They Bring the Degree With Them: The Oklahoma Masonic Indian Degree Team

Unique Masonic Degrees Worth Traveling For, No. 2

Some Masonic traditions are tied to a place.

This one gets in a vehicle and comes looking for you.

For more than six decades, Brothers of the Oklahoma Masonic Indian Degree Team have packed handmade regalia, ritual knowledge and probably more highway miles than most of us care to contemplate, then headed out to Lodges around the country.

Their destination might be Texas.

Or Pennsylvania.

Or Maine.

Or Alaska.

In 2022, approximately 800 Masons gathered in Delaware to watch them confer a Master Mason Degree. In a span of just two weeks in 2023, the team traveled from Long Island, New York, to Anchorage, Alaska.

That tells you something.

Brothers will travel a long way for something worth seeing.

Apparently, so will the degree team.

This is exactly the kind of Masonry that interests me.

Not because it is unusual simply for the sake of being unusual.

Because somewhere between Oklahoma and wherever these Brothers unload their bags next, Freemasonry becomes what it has always claimed to be.

A Brotherhood without much concern for mileage.

This Is Still the Master Mason Degree

That needs to be said first.

The Oklahoma Masonic Indian Degree Team is not performing some mysterious fourth degree dug out of an old frontier manuscript.

It is the Master Mason Degree according to the Oklahoma ritual.

David Dill, secretary of the team, explained that the required Oklahoma ritual remains intact. With the approval of the Grand Lodge, the team incorporates elements of the members’ Native heritage into the presentation, including Native prayer songs at places where the Oklahoma ritual traditionally calls for music.

Then there is the part photographs never quite explain.

The regalia.

The beadwork.

The feathers.

The colors.

The songs.

The Brothers themselves.

These are not costumes pulled from a theatrical storage closet.

Dill explained that team members’ dance clothing is handmade and that the outfits worn for their accompanying dance demonstrations are the same kind of regalia they would wear at an Oklahoma powwow. Recruiting for the team is difficult partly because a Brother needs the Masonic ritual ability, the ability and knowledge to maintain the regalia, and the freedom to travel.

Think about that combination for a minute.

You need to know your work.

You need to know your culture.

Then you need to be willing to put both in the car and drive.

That is commitment.

There Is More Than One Nation Represented

One of the easiest mistakes to make when talking about Native American history is flattening dozens of different peoples into one convenient story.

The Oklahoma Masonic Indian Degree Team is almost the opposite of that.

Its members represent multiple tribal nations.

Dill has identified Brothers from among the Muscogee Creek, Ottawa, Pawnee, Apache, Seminole and Choctaw, with roughly seven or eight tribes represented among the team at the time of his 2023 interview. Most belong to Masonic Lodges in northeastern Oklahoma, particularly around the Tulsa area.

That matters.

This is not Freemasonry pretending to be Native American.

These are Native American men who are Freemasons, bringing parts of their own living heritage into a Masonic experience.

There is a big difference.

And it is worth getting right.

Masonry in Oklahoma Has Deep Roots

To understand why a degree team like this could come from Oklahoma, you have to go further back than the team itself.

Way back.

Before Oklahoma was Oklahoma.

The first Masonic Lodges in what became Indian Territory appeared in the nineteenth century. Cherokee Lodge was chartered by the Grand Lodge of Arkansas in 1848, with officers installed at Tahlequah the following year. Other early Lodges developed in the Choctaw and Muscogee nations and around Fort Gibson.

Some of the most important Native political leaders of the era were Masons.

Cherokee Principal Chief John Ross, for example, became a Freemason in Tennessee in 1827. William P. Ross and Choctaw leader Peter Pitchlynn also became Masons.

The history is complicated.

It should be.

Real history usually is.

Freemasonry itself was not some ancient Native institution secretly waiting in Indian Territory. Modern Oklahoma Masonic historians correctly caution against romantic stories that try to turn similarities between Native traditions and Freemasonry into evidence that they somehow share an ancient origin.

They do not need one.

The real story is better.

Native men encountered Freemasonry, joined it, led within it and made it part of their communities.

Eventually, generations later, Native Oklahoma Masons created something recognizably Masonic and recognizably their own.

That is the Oklahoma Masonic Indian Degree Team.

Then They Took It on the Road

This is my favorite part.

They could have stayed in Oklahoma.

They didn’t.

The team became known for traveling.

A 1981 appearance in California gives some idea of what these trips became. Camellia Lodge No. 805 hosted the team for an outdoor degree in Carbon Canyon in Orange County. Brothers traveled in from near and far. The Lodge area was set outdoors with bleachers, and mounted Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies who were also Masons helped tile the surrounding hills on horseback.

Read that again.

A tiled outdoor Master Mason Degree.

In a canyon.

With Masonic sheriff’s deputies on horseback guarding the hills.

And a traveling Native American degree team from Oklahoma.

