John Brown (Seminole chief)
John Frippo Brown (October 23, 1842 – October 21, 1919) was the last principal chief of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma. He served from 1885 to 1901 and again from 1905 to 1906.
He was born near Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, into the Tiger Clan. He was of mixed heritage, the son of Dr. John Frippo Brown, a Scottish-born physician, and Lucy Nancy Greybeard. He had six siblings. His sister Alice Brown Davis became the Seminoles’ first woman chief in 1922, and his brother Andrew Jackson Brown served as treasurer. Brown is listed as one-half Seminole by blood on the Dawes Rolls.
During the Civil War, Brown served as an officer in the Confederate Army under Seminole Chief John Jumper. After the war, he helped negotiate the Reconstruction Treaty of 1866 for the Seminole Nation. In 1867, his parents died in a cholera outbreak.
There was a leadership dispute after Reconstruction. Although Big John Chupco was recognized by the U.S. government as chief for a time, Brown and the majority of the Seminole people supported Jumper’s leadership and then elected Brown as chief. He led the tribe as governor from 1885 to 1901, and again from 1905 to 1906, when tribal government ended as Oklahoma became a state.
Brown worked on national matters too. He helped negotiate the Dawes Commission agreement in 1897, which began dividing communal Seminole land into individual plots. He was a delegate to the Sequoyah Constitutional Convention in 1905, which aimed to create an all-Indian state, but that plan did not win approval.
He traveled often to Washington, D.C., and befriended President Theodore Roosevelt. He owned a ranch near Wewoka and ran the Wewoka Trading Company with his brother. He was ordained as a Baptist minister and led the Spring Baptist Church from 1894 until his death. He married Lizzie Jumper, and after her death he married twice more. He had at least 12 children. John Frippo Brown died in Sasakwa, Oklahoma, on October 21, 1919.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 05:16 (CET).