Alice Brown Davis was born in the Cherokee Nation. She was well-educated by private tutors and in boarding schools and ultimately taught school at Sasakwa. It was there that she met her husband, George Davis. The couple was married by the Chief of the Creek Nation, Samual Checote, in 1874. Together, they established the Bar X Ranch and trading post and founded the settlement of Arbeka, near the North Canadian River at Muskogee, in 1882. After her husband’s early death, Davis took over management of the ranch, twenty cowboys, and the local post office. In 1893, she became the interpreter for the Dawes Commission and, in 1909, took a group of missionaries to the Florida Seminoles. In 1922, President Warren G. Harding appointed her as Chief of the Seminole Nation. This made her the first woman chief of any tribe of Native Americans west of the Mississippi and possibly the only chief chosen by both her people and a United States President.