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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproduction Further reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. LIFE HISTORY OF SAMMY STILL,

A TRADITIONAL WESTERN CHEROKEE IN MODERN AMERICA

Juliette E. Sligar

Submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences

of American University

in PartialFulfillment of

the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

Public Anthropology

Chair:

Richard J. Dent"'' (\

Cesare Marino

Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences

Date

2005

American University

Washington, D.C. 20016

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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Juliette E. Sligar

2005

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIFE HISTORY OF SAMMY STILL, A TRADITIONAL WESTERN CHEROKEE

IN MODERN AMERICA

Juliette E. Sligar

ABSTRACT

The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma faces an encroachment of mainstream

American culture on its rich cultural heritage. The Cherokee of Oklahoma are struggling

to preserve their language, customs and traditions. This thesis explores what it means,

today, to be a traditional Cherokee in Oklahoma. As with most North American

indigenous cultures, Cherokee traditions are predominantly oral. This study presents the

narrated account of a contemporary, “ordinary” Western Cherokee, Sammy Still. This

account is unique because, to my knowledge, no other life history has been written on a

modem Cherokee individual who is not a public figure. Through this life history, where

ancestral traditions and modem living interweave and cohabitate, one will discover that

the Cherokee people continue to demonstrate their legendary ability to adapt, assimilate

and appropriate what is useful for everyday life. Sammy Still’s way of life soundly

echoes the contemporary Cherokee lifestyle as well as the ancient Cherokee traditions

and language.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study cannot be attributed to the researcher’s work alone. I would like to

take this opportunity to acknowledge the individuals who have made it possible.

First, I wish to thank my advisor and mentor, Dr. Richard J. Dent. Throughout

the academic years that have preceded this work, he has been an attentive listener, a

caring professor, and an impartial critic. He helped me keep my head above waters in

moments of doubt and inspired my academic and scholastic endeavors in times of

wonder. Dr. Dent has been a guiding light to me. So many times, he has given shape to

my chaotic ideas and interests. I would not have done it without him. I have

immeasurable admiration and respect for Dr. Dent, both as an individual and as a

professor, and I am forever in his debt. Dr. Dent has also enabled me to work with the

second person to whom I would like to express gratitude, Dr. Cesare Marino.

Dr. Marino is an amazing student of Indian cultures. He is the sweetest, yet

toughest scholar I had the chance to work for. For almost a year, I strived to help him in

his tasks at the Smithsonian Institution, Handbook of North American Indians, often

feeling that I was slowing him down rather than helping him. No matter how busy Dr.

Marino may have been, he always took the time to guide and instruct me in all Native

American things. Never have I met such an industrious, intellectually curious, and

iii

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. committed individual. I would be honored and feel privileged to be able to collaborate

with Dr. Marino again. He is forever a beloved mentor.

In all things, I want to show appreciation to my husband, Edwin J. Sligar Jr.. He

encouraged me, financially and emotionally supported me, believed in me and stood by

me throughout these most demanding years. Edwin never stopped surrounding me with

love and kindness. He never complained, not even when he spent his birthday alone

while I was conducting fieldwork in Oklahoma. There would have been no graduate

school or research without his unconditionally giving devotion. I can only wish to be

able to repay him with the same amazing support when the time comes.

Other individuals of the academic world have been there for me in a way or another.

The fact that they took the time to pause and listen to my complaints or questions means

a lot to me. Our department chair, Dr. William L. Leap is a renowned expert in North

American Indian linguistics. He gave me invaluable advice. Dr. Geoffrey Burkhart is an

inspiring and patient teacher. He was always available and willing to take the time to

provide me with guidance. I was incredibly lucky to have been his student. Additionally,

anyone who has the chance to study or work with Dr. Naomi Baron should count his or

her blessings. Her expertise in linguistics pairs with a genuine interest in her students. I

have never met someone who can so elegantly turn the study of writing and technology

into such interesting research.

I also wish to acknowledge the members of the CAS Mellon committee of American

University for awarding me with a research grant and Dr. Brett Williams for encouraging

me to apply. The grant was a welcomed help during fieldwork.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. To all my friends in Oklahoma, the talented artist and epicurean Ken Foster, the

matchless comedian and radioman Dennis Six Killer, and the Elders, please accept my

words of gratitude. You made me feel so very welcomed. Thank you for your warmth

and for the time you spared to take me under your wing and to share with me. I also want

to express thanks to my irreplaceable Cherokee language instructor, Ed Fields and his

wife Rita, who invited me to sit on their front porch and enjoy the view.

Diana Mouse, my dear and strong friend, thank you for your limitless hospitality and

for your wisdom. You are the outstanding pillar of an amazing family. I also would like

to thank Eduda (grandfather) Mouse who not only is a remarkable Korean War veteran

but also became a grandfather to me.

I wish to thank and acknowledge my friend Robert Smith who has been a formidable

advisor and has never shied away from my constant babbling and incessant questions.

Finally, and foremost, I wish to honor and express utmost gratitude to the hero of this

study, Sammy Still. He is an incredible individual. I can never truly express in words

how amazing it was to share his family’s everyday life. Mostly, I can never really

convey how becoming part of his family made me feel. For his trust, his friendship, for

all that Sammy is and stands for, I command him. Sammy touched my life in so many

ways. He is a giving and beautiful person. I never expected that I would be welcomed

with such openness and generosity. Sammy entrusted me with the most precious gift: the

story of his life. I can only wish that this modest attempt to transmit the vibrancy and

passion he conveyed to me be an inspiration for future Cherokee generations to follow in

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. his footsteps. I came back a richer person, and I am honored to call Sammy and his wife

Dama, my friends.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT...... ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iii

LIST OF FIGURES...... ix

Chapter

I. THE WESTERN CHEROKEE ...... 1

Statement of the Problem

The Project

Sammy Still

Methods

Subjectivity, Vulnerability, and Interpretation

Relevance of a Single Life History as Ethnographic Tool

Reliability of Oral Accounts

Why Is This Work Important?

Research Setting

II. SAMMY STILL’S CHILDHOOD AND UPBRINGING...... 35

Introduction

Education

Apprenticeship

vii

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Traditional Medicine and Spirituality

Tolerance, Intertribal, and Native-Non-Native Relationship

Cultural Heritage and Preservation

Humor and Friendship

Storytelling

IV. CONCLUSION...... 94

REFERENCES...... 97

viii

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Figure

1. Sammy Still ...... 11

2. Sequoyah syllabary...... 23

3. Map of Oklahoma including the Cherokee Nation Counties ...... 34

4. Photograph of Sammy’s mom, Jessie Still (Coffee) ...... 41

5. Photograph of basket weaving organized by the Cherokee Cultural Center. ...52

6. Photograph of Sammy and Ed Fields making blowguns ...... 53

7. Photograph of Sammy straightening a river cane to make a blowgun...... 55

8. Photograph of Sammy picking dried wild thistle to make darts...... 56

9. Photograph of Sammy detaching the skin of the thistle...... 58

10. Photograph of Sammy attaching the thistle to the dart’s body ...... 59

11. Photograph of a storytelling gathering at Sammy and Dama’s ...... 89

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER I

THE WESTERN CHEROKEE

There are today two major Cherokee groups. The first group is called the Eastern

Band of Cherokee Indians, or Eastern Cherokee, and is located in North Carolina. The

second group is known as the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, or Western Cherokee, and

is located in the eastern part of Oklahoma. Both groups have a common ancestry. They

parted from one another during the period of the infamous Trail of Tears, or Removal, in

1838-39. This historic tragedy led to the removal of about ninety-five percent of

Cherokee Indians from their ancestral North Carolinian and Georgian lands. The

research presented in this work focuses on the Western Cherokee in modem America.

The undertaking of a study on modem Western Cherokee every day life calls for the

investigation of two very important and intertwined aspects of their culture. The first

regards how contemporary Western Cherokee negotiate contemporary life with ancestral

traditions, and the second, the role orality plays as a major medium of communication

and cultural exchange among traditional Cherokee people.

Questions of contemporary identity, cultural revival, and survival are at the heart of

Oklahoma Cherokee concerns as the address to the tribal council of June 14, 2004 from

Principal Chief Chad Smith (2004) reveals:

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We have a legacy: face adversity, survive, adapt, prosper and excel.... We have a decision now whether to pass on that legacy or to allow it to lapse.... Why work? [at passing on the legacy] It’s just amazing what an opportunity we have to rebuild this Cherokee Nation and pass the legacy on. No other group has such an opportunity. Each day, we decide to take advantage of this opportunity, or we lose it.

