation's own museum in Lawton, built so that the history, art and lifeways of the Nʉmʉnʉʉ, The People, are told from a Comanche perspective.
natural33 mi away
Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge
Worn granite peaks and mixed-grass prairie in Comanche and Kiowa homeland, set aside in 1901 and restocked in 1907 with fifteen bison sent by train from the New York Zoological Park.
historical36 mi away
Historic Fort Reno
The Army post beside the Cheyenne and Arapaho agency at Darlington, from which troops chased the Northern Cheyenne north in 1878, later a remount station and a prisoner-of-war camp.
historical41 mi away
Chisholm Trail Heritage Center
Duncan's museum of the cattle trail on US-81, with an 18-minute drive film, a western art gallery and the route through the Chickasaw Nation to Silver City and the Canadian.
historical49 mi away
Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum
The outdoor memorial and museum on the site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, where 168 people were killed at 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, shaped by the families and survivors.
cultural50 mi away
First Americans Museum
The museum of the 39 First American nations in Oklahoma today, on the Oklahoma River, with galleries shaped by each nation, Smithsonian objects brought home and a 90-foot mound.

Historical markers nearby

Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour

Marker1.7 mi away
Riverside School
Marker12 mi away
Fort Cobb
Marker25 mi away
Battle of the Wichita Village
Marker28 mi away
Millie Durgan, White Captive
Marker28 mi away
Run of '89 South Boundary