TAHLEQUAH DAILY PRESS — “Sensual” isn’t the first word that comes to mind when thinking of Seminary Hall, the oldest building at Northeastern State University and center of its campus.

But Dr. Carl Farinelli invites visitors to savor all five senses when touring Seminary Hall – and possibly a sixth sense, invoking the school’s spirit and feeling of heritage.

On Friday, students videotaped Farinelli conducting what he calls a “walkabout tour” of Seminary Hall. The finished video, with input from other experts on the University and its history, will be a valuable tool for the NSU Foundation, said Penny Moore, annual fund coordinator in the development department. The video will be a part of NSU’s centennial celebration.

Moore plans to ask local historian and educator Beth Herrington and C.F. Parker, longtime professor, to add their reminiscences to the video.

Farinelli also suggesting adding videos of the late Jake Chanate drumming and telling native stories.

“In 2002, when I was a graduate student, Dr. Farinelli gave me and a couple of other students the tour,” Moore said

“I always wanted to get it on film. It’s a great marketing tool.”

Farinelli beguiled a few listeners on a cold, blustery afternoon as he led them around the historic structure.

“I came here in 1988. Guess which year I bought this umbrella?” he said, waving a collapsible bumbershoot in NSU green and white, the white part somewhat yellowed. “Guess they made them better then.”

The tour guide, now a professor of educational foundations and leadership, began his tour at the arch on the south side of Seminary Hall. He had just come to NSU when it was dedicated, highlighted by a speech from Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller.

“I started out on the right foot here. I really was hit full force with the spirit of NSU,” he said.

Over the years, he’s heard many legends about Seminary Hall and the campus, some factual, some myth.

“Being a literary person, it didn’t really bother me if it was true or not,” he said. “Everything I’m going to ask you to think about today has a deeper, hidden truth.”

The tour group stood outside Seminary Hall’s main entrance, flanked by the conical towers that housed the offices of legendary professors.

“You know, this was all ivy covered at one time. This was considered kind of the Ivy League of Oklahoma,” Farinelli said. “One book referred to it as the Athens of the west.”

The ivy, although picturesque, was removed so it would not damage the bricks.

Inside, Farinelli pointed to the cornerstone plaque. Construction of the seminary began in 1888 and was completed in 1889. It replaced the original Cherokee Female Seminary at Park Hill, which burned in 1887. The old site is now the grounds of the Cherokee Heritage Center.

He said the foyer best gives the impression of what the building must have been like shortly after its construction. The fireplace serves as its focus.

“If you can imagine, in those days, there was no central air conditioning, no central heat,

Upon entering, eyes are drawn to a large mural, “The Buffalo Hunt.”

“Of particular interest are the murals. This is the most famous and the largest of the murals,” Farinelli said.

During the Depression, three of the famed Kiowa Five, a group of artists receiving much of the credit for bring modern Indian art to national attention, pained the murals in Seminary Hall. Farinelli also displayed the other murals, of fancy dancers in the dean’s office and drummers on the second floor landing.

“When I first came here this mural was not in very good shape, it was splotchy,” he said. “It had been greatly abused. Nobody appreciated what it was.”

Moore told how in recent years the murals were preserved and restored, thanks to alumni and other donors. The project was finished and dedicated in 2007.

While viewing the drum painting on the second floor, Farinelli recalled conversations with Chanate, longtime veterans affairs representative for the university and master of ceremonies at the annual powwow.

“One of the things Jake educated me about the drum was the difference between the Hollywood drum beats and the real drum beat,” he said.

It was one of many things he has learned at NSU.

“You can’t go to this university without being reeducated in cross-cultural, cross-generational ideas,” he said.

He also pointed out a nearby plaque containing recollections of former seminary student Patsy Mayes Adair Pointer. She reflected the prominence of the students attending the seminary. Two Oklahoma counties also bear her family names.

Farinelli said frequently people come to campus telling stories of their ancestors who attended the school. It exemplified the Cherokee belief that girls should receive the same quality education as boys.