However, while researching the existing literature, I was surprised to find that more

material is in fact available on the Eastern Band of Cherokee in North Carolina than on

the Western Cherokee of Oklahoma. This is especially true of existing studies on

Cherokee oral culture and folklore.

Such an occurrence may be due to the generally accepted, while not necessarily

accurate, assumption that the Eastern Band alone kept intact ancient Cherokee traditions.

In his introduction to the works of James Mooney, George Ellison (1992:23) writes that

“it also seems clear that [Mooney] had concluded after visiting the Indian Territory in

Oklahoma that ‘the bulk of Cherokee traditional knowledge and ritual remained in the

East’.” What might have seemed true then has been contradicted by subsequent studies

and by my own direct observation during the course of this research.

The Eastern Cherokee are the descendants of those who avoided removal in 1838 and

remained on ancestral lands. In the Series Editors’ Foreword to John R. Finger’s book

Cherokee Americans, Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green (1991 :ix) explain that “those

Cherokees who remained in the East used their geographic isolation and economic

marginality to maintain political and cultural integrity.” The fact that the Eastern

Cherokee remained relatively isolated for some time can be seen as support for James

Mooney’s statement. On the other hand, Perdue and Green (1991 :ix) emphasize that, “in

the twentieth century, however, the Eastern Band became increasingly drawn into a

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market economy, and some of its members began to advocate individualism, assimilation,

and detribalization.”

The Western Cherokee, on the other hand, are the descendants of the nearly 15,000

people who were pushed out of North Carolina and Georgia by American settlers and

walked the Trail of Tears in 1838-39. The common conjecture being that, once

displaced, the Western Cherokee quickly adapted to the dominant surrounding culture

and accordingly lost most of their ancestral customs. However, some believe that since

most of the Cherokee population was forced to remove from its homeland, it is likely that

they took with them their belief structure and traditional culture. These were then

perpetuated in the new Western territory. I, and others, believe that they too maintained

most of their cultural integrity while also incorporating in it useful traits of non-Cherokee

culture.

As with any living culture, beliefs and traditions evolve. It would be unrealistic to

assert that the few hundred Cherokee who remained on Native lands were somehow

frozen in time. Presently, both the Eastern Band of Cherokee and the Oklahoma

Cherokee hold strong to their respective cultures, which have identical roots. Similarly,

today, both the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the Western Cherokee strive for

cultural preservation.

In his book Myths o f the Cherokee, James Mooney (1900) explained that the

originally united Cherokee tribe had in fact started to divide possibly as early as the late

1700s, more than a hundred years before the infamous Trail of Tears. Early records and

oral history seem to confirm what Mooney puts forward in his study. Small bands of

Cherokee came to territories sometimes extending into Spanish lands before the infamous

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Trail of Tears. In her book, The Texas Cherokees: a People Between Two Fires, 1819-

1840, Dianna Everett (1990:10) writes:

In 1788 a Cherokee headman named Toquo, or Turkey, petitioned Don Manuel Perez, residing in St Louis as governor of Spanish Illinois, to .grant him the favor of giving refuge to his whole nation in the territory of the great king of Spain.” Although Spanish officials feared a mass movement of Indians to the west, Esteban Miro, commandant general of Louisiana, nevertheless approved the emigration of up to six villages

Some crossed the Mississippi and begun existing as separate Cherokee groups living in

the West. Everett (1990:10) further explains that, “throughout the last decade of the

eighteenth century, Cherokee headmen sought and received permission to settle there; at

least two large communities were established.”

It is also believed that, as white settlers’ encroached on Cherokee lands, Chief Yunwi-

usgase ’ti (Dangerous-Man) refused to adopt the new settlers’ way of life as well as

system of values. He resolved to move a part of his tribe to the West. They would have

lost touch with the main body of the Cherokee tribe shortly after crossing the Mississippi

and are still today known to the other Cherokee, as “the lost tribe.” These events would

have taken place immediately after the first treaty with the Colony of Carolina in 1721

(Mooney 1900:34).

It is a widely accepted fact that there were many Indian movements back and forth

into Spanish territory and across the Mississippi. These movements may be attributed to

small bands attempting to avoid the ever-advancing colonial frontier and encroachment

on Indian land. The most widely accepted record of a Cherokee band settling in the West

before the tragic exodus of the Trail of Tears involves a historic incident known as the

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massacre of “the Scott party at Muscle Shoals” (Mooney 1900:100), in 1794. Mooney

proposes two conflicting versions of the incident in his book.

In the first version, put forward by early Tennessee historians such as John Haywood

and James Gettys M. Ramsey, the massacre would have taken place when Cherokee from

the hostile town of Chickamauga attacked a party of settlers traveling by boat under the

command of William Scott. The entire crew was said to have been killed, slaves taken

and goods plundered. The perpetrators fearing repercussions then fled into Spanish

territory and founded the first permanent Cherokee settlement there.

This version differs much from the account given by Reverend Cephas Washburn,

first missionary to the Western Cherokee. In Washburn’s account, the Cherokee were

instead tricked by the travelers who stole a large sum of money belonging to the tribe.

The Cherokee party and its chief, Chief Bowles, caught up with the thieves and

demanded restitution of the money. The settlers fired upon them and killed two

Cherokee men. In turn, Bowles’ followers attacked the boat, killed the men but spared

women and children. The warriors then moved into Spanish territory to await the

outcome of the incident. Members of the friendly Cherokee towns in the East

condemned Bowles’ actions and repudiated him. He was later exonerated but, by then,

felt deceived by his people and decided to settle in the West. This account was recorded

by Washburn who interviewed one of the white women who survived the attack and

settled in New Orleans. It presents, however, some inconsistencies that may be linked to

his personal attachment to the Cherokee people (Mooney 1900:100).

Regardless of the unclear nature of early migrations throughout the post-contact

period, it appears that, while each divided group of the main Cherokee Nation adapted to

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rapidly changing circumstances, all made an effort to keep intact the roots of their

cultural identity. While scholars still perceive today the Eastern Band of Cherokee as the

most traditionally in touch with ancestral culture, the Oklahoma Cherokee, the

descendants of the Texas Cherokee, the Arkansas Cherokee, and other small Cherokee

groups may be inclined to disagree. In fact, it is probably more realistic to state that each

group developed its own particular interpretation of ancient traditions.

Migrations were common even in pre-contact times. Native groups traveled

extensively in small bands in addition to relocating their villages. Such movements did

not prevent them from keeping their culture and traditions alive. I argue that the history

of the Cherokee people is too complex and dynamic to attribute to a sole group the “bulk

of Cherokee traditional knowledge.” I further contend that migration, even as traumatic

as the Removal of 1838-39, did not alienate the Western Cherokee from their traditional

culture as they established themselves in Oklahoma.

Ancestral lands are nevertheless certainly considered by all Cherokee as being in the

Appalachian Mountains and are connected to where the Eastern Band still resides today.

The Appalachians are the source and the foundation where much of all that is known to

the Cherokee originated. Traditional knowledge is nonetheless boundless and has

continued to survive and become modified among all Cherokee people. This process of

“mutation” touches all Cherokee groups, including the Eastern Band of Cherokee.

Historical circumstances I have briefly described above influenced the direction of

my research. I became interested in the Western Cherokee and wondered how that

branch lives and what it means today to be a Cherokee in Oklahoma. Originally, this

study was intended to mainly explore local oral history and folklore. In addition, I hoped

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to participate in the efforts of preservation of oral tradition among the Cherokee Nation of

Oklahoma. My research began with a short period of fieldwork among the Elder

community, and after evolved into a biographical project.

Statement of the Problem

As my Cherokee contacts and I started developing ties, and as the idea of a possible

research project related to their culture developed, the work of Richard Chalfen (1991)

and his book Turning leafs: The Photograph Collections o f Two Japanese American

Families helped me define the perspective from which I would approach this research.

While Chalfen particularly examines what photographs tell about a group of people and

the social and cultural change these people undergo with time, he puts into words a

theory that embodies some of the current Western Cherokee issues I propose to explore.

Chalfen (1991:16) explains that:

in general, questions of continuity and change are extremely complex. One may be mistaken for the other without proper reference to behavioral context. Continuity and discontinuity can take place at the same time; insistence on specifying one or the other may be an inappropriate imposition of a cultural need for dualism and/or polar opposites. Notions of transformation and reformulation for cultural values for instance, may suggest a parallel expression of continuity and change.

The idea of two or more parallel, yet intertwined, universes reflects the situation of the

modem traditional Western Cherokee. In one sense, they live as many other Americans.