If you are waiting for me to explain why someone would drive several hours to attend something like that, I can’t help you.

Your keys should already be in your hand.

Decades later, the team is still traveling.

Recent trips cited by the team include New York, Alaska, Denver, Maine, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas, Arkansas and Kansas.

Different Lodges.

Different candidates.

Different audiences.

Same road.

The Candidate Is Still the Point

There is a danger with any famous degree team.

The spectacle can become the story.

The candidate cannot.

Everything still has to come back to the Brother being raised.

According to Dill, candidates at the end of these degrees sometimes struggle to even describe what they have experienced. Some become emotional. Crowds have responded the same way, including lengthy standing ovations after out-of-state performances.

That is important.

Because the best degree work is not remembered because somebody hit every word like a courtroom transcription.

You remember how it felt.

You remember who was there.

You remember the Brother who came up afterward and shook your hand.

You remember looking around the room thinking:

“Well, I wasn’t expecting tonight to be quite like this.”

Years later, the details blur.

The feeling usually doesn’t.

Why Brothers Travel for Masonic Degrees

I hear the same question whenever we talk about unique Masonic degrees.

Why drive five hours to see a degree you have already seen?

Fair question.

You can also drink coffee at home.

Yet somehow there are coffee shops.

Travel changes familiar things.

Seeing the Master Mason Degree worked by Brothers from another jurisdiction forces you to pay attention again.

You hear different rhythms.

You notice different traditions.

You meet Brothers whose Masonic experience may look nothing like yours.

Then everyone sits down afterward and discovers they have roughly the same Lodge problems.

Some traditions apparently are universal.

That is why I think more Freemasons should travel for Masonry.

Not every weekend.

Your wife may eventually notice.

But once in a while, get outside your district.

Then your jurisdiction.

Find the degree everyone talks about.

Go see it.

You Don’t Need Another Masonic Thing

There are approximately eleven billion Masonic gifts available on the internet.

I may be slightly off on that number.

• Square and Compasses mugs.
• Rings.
• Knives.
• Hats.
• Aprons.
• Decanters.
• Signs.
• Coins.
• Cufflinks.
• Things made out of wood that nobody knew needed a Square and Compasses carved into them until Etsy arrived.

Search Freemason gifts, Master Mason gifts or gifts for Freemasons, and you could probably finish your Christmas shopping before lunch.

Nothing wrong with any of it.

I like Masonic stuff too.

But the Masonic things I keep are usually attached to somewhere I went.

A pin from a Lodge I visited.

A shirt from a degree.

A coin handed to me by a Brother.

A postcard from somewhere I would not have known existed if Masonry had not taken me there.

The object becomes a bookmark.

The story is what you are actually keeping.

That is the idea behind Traveling Ashlar.

Wear the Story

When we decided to feature the Oklahoma Masonic Indian Degree Team with Traveling Ashlar, it was not because we needed another piece of Masonic apparel.

The world has enough shirts.

This one needed a reason to exist.

The reason is a group of Brothers who have spent decades taking their work outside their own Lodge rooms and sharing it with Freemasons across the country.

Every trip costs time.

Every piece of regalia requires care.

Every degree requires preparation.

Every mile has to be driven.

Yet they keep going.

There is something distinctly Masonic about that.

Not the symbols.

Not the merchandise.

The effort.

Maybe the Best Masonic Gift Is a Full Tank of Gas

There is a line hidden somewhere in all of this.

We spend a lot of time asking how to get Brothers more involved in Freemasonry.

Maybe occasionally the answer is simpler than another committee.

Give them somewhere worth going.

• A battlefield.
• A cave.
• A historic Lodge.
• An outdoor degree.
• A degree team that just drove halfway across the country to raise one Brother.

Tell the guys at your Lodge you are going.

Put four of them in the car.

Stop somewhere questionable for breakfast.

Argue about directions even though every person in the vehicle has GPS.

Attend the degree.

Buy the commemorative Masonic shirt.

Meet somebody.

Stay longer than you planned.

Drive home talking about it.

That sounds considerably more interesting than another Tuesday night spent discussing the price of replacing the Lodge refrigerator.

Find Them When They Come Through

The Oklahoma Masonic Indian Degree Team does not perform every week.

That is part of what makes seeing them worthwhile.

When their travels bring them within reach, go.

Do not wait until afterward to see somebody else’s photographs and say:

“I wish I knew about that.”

Find out.

Make the drive.

Introduce yourself to the Brothers from Oklahoma.

Watch the work.

Listen to the songs.

Pay attention to the candidate.

Then remember that somewhere after the Lodge closes, those Brothers are going to pack everything back up and get on the road again.

Another Lodge.

Another town.

Another Master Mason.

Another few hundred miles.

That might be the most Traveling Ashlar thing imaginable.

Wear. Share. Travel.

Traveling Ashlar
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