“Cherokees had thought of women having valuable leadership skills when Europeans still thought of women as property,” he said.

“A lot of leadership began at this university and that spirit still lives at this university.”

He already had asked the tour members to examine Seminary Hall’s visual richness and hear the sound of the drum beats. Next he took them outside, to the south part of the Seminary Hall lawn, to touch bricks that formed part of the original Cherokee Female Seminary in 1851.

“You’re touching some of the very same bricks that those women touched in 1851,” he said as they laid their hands on the columns.

He’s heard at least a dozen theories of why the seminary was relocated after the 1887 fire, but believes the availability of good spring water in Town Branch was a major reason. Moore also said she had heard the Cherokees wanted to have the institution on a hill, overlooking the town.

A large, venerable persimmon tree next to the columns evoked another sense, that of taste, as Farinelli encouraged those who had never sampled a fresh persimmon to do so, now that the frost has made them palatable.

The next stop was at the west end of Seminary Hall, where the words “Cherokee Icebox 1887” are etched into the concrete sidewalk.

“Use your imagination to kind of connect to the spirit of the university, before there were refrigerators, before you could go get ice for your drink,” he encouraged his listeners.

“It’s going to be hard for you to imagine it today, because it’s so cold.”

But on a 100-degree day, it was tempting for students to sneak down to an underground chamber where ice was stored, when the legendary Florence Wilson, their dean, went to the bank in town and was gone for an hour or two.

One girl was posted as a guard, to warn her classmates of Wilson’s impending return.

(Some believe Wilson still haunts Seminary Hall, where she lived and reigned for years. To hear more about this, join one of the Seminary Hall ghost tours held each October).

“Are the steps still there?” Moore asked, pointing at the sidewalk.

“You know, I would love to know. I wish we could get them to open it up,” Farinelli replied. Asked if a weathered lamppost nearby was original, Farinelli said it wasn’t. A former university president – the same one who had the third story of the education building removed – also scrapped all the old gas lights in favor of something more modern. His solution? Square boards topped by light bulbs. Alumni, not caring for them, eventually raise money to purchase reproduction lampposts.

Farinelli said the gazebo on the north side of Seminary Hall once was the site of a burial, although not that of a body. Former NSU President Roger Webb invited students out back, where a hearse and backhoe awaited, saying there was going to be an interment. The subject: A stone marked “apathy.”

“On that day they buried apathy at NSU,” Farinelli said.

He invited group members to turn their eyes toward Seminary Hall’s north facade.

“Look back at the building. Notice all the different tints on the brick,” he said, attributing them to covered porches formerly along the building’s side. “Some of them received sunlight, some of them didn’t.”

The kitchen also was on the north side, and standing outside its windows, Farinelli brought forth the final two senses.

“I’m going to ask you to smell the wonderful smell of the warm yeast bread,” he said. “I love the idea of the sound of butcher knives being sharpened.”

An arched window next to the back door, now bricked in, could well have been a spot for cooling pies. And the sill of the window next to the door is smooth, in contrast to the rough one next to it. Cooks used the Arkansas sandstone sill to sharpen everything from cleavers to small paring knives.

“Come touch the rough one and feel how it would have felt like, then the smooth one,” he said.

The restroom facilities, primitive by today’s standards, also were on the north side. After using them, students lined up for inspection before going in to breakfast.

“Everything was in this building at one time,” Farinelli said. “It was a university in one building.

“There are many stories about this university, wonderful stories. This university has rich historical roots in the Cherokee Female Seminary,” he said.

When the United States was founded, the only people who could vote were rich white male landowners. Indians were not even considered human until years later, did not become citizens for many more years.

“We have painfully, slowly grown to a more representative democracy. The Cherokees already believed that,” Farinelli said. “This seminary is the exact opposite of Harvard. Harvard was established long before there was a United States to educate the sons of the rich white landowners. The Cherokees established this seminary for their daughters.”