They have adapted to the all-American way of life. However, in another sense, the

Cherokee also retain their traditional cultural particularities. These manifest themselves

in various social, cultural, and religious celebrations and even, in culinary habits. When

looking at today’s traditional Western Cherokee one does not see complete acculturation

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to modem society. Nonetheless, one will not see intact ancestral and traditional life ways

either. The Western Cherokee live in a world of both cultural plurality and particularism.

They live in a world of continuity and change.

The Project

I traveled to Tahlequah with university support to participate in the efforts of the

Cherokee Nation to preserve traditional oral history and local lore. I was hopeful that,

while witnessing and actively interacting with Cherokee people, I would get a sense of

what being a Cherokee today entails, and consequently find the right angle from which to

approach this project. Over the first week of work and exchange, more particularly at the

end of the second interview sessions with the Elders, I realized that my mission to assist

the Nation in its oral history project was not going to develop into a thesis project. That

would have required considerably more time than the few weeks of actual fieldwork

would allow.

Most of the interviews were conducted in the Cherokee language, or Tsalagi

(pronounced “ja-la-ghee”), and it is nearly impossible to mobilize the highly demanded

translators to assist in accurate English translations. Furthermore, the Cherokee Nation

saves the recorded sessions in Tsalagi, as is, and does not feel the need for translations in

its preservation project. The Nation mainly utilizes fluent speakers for its numerous

educational activities. To work with the Elders would necessitate particular logistical

arrangements, and in order for us to win their trust, we (the team and I) would have had

to pay several visits to each Elder.

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As delightful and instructive these visits happened to be, the Elders live for the most

part in remote communities. In order for the team to get to their homes, it takes each time

many hours of driving. Furthermore, while the project has been ongoing and dynamic for

years now, it was impossible to undertake those many trips in such a limited amount of

time (few weeks).

As stated earlier, this research thus took a new turn by the end of the first week. A

group of Cherokee Nation employees and I were coming back from an interview. The

group included Sammy Still, who was driving, and his good friends Denis Six Killer and

Ed Fields; all three of them are Cherokee and fluent in Tsalagi. We were discussing the

difficulties of conducting interviews with Elders and how important it is to preserve oral

history and the Cherokee language when Sammy declared: ’’you know Juliette, the day all

of us in this car die, it’s a hundred and fifty years of knowledge and traditions that will

die....” There, I realized, laid the answer to my research goals.

By putting into written words Sammy’s life experience, I could not only open a

window and share with others what it means today to be one the few remaining

contemporary traditional Cherokee, but also explore how they negotiate everyday

processes of cultural continuity and change. Certainly, the most efficient manner to

better understand and share the modem Western Cherokee reality is to get to know the

everyday life of its contemporaries.

While Sammy is middle-aged, he is regarded by his community as an Elder due to his

knowledge of the language and of ancestral Cherokee practices. Sammy Still is full-

blooded Cherokee. He is a craftsman and a traditional storyteller, yet also a fan of

racecar driver Jeff Gordon and a passionate golfer. He is traditional, but at the same

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time, he enjoys contemporary American culture. His life is the embodiment and the

representation of the life of some 5,000 traditional Cherokee people who live today in

Oklahoma. In the context of this research, “traditional” refers to those Cherokee people

who, while in the midst of the all-American way of life, continue to speak their tongue

and still practice activities typical of their ancestral culture.

There are over 200,000 members of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Because the

Nation does not require any specific blood quantum for membership, any individual who

possesses proof of Cherokee ancestry is welcomed. People with as little as 1/500 or less

blood quantum have registered as members of the Nation. Unfortunately, out the

thousands of people enjoying membership, very few remain able to speak the language

and perpetuate ancestral traditions. Sammy Still grew up in a traditional setting and

understands Tsalagi.

As with anybody, Sammy’s experience is unique and personal. His perception of

things is particular and subjective. My research with him is likewise the product of my

own personality and individual interests and interpretation. As Sidney Mintz (1974:1)

has stated, “the best one can do is to try to be aware of one’s perceptual limitations, as

well as of those of the informant.” I cannot and will not claim to be totally unbiased.

However, Sammy faces similar issues to those that other members of the traditional

Cherokee community face. He is in his own way an unofficial Cherokee ambassador to

the “outside world.” I hope this study will for the least shed light on aspects of the

Western Cherokee contemporary reality.

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Sammv Still

During the course of this research, Ed Fields, Sammy Still, and I became good

friends. We felt very comfortable in each other’s company and just as Ed mentioned on

several occasions, “it just seems that you [30 fit right in.” Sammy had invited me to stay

with his family and had taken me under his wing. Because trust had been established and

mutual interest had arisen on both sides, the conditions seemed to be ideal to begin

working on Sammy’s life history. To come to this point, however, many months of

getting accustomed to one another had been fruitfully spent through continuous

communication via email, phone and online classes.

Figure 1. Sammy Still. Photographed by Juliette Sligar in July 2004.

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The following is an email that Sammy sent me in the very beginnings. It describes

the project as envisioned in the start, gives an idea of the general mood, and presents

concerns the Cherokee people have. Most of all, this message emphasizes the

commencement of our association. Sammy writes (email to author, 03 March 2004):

Osiyo , dohitsu . Agasga doya .

One project that Ed and I have been involved with has been interviewing Cherokee Elders. We have several questions that we ask and what happens is that when we begin our questions, usually the Elders will take off on the questions and start telling us of their childhood as well as old stories they heard from their Elders. What our goal here is, to record history, culture, stories and historic events through our Elders, who lived through these experiences. One example; one Elder reminisced the first time their family ever seen their first television, how they were afraid to touch it and how they all were so excited. Another Elder talked about the first time she had ever walked on a paved sidewalk, and she told us that this is why today many Elder Cherokees have arthritis in the joints of their knees, because the sidewalks are very hard surfaces and the impact of your feet onto the hard surface causes hard impacts to your knees. This is why you will see a lot of Cherokee Elders walking on the grass instead of on the sidewalk; the grass area is softer less impact. I never realized this or even gave it much thought, but the Elder was right. These little examples may not mean a lot to many, but to us they have a lot of meaning to our culture. Plus the many stories that the Elders share with us, many are very old stories.

The main thing that Ed and I have found out is that you have to go to the Elders; they will not come to you. You have to travel to their communities, their homes and then you have to win their trust. If they don’t feel comfortable with you or do not trust you, they will not give you the time of day. And once you have gained their trust, you better not violate that trust, because you will never ever have their trust again. This is how the Cherokee Elders live, I know, because as I get older in age, I am beginning to feel this way. As I said before, I am 4/4 Cherokee and I have a lot of stories and have knowledge of traditional craft making skills that I share with others as well as with my family. I do this to keep our Cherokee culture, heritage and crafts alive as well as our language. But if for some reason the trust from anyone is violated, I feel that I cannot help them anymore. You have to remember I was bom and raised Cherokee, when you are young you listen to your Elders, but you don’t always understand their meaning until you start getting older, then you start getting wiser and understand what your Elders where telling you when you were young. Now I am becoming the Elder and teaching my children and young Cherokees what was taught to me by my Elders. This makes me proud to be a Cherokee.

There is so much to tell you, and it is very exciting when someone as yourself

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is interested in our Cherokee culture, let alone wanting to learn our language. It was once said by one of our Cherokee Elders, “If we lose our language, we will cease to exist as Cherokee people.” This is so very true; if we lose our language we lose our identity as a Cherokee tribe. This is why I feel so honored that you want to keep our Cherokee language alive, because through you, we will never cease to exist. Thank you very much!

I’ve taken enough of your time, I apologize to you. June would be a fine time to come down for a visit. Our Cherokee Online classes will be finishing up around June 3. You could come down and see where we do our online classes here at the W.W. Keeler Tribal Complex. We also will be starting our Cherokee Immersion Six-Week camp at Sequoyah High School. Maybe you could come down and help us, speak to the Cherokee children about your French culture. I’m sure that they would be honored by your visit. Tell you husband to be prepared to learn how to make traditional crafts and to tell us some stories that he might know.

And I understood every thing that you wrote in Cherokee. I am sorry that you don’t have a Cherokee name. They say that usually a Cherokee Elder is to give you a Cherokee name, so since I would be considered an Elder, not in the since of age, ha, ha, but because of my knowledge, I would like to give you a Cherokee name; galvquodi atsilvsgi (Precious Rose).

