Ruth Margaret Muskrat

Biography

Ruth Margaret Muskrat was born in 1897 in Indian Territory. As a young woman, she was active in the Y. W. C. A., serving as "poet delegate" at the International Student Volunteer Conference in Peking, China, in 1922. She attended a number of schools, including Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, the University of Oklahoma, and Mount Holyoke College, where she graduated in 1925. During her time at Mount Holyoke, she presented President Calvin Coolidge with a copy of The Red Man in the United States, a survey of the present day American Indian.

In 1926, Muskrat took a position at Haskell Institute (an Indian high school in Kansas) as an English teacher. She served as executive secretary of the National Congress of American Indians, and wrote poetry and articles on Americans Indians. Her book, Indians Are People, Too, was published in 1947. Ruth Muskrat Bronson became her married name, and she raised one daughter. She died June 12, 1982, in a nursing home in Tucson, Arizona, at age 84.