Tell your husband to strengthen his arm; I and a few friends would like to challenge him to a game of traditional marbles. Just for fun of course. I’m not very good at the game, but it is fun to play. He can also join us in the cornstalk competition, where we shoot our bows and arrows at cornstalk targets. He’ll have a great time. As for your project, maybe interviewing and recording our Cherokee Elders. Our Elders are dying everyday along with their history and culture, in this sense you could help us by leaving us copies of your interviews and recordings for our archives so that our culture and history will live on.

W ado, Sequotsi Sammy Still

Folklorist Tom Rankin (2004) once stated, “out of shared telling and remembering

grow identity, connection, and pride, binding people to a place and to one another."

Sammy Still’s way of life soundly echoes the contemporary Cherokee lifestyle as well as

the ancient Cherokee traditions and language. His life history and everyday living

reveals that, as in the past, the Cherokee people demonstrate their extraordinary ability to

adapt, assimilate, and appropriate what is available and useful for success while retaining

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their customs and beliefs. These traditions are still being passed on orally to younger

generations. In reliving the past in storytelling and oral history, the Cherokee and in this

case, Sammy Still, plant in the present the seeds of the Cherokee future.

Methods

The present study is a life history narrative that involves various research tools. It

relies on the email messages that Cherokee contacts and I exchanged before and after my

visit. It is mainly based on qualitative data I gathered throughout the research. I used

photographic material from my trip to illustrate some of the ideas developed in this work.

Primarily, the study introduces hours of recorded conversations and interviews with

Sammy. A number of lengthy transcripts have been edited. Furthermore, portions of the

interviews have been summarized in order to keep the thesis under reasonable

proportions and facilitate the analysis. In any case, I made every effort to stay as close as

possible to the substance of the recordings and the essence of the interviews.

Based on Michael Agar’s (1980:223) definition, “a life history is an elaborate,

connected piece of talk presented in a social situation consisting of an informant and an

ethnographer.” Interests in life history, to name a few, range from linguistics with

concerns of “discourse analysis” and “computer simulation of natural language” (Agar

1980:223) to folklore and cognitive anthropology. Life history has been used as a tool

for ethnographic research for the past eighty years. Today, this method has mostly been

relegated to the background of the social sciences and has lost some appeal to more

widely accepted and appraised techniques such as participant-observation or focused

groups interview.

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Social scientists have mainly utilized life histories as a complement to other methods,

but less as primary source of qualitative data. The reasons anthropologists advance to

explain their underuse of this method are various. In the present context, however, I

believe that life history narratives are at least as valuable as any other research

methodology and that problems of interpretation and subjectivity arise no matter what

technique the anthropologist chooses to use. Furthermore, life history narratives are, in

my opinion, very much appropriate when fieldwork takes place among oral cultures in

which information and traditions are verbally perpetuated. There are indeed problems

associated with this technique, but much the same goes for other means of fieldwork

research.

Subjectivity. Vulnerability, and Interpretation

In an article entitled “Understanding a Life History as a Subjective Document:

Hermeneutical and Phenomenological Perspectives,” Lawrence Watson (1976:98)

declares that:

with something as alive and vital as a life history document, however, where the individual stands revealed to us by his own choice, we have a natural, self-contained source of information about subjective experience that cries out for understanding.

Understanding here refers to problems associated with processes of interpretation. In the

past decades, there have been works advanced to discuss the methods of life history in

anthropological studies, but very little has been devised to help the ethnographer with the

analytical part of such method.

Michael Agar (1980:224) notes, “there are discussions of the life history method

(Langness 1965; Mandelbaum 1973) but there is little in the way of explicit approaches

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to the analysis of life history materials.” In turn, Watson (1976:98) proclaims that “too

often the integrity of an autobiographical account is violated in the very act of

interpretation.” The subjective experience of both the informant and the ethnographer

intertwines in the exercise of interpretation. Questions of subjectivity arise and, with it,

certain vulnerabilities.

At times, personal involvement can be omnipresent, especially when working on the

biographical narratives of a single subject. From such work, intimacy and closeness

develop between the narrator and the ethnographer, turning the latter in what Ruth Behar

(1996) calls a “vulnerable observer.” The part emotions, perceptions and subjectivity

play in fieldwork needs to be recognized. Yet, I do not believe that these factors

jeopardize the realization of a fruitful ethnography. Recognizing that both the

ethnographer and the narrator are vulnerable once the journey begins is certainly

necessary to better understanding the circumstances of the ethnographic production.

Fieldwork is a time when rich human emotions come together and bounce of each other.

Fieldwork as such is a living entity. Because it is alive, and involves individuals from,

more often than not, very different backgrounds and culture, the role that emotions and

subjectivity play in its conduct are unquestionable, but also necessary.

As stated earlier, questions of subjectivity are not only related to the informant’s life

and the manner in which he or she chooses to describe it, but also to the ethnographer’s

own interpretation and the filters through which what the informant relates is to be

understood. In his foreword to Radin’s work Crashing Thunder: the Autobiography o f an

American Indian, Arnold Krupat (1983:xv) declares that the book:

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may be read for the light it sheds on the mind of the Indian and of the culture to which he belonged; it may be read, too, for the light it sheds on Radin’s mind and the social-scientific culture of the first quarter of the twentieth century to which he belongs

Such a trend is not limited to life histories but touches other realms of research methods,

including that of participant-observation. Additionally, in Behar’s (1996:6) own words,

“the observer never observes the behavioral event which ‘would have taken place in his

absence,’ nor bears an account identical with that which the same narrator would give to

another person.” Life history as ethnography, however, brings into light a distinctive

aspect of the method. It is bound to incite closeness between the ethnographer and his or

her subject. And that process also has a positive effect.

The familiarity that takes place when doing life history work is not necessarily a total

obstacle to the conduct of fieldwork and the making of ethnography. In such applauded

studies as Worker in the Cane: A Puerto Rican Life History, Sidney Mintz (1974:12)

declares: “I have no fully confident belief that I succeeded in my intent, but I am entirely

certain that my friend, Taso, in telling his own story, did.” Many a time in the book,

Mintz refers to Taso as his friend, clearly stating that a certain degree of intimacy

developed. Worker in the Cane thus remains a universally admired ethnography.

Ruth Behar (1996:5) defines cultural anthropology as the “most fascinating, bizarre,

disturbing, and necessary form of witnessing left to us at the end of the twentieth

century.” She continues by stating that “our intellectual mission is deeply paradoxical:

get the ‘native point of view,’ pero por favor without actually ‘going native’.” Following

Watson’s (1976:101) argument, “the life history that we wish to interpret is something

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whose meaning is revealed not by imposing external constructs but by ‘making room’ to

accommodate the foreign frame of reference that brought it into being.”

Relevance of a Single Life History as Ethnographic Tool

In another article entitled “The Question of ‘Individuality’ in Life History

Interpretation,” Watson (1989:308) brings to light the fact that:

one of the most intriguing, indeed troublesome, questions that be-devils life history research has to do with making interpretative statements about the individuality of the life history subject. Since, as a rule, notions of individuality also imply uniqueness, the problem is further compounded and raises a number of complex epistemological and methodological issues.

He argues that if social scientists discuss the relevance of a single informant’s life history

as complete ethnographic study and emphasize the uniqueness of the individual’s

existence as unrepresentative of the life of entire groups of people, it is mostly contingent

upon Western standards that such objections can be made.

In fact, the concept of self and individuality Western anthropologists are embedded

into is only a representation of their own value system and not necessarily apart of the

informant’s reality. In his book For Those Who Come After: a Study o f Native American

Autobiography, Arnold Krupat (1985:29) writes that “although the Indians’ sense of

personal freedom, worth, and responsibility became legendary, the ‘autonomy of the

[male] individual’ was always subordinated to communal and collective requirements.”

Furthermore, Watson (1989:309) explains that:

in Western cultures, so accustomed are we to thinking of each person’s special identity or personality, of a person’s special relationship to the environment, that we take the very notion of a coherent individuality for granted in our construction of the world.

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This notion of individuality is a very Western model that does not necessarily apply to

other cultures whose model may be drastically different. Watson (1989:309) relies on

Marcel Mauss to further his argument and elaborate on the idea that “we see ourselves as

freestanding and free-acting among others.”

Mauss sees this phenomenon as rooted in our philosophical and religious value

system. In turn, Watson (1989:309) agrees with Mauss and addresses the fact that:

in many non-Western societies, with dissimilar social and ideological patterns, the culturally formulated concept of the person, and presumably the basis for self formation, develops according to vastly different principles. In such societies, the person’s identity with social roles is likely to be stressed, in its connectedness to the larger social and kinship spheres, over the person’s freedom, autonomy, and specialness.

Clearly, the attitude we, as Western anthropologists, demonstrate when relating to

concepts of individuality in the biographical studies of non-Western individuals takes

roots in values and principles directly deriving from “our specific, and delimited cultural

tradition of freestanding individual autonomy, which in its full-blown form is a fairly

recent phenomenon” (Watson 1989:309). This phenomenon can even be observed

similarly when life histories of individual of our own culture are called upon.

I agree with Watson (1989:309) who claims that “our sense of a subject’s unique,

individual qualities is not something inherent in the data.” It is the result of where we are

coming from, and of our own cultural preconceptions, and preunderstandings. Through

our own “special activity of engaging and appropriating the text of the other’s life into

our world so that it speaks to us” (Watson 1989:324), we may miss all together the

quality and soundness of general information a single life history can provide on a given

group of people. I argue that a single individual can in fact operate as an open window to

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another world, a window through which the ethnographer is invited to gaze, observe, and

share experiences. Furthermore, I believe that this is particularly true of oral cultures

such as Native American cultures.

Some may argue that the concept of life history narratives is also a very Western

concept. To this, I would reply with Hertha Wong s’ (1992:3) statement:

most literary scholars insist that autobiography is ‘a distinctive product of Western post-Roman civilization,’ ‘a late phenomenon in Western culture’ that ’expresses a concern peculiar to Western’ individuals. However, long before Anglo ethnographers arrived in North America, indigenous people were telling, creating, and enacting their personal narratives through stories, pictographs, and performances.

Some scholars have contradicted her claim. In the preface to the book previously

mentioned, For Those Who Come After, Krupat (1985:xi) declares that “Indian

autobiographies are not a traditional form among Native peoples, but the consequence of

contact with the white invader-settlers, and the product of a limited collaboration with

them.”

I would like to challenge such an assertion. I subscribe to Wong’s (1992:4) idea that

only if we “apply Western definitions to the study of the self-narration of indigenous

people, these scholars are absolutely correct.” Here again, we need to state clearly what

we refer to and what standards we use in referring to it. Are we speaking about written

literature or performed and spoken narratives? Can pictographs tell a life history?

It is a known fact that Native peoples have been relating their experiences through

various unwritten media such as storytelling, dances and folk art for millennia. Native

American cultures are oral. The difference here resides in the fact that Native life

histories started to be put into writing through the course of the last century. Most of

these stories were indeed collected by Western scholars. This fact, however, has changed

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in the past few decades with the publication of written self-narratives such as The Names:

A Menoir by Kiowa award-winner author Scott Momaday (1987).

Reliability of Oral Accounts

The next issue needing discussion regards the soundness of the information as related

by the interviewee. To paraphrase Mark Luborsky (1987:366) in his article entitled

“Analysis of Multiple Life History Narratives,” the question is whether the informant’s

“conceptual orientations [are] significant in the conduct of life outside the interview

setting?” In other words, are the interviews soundly echoing life as it is for the informant

outside the context of the interview? To better answer this question, I would like to

emphasize that the present study concerns the modem Western Cherokee.

The Cherokee culture, as with any other First American culture, is heavily rooted in

orality. Traditions are passed on verbally and oral communication is predominant among

Cherokee members. This is true even though literacy became an important part of the

Cherokee culture following the invention and introduction of the Tsalagi syllabary by

Sequoyah in the early 1800’s. Over the course of my fieldwork, I noted that those

Cherokee people versed in the Sequoyah syllabary do not unanimously use it to

communicate in writing. Instead they widely correspond in English. This can be

explained by the fact that not all are fluent enough in written Cherokee to easily use it.

Most importantly, the Cherokee language is traditionally an oral way of communication.

The use of spoken Cherokee, on the other hand, is widespread among those fluent in

the language. Some research on the use of the Sequoyah syllabary among contemporary

Cherokee was conducted by Margaret Bender. Her first publication in 1996 was a

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dissertation entitled “Reading Culture: The Cherokee Syllabary and the Eastern

Cherokees, 1993-1995.” In 2000, she published Signs o f Cherokee Culture: Sequoyah

Syllabary in Eastern Cherokee Life. Both of these studies, however, relate to the Eastern

Band of North Carolina. To my knowledge, the equivalent of such work has yet to be

undertaken on the Western Cherokee.

In order to further our understanding of the reliability of oral information as well as to

better reflect on whether interviewing a single member of the Western Cherokee may

really reflect a more general understanding of their current realities, I propose to briefly

examine the question of truth and authenticity in oral history. It is my claim that oral

history unquestionably brings about spheres of understanding and meaning that could not

be explored otherwise and that can greatly contribute to our understanding different

cultures. The validity of such method as an anthropological tool depends on the

perspective the scholar takes in looking at his or her research.

Scholars trace the use of oral history in the gathering of data and scientific research

back to antiquity. In his book Listening to History, Trevor Lummis (1987:16) also

explains that “Ancient Greek historians have asked participants in past events to

communicate their memories as part of the historical record.” More recently, in the late

nineteenth century, folklorists interested in the preservation of traditional and rural

traditions proceeded to the first recording of modem oral histories. Soon areas of interest

widened to cover multiple facets of history for which oral testimony was available.

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Figure 2. Sequoyah syllabary. (Image credit: Sequoyah Birthplace Museum.)

One of the principal questions that haunt the practice of oral history is the question of

reliability of oral sources. In an article to the Journal o f American History entitled

“Power and Memory in Oral History,” John Bodnar (1989:1201) declares, “no one who

has conducted oral history interviews has escaped the question ‘but how do you know it

is true?’” Bernard L. Fontana (1969:166) nuances the question in his article “American

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Indian Oral History: An Anthropologist’s Note”:

One of the concerns of anthropologists with eyewitness accounts and with oral traditions is whether or not they are ‘true?’ That is to say, does the oral testimony conform to our concept of the truth? Is it factual in our terms?”

Such a statement, I believe, sets the stage for where the real problem lays. When an

anthropologist, trained in the conventional tradition of “Western social sciences” meets

the other side of the interpretive and cultural spectrum, answering such a query proves to

be problematic.

In one of the messages of the abundant correspondence I exchange with contacts at

the Cherokee Nation, Sammy Still remembers the day he participated in a Repatriation

meeting with the National Park Service. He writes (email to author, 26 March 2004):

My question to them was, “why dig up our ancestor’s remains to find out about our past culture, history and staple of food that we ate. Why not just ask us or our tribal Elders? Our history, culture and how we survived has been handed down from generation to generation.” Ask us, we know how we lived and survived, but please don’t violate our ancestor’s final resting place...

This short statement reminds us of the necessity for interviewers to “know about the

social role, or function, of oral traditions of the society being studied” (Fontana

1969:368). Fontana (1969:368) continues by citing William Sturtevant and declares:

a great deal of the evaluation of oral tradition as historical evidence depends upon detailed ethnographic knowledge of the social functions of folk history, of its manner of transmission, its variability within any one society, the local criteria for historical truth, and other features of folk history as a system within the culture under study.

In addition, Fontana raises a very important issue with regard to what anthropologists

strive to do when collecting oral histories. Referring to Wyland Hand, Fontana

(1969:369) explains that “it is the everyday life of the people, or what is referred to as

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‘culture,’ that the anthropologist seeks.... In this sense, history and ethnography become

synonymous.”

James Hoopes (1979:3) reminds us in his book Oral History, “too often we forget that

history [as we commonly know it in literate societies] is, among other things, an exercise

of the imagination.” In turn, non-literate societies have developed a highly ritualistic

system of oral traditions where, very often, the teller (in effect an oral historian) may be

punished for changing form or content. Understanding the reliability and consistency of

oral traditions in non-literate cultures is a very delicate exercise for scholars who observe

from a customarily literate standpoint, where traditions are written instead of spoken.

Literate societies do not have the sophisticated system to orally relay legends or historical

events. They are culturally poorly equipped to understand the validity and efficiency of

orality in a completely different cultural setting.

This being said, cultural anthropologists strive to study socially transmitted facts and

beliefs, most of which are from culturally different societies. Given this fact, more and

more scholars utilize, at various levels and degrees, the support of oral and life history in

their research. And in the final analysis, truth is a very relative matter. Fontana

(1969:369) explains:

Finally, and perhaps most of all, there is the definition of truth to consider. Although anthropologists are often concerned with discerning the truth in oral history as truth is conceived of in our own culture, so are they concerned in knowing how other peoples define truth for themselves.

Each culture has its own way to view and interpret events and past matters.

I agree with Fontana (1969:369) who says that, “notions of history and truth espoused

by participants in Western civilization are but few among many. Our way of conceiving

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of time and of segmenting it into discrete units is not traditionally shared by American

Indians.” The tendency Western researchers demonstrate in face of non-literal

expressions such as storytelling or other oral traditions is to commonly reduce,

marginalize them as "primitive," or at most, confine them to the outskirts of ethnographic

endeavors. These important forms of cultural expression are historical evidence, and like

for any other historical material, they have to be used with caution and to be cross-

examined with other sources. They remain, however, a solid expression of the cultural

life of a given people.

Finally, I would like to agree with Linda Shopes and Michael Frisch (1996:549) when

they declare that there is a “growing recognition [among scholars] that oral history is a

practice grounded in relationships - between narrator and interviewer, past and present,

memory and history.” The value of oral history and oral traditions is undeniable. It

creates “new avenues of historical inquiry” (Shopes and Frisch 1996:550). It also pushes

the limits of contemporary scholarly fieldwork beyond long-established, conventional,

and often restrictive, anthropological practices.

Why Is This Work Important?

In the case of this study, it is my claim that writing a life history is a sound approach

to a better understanding of what it means today to be a traditional Cherokee in

Oklahoma.

In 1957, Nancy Oestrich Lurie started collecting the life history of her Winnebago

adoptive aunt. As she began her work, which has been published under the title

Mountain Wolf Woman, Sister o f Crashing Thunder: the Autobiography o f a Winnebago

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Indian, Lurie (1961 :xii) declared that, “her [aunt’s] autobiography would be of great

interest both as a literary document and as a source of insights for anthropological

purposes.” In the foreword to this book, Ruth Underhill (1961 :ix) also insisted that “Dr.

Lurie should be thanked for this opportunity of day-by-day acquaintance with a woodland

Indian woman.” Indeed life histories elaborated within the scope of ethnographical

studies present many interests.

Arguably, the most significant prospect a life history offers is that it sheds light on the

daily realities of the studied individual. Simultaneously, this particular individual’s

activities and routine allow for a better understanding of the more general way of life and

realities the group this individual belong to share. In Left Handed: a Navajo

Autobiography, Ruth Dyk (1980:xi) mentions:

As Walter Dyk says in the Preface to the first volume, he was initially interested in collecting material for a study of the functioning of clan and kinship in Navajo society, but these interests, with the passing of time have become secondary to the broader account of Navajo life in all its dimensions - social, cultural, and philosophical.

Biographical accounts offer unique scholastic possibilities. They allow multidimensional

information that would not be attainable with the sole use of a different ethnographical

research tool.

The ethnographer wishing to investigate what Edward Sapir (1966:vii) calls a “given

culture in operation,” in his foreword to Dyk’s Son o f Old Man Hat, would need to resort

to various methods of investigation to achieve the same level of general knowledge a life

history can provide on a given culture. Issues sometimes covering several generations

and ranging from traditional customs, food habits, social organization, kinship, and

economics may be addressed via a single informant as he or she relates his or her life.

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Sammy’s life history allows for a wide-ranging account of Cherokee life in many of its

various dimensions. Dyk (1980:xiii) has underlined the fact that autobiographical

accounts collected by anthropologists offer a record of the life of ordinary Natives for the

benefit of future generations.

As Sammy announced while we were riding back from one of our visits to the Elder

community, there is today in Oklahoma, a mine of precious information waiting to be

unveiled. This cultural richness will not be found in books or in educational material. It

is held by people. The few remaining Cherokee traditionalists who hold ancestral

knowledge will gladly share with whomever manifests interest and is able to take the

time to listen. All is entirely dependent upon the genuine curiosity and willingness

scholars or others may express to learn and help preserve ancestral traditions. Only then

will these traditions be unveiled and shared.

Ancestral culture, however, will not be available forever. Sammy bluntly depicted

the state of things as it is today. The moment the very few Cherokee traditionalists who

are still fluent in their native tongue and traditional culture pass away, precious oral

records will irremediably disappear. To make matters worse, the Cherokee language is

slowly but steadily disappearing. While in Oklahoma, I was saddened to see that even

Cherokee traditionalists had not successfully passed on their language and culture to

younger generations. As an explanation, I was given the same account on many

occasions.

After the boarding schools experience, and after the harsh treatments previous

generations had to endure because they did not speak English fluently, many chose to

emphasize an all-American education for their children. As we will see with Sammy’s

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story, transmittal to younger generations also depends on the interest the youth shows in

learning the ways of their ancestors. One cannot force a Cherokee youth into a cultural

apprenticeship. All is dependent upon the Cherokee youth’s willingness to learn.

The Cherokee have always done what they believe they had to do to survive and

succeed: effectively adapt to antagonistic circumstances and carry on. Unfortunately, the

result of these necessary choices presents a somewhat gloomy prospect for traditional

culture. Even though the Cherokee Nation possesses some of the most advanced

interactive technology among all Native tribes, continues to develop educational

programs, and strives to educate its youth in all things Cherokee, any language and

culture needs to be fully apart of everyday life to stay alive. My fears today are similar to

what Franz Boas describes in 1911 in his introduction to the Handbook of American

Indian Languages. Boas (1991:56) states: “the American ethnologist is confronted with a

serious practical difficulty, for, in the present state of American society, by far the greater

number of [Native] customs and practices have gone out of existence.” In fact, what he

relates at that time is truer ofNative American traditional cultures by the day.

The Foundation for Endangered Languages (2004) provides statistical data predicting

catastrophe. Out of the 260 Native languages still spoken today, 80 percent are not being

taught to younger generations. When a language dies, anthropologists and other

researchers lose rich sources of material for their work documenting a people’s history

and culture. More importantly, by losing their language and assimilating to mainstream

society, Native groups are doomed to watch their culture disappear. With it, the world

looses parts of its human history with no chance of recovery. Not only is it important for

Natives to protect their cultural patrimony, it is also essential for the world in general.

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The practice of orally passing on traditions, customs and history is obviously

significantly j eopardized by the fact that many young generations do not speak the

language of their Elders. With the loss of the language comes the destruction of entire

parts of Cherokee history and memory. In other words, the once dynamic and flourishing

Cherokee culture is now in serious jeopardy, threatened by decline. This situation is not

unique to the Cherokee culture; it touches all the remaining Native groups. In fact,

during my stay in Oklahoma, Sammy informed me that the last Elder of the Loyal

Shawnees to speak his native tongue fluently had passed away.

In their book Vanishing Voices, The Extinction o f the World's Languages,

anthropologists Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine (2000) explain that, for instance,

resource management has been carried out locally for thousands of years by Native

communities relying on traditional knowledge passed down orally from generation to

generation. Much of this knowledge is related in unique ways depending on the culture

and the language. Speakers of dying or endangered languages are rich vessels of local

knowledge.

Out of more than 200,000 citizens of the Cherokee Nation, about 2,000 speak the

Cherokee language. Most of them are elderly people. To draw comparisons with other

Native languages such as Delaware or Eyak (coast of Alaska’s Prince William Sound)

which only have one surviving speaker, the Cherokee could be viewed as relatively

healthy. Nevertheless and compared to Dine (Navajo language) that has about 130,000

speakers out of 200,000 Navajo Natives, the Cherokee language is endangered. Even

though Dine seems to be a relatively dynamic language, the Foundation for Endangered

Languages has raised high concerns as to whether Dine would survive the turn of the

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century. Based on that, predictions for the survival of the Cherokee tongue are much

bleaker.

Traditions, like language, are also endangered. This is the reason why it was so

important to undertake studies similar to this. While modest, this work records Cherokee

traditional everyday life. Sammy Still is one of these few remaining Cherokee who

knows, and to a certain extent, still lives ancient customs and traditions. Through the

exploration of his life history, one can learn a great deal about traditional Cherokee living

in the modem world.

Research Setting

Tahlequah is located in the eastern side of Oklahoma. It is the capital of the

Cherokee Nation and is not part of a reservation. In fact, I was reminded on many

occasions that there is no Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma. This seems to be a great

source of pride among the Western Cherokee. The name Tahlequah derives from the

Cherokee word Ta'ligwu, which means “just two," or "two is enough." The town was

named after an event that presumably took place shortly following the Trail of Tears. A

meeting of Elders was organized to determine the location of the Cherokee Nation's

permanent capital. Three tribal elders had planned to gather for this meeting. Two of the

three elders arrived at the agreed location and waited for the third. He never came. As

daylight begun to fade, the two Elders decided that "two is enough," and went about

deciding where the capital would stand.

Tahlequah is part of the so-called “Bible-belt,” that stretches from Texas north to

Kansas, east to Virginia and south to Florida. As opposed to the dried and flat western

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parts of Oklahoma, this area is green, hilled, wooded and has numerous streams and

creeks. Many of the Cherokee people I have met told me that their ancestors, those who

survived the Trails of Tears, decided to establish themselves in this region because it

reminded them of the lush mountains of North Carolina. The region that surrounds

Tahlequah is rural with pasture and grazing land. Tahlequah itself is located 873 feet

above sea level and is populated by about 22,000 souls. The town is young with 67

percent of the population 44 years old or less.

In and around the town, there are, among other facilities, forty Protestant and two

Catholic churches, a fire station, four banks, and one institution of higher learning,

Northeastern State University. The Cherokee Nation, the hospital, and a Wal-Mart are

the major employers in the area. Sammy Still has been working for the Cherokee Nation

for more than twenty years. His wife Dama is a cake decorator for Wal-Mart. As per the

2000 Federal Census for the Cherokee County, the average salary in 1999 was of

approximately 31,000 dollars with an unemployment rate of about 3.6% for people 16

years old and above. The per-capita income was about 16,640 dollars.

As for many other members of the Cherokee Nation, Sammy and Dama live in what

is commonly called an “Indian House.” Most “Indian houses” are built on the same floor

plan. They are nonetheless comfortable and inviting. Created in 1966 under the

Oklahoma State Statutes for Indian Housing, the Housing Authority of the Cherokee

Nation (HACN) provides opportunities for home ownership to its members. Since the

Native American Housing Assistance and Self Determination Act of 1996 much progress

has been made. The HACN was recently awarded 50 million dollars for its housing

program. The HACN covers 14 jurisdictions. The counties include all of Cherokee,

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Adair Delaware, Mayes, Craig, Nowata, Rogers, and Sequoyah and portions of McIntosh,

Muskogee, Wagoner, Ottawa, Tulsa and Washington. Sammy and Dama’s home is

located in Tahlequah, Cherokee County. It is set on a nice piece of forested land that

provides adequate amount of space for their many pets. The family owns nearly a dozen

cats and seven dogs (their neighbor’s dogs seem to have elected Dama and Sammy as

surrogate owners as well). Certainly, Dama and Sammy have provided a great haven for

those lost animals and their contribution to helping man’s best friends is commendable.

Sammy has two daughters. His older daughter, Tonya, is married with two little girls.

Sammy met Dama 28 years ago and the family has lived in Tahlequah for a number of

years now. I am honored that Sammy allowed me to record his life history and trusted

me to pass on his experience. I also feel very privileged that Sammy, Dama, and their

second daughter Tiffany welcomed me with such great warmth and openness. Through

this work, I hope I can share with others the realities of the ordinary life of a not so

ordinary Cherokee gentleman and his family.

The study is organized in two sections followed by a conclusion. The first part

introduces Sammy’s childhood and upbringing while the second part addresses adulthood

as well as the various concerns and ideas he expressed during the interviews. I hope to

bring to light the processes by which Sammy in particular, and other traditional Western

Cherokee in general, create and live their culture. This culture is made up of a strong

ancestral Cherokee identity and of contemporary all-American customs.

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Figure 3. Map of Oklahomaincluding the Cherokee Nation Counties. (Image credit: rootsweb.com)

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SAMMY STILL’S CHILDHOOD AND UPBRINGING

This chapter presents the first session of interviews with Sammy. These interviews

have been paraphrased to allow better clarity. I have nonetheless strived to stay as close

as possible to the tone and essence of our exchange, which addresses Sammy’s childhood

and upbringing. All through this chapter, I will go back to some of the aspects of

Cherokee beliefs and customs that Sammy mentioned and provide related information.

Similarly, I will go back to some of the more personal information he shared with me.

Introduction

Sammy’s full name is Sammy Lee Still. He was bom in Claremore, Oklahoma in

1953. His Cherokee name is Siquotsi (pronounced “See-qwo-jee” with an emphasis on

the second syllable). His grandmother, who got it from her great-great grandfather, gave

this name to him. It was passed down from generation to generation. For each

generation, someone in Sammy’s family would be named Siquotsi. Siquotsi is a

Cherokee word that designates a type of water bird. Sammy (interview by author, 2004)

does not know what type of water bird it is, but explains that “it is the kind that hangs

around lakes and rivers.”

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Sammy describes himself as “fourth/fourth” Cherokee, or full-blooded Cherokee. He

explains that while he speaks the language quite well, he is less fluent in speaking and

more fluent in understanding it. Sammy tells me that he spoke only Cherokee until the

age of six when he started going to public school. At home, he says, they spoke

Cherokee exclusively. When he started going to school, Sammy says that he was told

they had to learn a second language. However, to him, English was a second language.

Cherokee was his native tongue. He mentions that even today, when he speaks with his

mom, they use the Cherokee language.

Sammy’s mother is from the Blue Clan, Anisahoni (pronounced “a-nee-sa-ho-nee”).

His father is from the Wolf Clan, Aniwaya (pronounced “a-nee-wa-ya”). There are seven

Cherokee clans. Anigilohi (pronounced “a-nee-ghee-lo-hee”), or Long Hair clan, also

known as The Twister, Hair Hanging Down, or Wind clan. Its members wore their hair

in sophisticated fashion. The Peace Chief was often from this clan. Members of the

Anisahoni, or Blue clan, made medicine from a plant that has bluish tones. It was

destined to protect children and keep them healthy. Anisahoni had two sub-clans, the

Wildcat and the Bear (which is considered the oldest of all Cherokee clans).

Aniwaya, or Wolf clan, is said to have been the largest. Many prominent war chiefs

are known to have come from this clan. The wolf was considered a protector. People

from the Anigotegewi clan (pronounced “a-nee-go-tae-ghae-wee”), or Wild Potato, were

considered to be the keeper of the land. They were the gatherers. The wild potato

constituted a large part of the Cherokee diet back in North Carolina. The Aniawi clan

(pronounced “a-nee-a-wee”), or Deer clan, was known for generating fast runners and

great hunters.

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The Cherokee Nation (2004) explains that:

even though they hunted game for subsistence, they respected and cared for the animals while they were living amongst them. They were also known as messengers on an earthly level, delivering messages from village to village, or person to person.

Anitsisqua (pronounced “a-nee-jee-ss-qwa”), or Bird Clan had members skilled in the art

of using blowguns for hunting. The Cherokee Nation (2004) also states that:

Members of the Bird Clan were historically known as [spiritual] messengers. The belief that birds are messengers between earth and heaven, or the People and Creator, gave the members of this clan the responsibility of caring for the birds. The subdivisions are Raven, Turtle Dove and Eagle. Our earned Eagle feathers were originally presented by the members of this clan, as they were the only ones able to collect them.

Finally, members of the Aniwodi, or Paint clan were “the sorcerers and medicine men”

(Reed 1993:5).

Seven is a very important number to the Cherokee people. The council house was

seven sided and the number was present in many ceremonies. The Cherokee honored

seven ceremonies or festivals. The first one was the First New Moon of Spring

ceremony. It marked the planting season and lasted seven days. The second was the

Green Com Ceremony, or Selutsunigististi (pronounced “sae-loo-ju-nee-ghee-jee-jee”).

It was celebrated when the young com was ripe enough to eat.

The third ceremony was the Ripe Com Ceremony, Donagohuni (pronounced “do-na-

go-hoo-nee”), celebrating the com harvest. The fourth one was the Great New Moon

ceremony, Nuwatiegwa (pronounced “noo-wa-ti-ae-gwa”). It recognized the end of

nature’s previous life cycle and allowed the Cherokee to give thanks to the Creator. Ten

days later, the fifth ceremony was held. It was called the Reconciliation and Make-

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Friends Ceremony, or Atohuna (pronounced ’’a-to-hoo-nha”). It was traditionally when

adoptions were performed and personal conflicts resolved.

The sixth one was the Bounding Bush ceremony, Elawatalegi (pronounced “ae-la-

wa-ta-lae-ghee”). It was a joyful ceremony. Tobacco was tossed into the sacred fire and

thanks were given to the Creator. The sacred fire was made of seven different types of

wood to represent the seven clans. The last and seventh ceremony was called the Uku

Dance, or Peace Chief Dance. It was celebrated every seventh years instead of the usual

Great New Moon ceremony. If much of these traditions have faded away, seven is still

today charged with hallowed meaning among traditional Cherokee. All seven clans are

represented on ceremonial grounds and are still part of the traditional contemporary

Cherokee belief system.

Sammy explained that when his father married his mother, his father became a

member of the Blue Clan. Cherokee society is traditionally matrilineal, meaning that

kinship and lineage is traced through the maternal side. Men moved in with the woman

they married and therefore into their wife’s clan. Women were considered the head of

the household. The home and children belonged to the woman should she separate from

her husband. The husband, in turn, would return to his mother’s clan. Sammy is member

of the Blue clan through his mother. His clanship changed, he reminded me, after he

married his non-Cherokee wife, Dama. Sammy declared that non-Cherokee, who are

adopted into the tribe through marriage or other means, are assimilated into the Long

Hair clan. After marrying Dama, Sammy “moved” to the Long Hair clan. Consequently,

his children, and grandchildren, belong to the Long Hair clan.

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Among Cherokee traditionalists, knowing a person's clan is of the utmost importance

as it is customarily forbidden to marry within one’s clan. Clan members are in fact

considered as relatives, and therefore “unmarriable.” While in Oklahoma, I was told on

several occasions that, because of the clan system, marriage arrangements can become

tricky and that young Cherokee tend to find a mate outside the tribe to avoid the trouble.

Clan affiliation is, as we will see later on, also crucial for medicine people to be aware of

when a patient seeks spiritual guidance or medical treatment. Seating at ceremonial

Stomp Dances is by clan, as well.

Sammy’s father was a wood carver and a jewelry maker. However, and by

profession, he worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a road foreman. Sammy’s

father had been left at a very early age without parents. He and his brothers had to care

for themselves. In the early fifties, Sammy’s father joined the army because he believed

that he would stand a better chance in life. That is where he met his wife (Sammy’s

mom). Even though his father had a fourth grade education, Sammy describes him as the

smartest man he has met. He was also a Korean War veteran.

I have always been curious seeing how many Native Americans served, and still

serve, in the United States Military. I wondered how they felt about fighting alongside

those who oppressed them for so long. I understand that in many instances, it was a

necessity but I wondered what, for instance, Sammy’s father thought about it. To that,

Sammy (interview by author 2004) responds:

this is the way it was put to me by a gentleman who served in the war.... (hesitates)

He said, he wasn’t fighting so much for the United States, he was fighting because his

people lived here. See, back in the early WWI, WWII, we weren’t even citizen of the

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United States. We fought for America, we fought for the United States flag, and yet,

we were considered second class people, we weren’t even citizens. Women got the

right before before we even became citizen of the United States.

Sammy is a man of great honor, pride and sense of duty. He contracted polio at a young

age, which prevented him from joining other Cherokee in the service. This still greatly

distresses him.

Sammy refers to his mother as a Cherokee homemaker. He has an immense respect

and admiration for her. Sammy also reminds me that both his parents were fourth/fourth

Cherokee and spoke the Cherokee language fluently. Sammy’s mother is still living and

is an attractive and joyful lady. One day, she gracefully read my fortune in the bottom of

her coffee cup.

Education

Sammy went to junior high in Tahlequah, and to high school in North Carolina.

However, he graduated from high school back in Oklahoma. For a short while and

because his condition made it difficult for him to attend school, Sammy had to be home

schooled. A tutor came in and worked with him everyday. During this period, his

mother and he went back and forth between Oklahoma and North Carolina because

Sammy’s father had been transferred to Cherokee, North Carolina. This happened when

Sammy was in the fourth grade. They moved there in the Fall and Sammy remembers it

being quite lonely. They had to leave his grandparents and all the people they knew back

in Oklahoma.

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Figure 4. Sammy’s mom, Jessie Still (Coffee). Photographed by Juliette Sligar in August 2004.

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His father was expected to stay in North Carolina for at least two years but the family

ended up living in Cherokee, North Carolina for about three years. Sammy (interview by

author 2004) recalls that:

we lived there for about three years, then my dad stayed. We came back because, me

having my condition, having polio when I was younger, I had to have check-ups, see

the doctor and all this and I was still in need of the doctors’ care. But when we lived

in North Carolina, we were refused health services there by the Eastern Band because

we were considered Western Band, not Eastern Band.

For that reason, Sammy’s mom and dad decided that the family would move back to

Oklahoma and that his dad would remain in North Carolina to finish the remaining year.

Coming back was indeed the only option since Sammy needed to be close to the doctor

and that a surgery had been scheduled for his knee. Sammy’s father stayed in Cherokee,

North Carolina for a year while the rest of the family moved back and settled with

Sammy’s grandmother.

After graduating from high school, Sammy attended Bacone College. Bacone

College is a Christian private college. At the time, it was geared solely towards Native

American students. Bacone is located in Muscogee, Oklahoma. He commuted from

Tahlequah, which is about thirty miles, back and forth to go to school. Sammy (interview

by author 2004) remembers that:

every Wednesday, at 10 o’clock, they would have chapel. They would have no classes

and from ten to eleven o’clock it was chapel. It was taught by the missionaries, I

guess. It was Presbyterian or something like that. I remember when I was younger I

always used to point to that college when we passed the town with my mom. That’s

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where I want to go to school when I get older. That’s where I went to go to school

when I graduate. Sure enough I did. It was just a two year junior college but now

they made it into a four year college. I thought, this is going to be great, I’m going

to enjoy. But, two years came and were gone. I remember the people I went to

school with. I remember the classes, but it’s like it just went by (snaps his fingers) that

fast. It’s already gone, you know? I really enjoyed it down there.

As Sammy mentioned, Bacone College used to be a junior college. Since then, it became

a four-year liberal arts college. This institution is affiliated to the American Baptist

Church and is aimed at “embracing a historic educational mission to American Indians”

(Bacone College 2004).

A missionary of the American Baptist Home Mission Society founded Bacone

College in 1880. His name was Almon C. Bacone and he worked in the Cherokee Baptist

Mission in Tahlequah, “Indian Territory.” The college was first named Indian College.

It was set on 160 acres of land donated by the Creek Tribal council at the end of the 19th

century. It was renamed Bacone Indian University in 1910, and later changed to Bacone

College. Like for many other places in the United States of that era, religious groups and

missions strived to “educate” American Indians on Christian principles. These types of

schools, as well as the infamous boarding schools, had a profound impact on Native

Americans, and were artifacts of a distinct era of relations between them and the United

States government.

Subsequent to the closing of the last boarding schools (Chilocco in Oklahoma in

1980, and the Phoenix Indian School in Arizona in the Reagan era), historians produced

studies describing the Native experience, the functioning of particular Indian schools, and

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the legal framework of assimilation policies. The reason and justification for the creation

of such schools, however, is well known. The Federal government attempted to

assimilate, “Americanize,” and integrate Native Americans within mainstream society.

To my knowledge, Sally J. McBeth (1983) through her book,Ethnic Identity and the

Boarding School Experience o f West-Central Oklahoma American Indians, was among

the first scholars to introduce memoirs and life histories of Native experiences within the

American public or private school systems

Sammy did not experience the Federal boarding school system. He attended a college

founded by missionaries. His experience, however, and his parents’ strong position on

his receiving the best possible instruction, greatly reflects a common attitude among the

Cherokee people towards education. As some Cherokee scholars have pointed out, it is

quite significant that the most cherished figure among the Cherokee, Sequoyah, is an

intellectual and academic, instead of a warrior.

In Friends o f Thunder: Folktales o f the Oklahoma Cherokees, Jack and Anna

Kilpatrick (1995:179-180) wrote:

The Cherokees revere the memory of Sequoyah as the greatest Cherokee that ever lived, and the farther his figure retreats into time, the larger his shadow falls across the present. To them he is much more than the genius who made them a literate people: he is the eternal symbol of the national virtues of wisdom, forbearance, and compassion.

By all standards, Sequoyah was indeed one of the truly towering American Indians. It is highly significant that the national hero of the Cherokees was an intellectual, not a warrior.

Our people refuse to let him go, this small lame man who taught and led and loved them in their persecuted past. He has been enshrined in a Messianic mysticism that the essentially pragmatic Cherokees reserve for him alone. With shinning eyes, an old woman once said to us: “he will come back someday. ’

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In the book Cultivating The Rosebuds: the Education o f Women at the Cherokee Female

Seminary, 1851-1909, Choctaw University Professor Devon Mihesuah’s presents the

Cherokee female seminary and introduces a whole different aspect of the “assimilation

period.” The book is the account of one of the several Native schools meant to facilitate

the assimilation process, established by the Natives themselves instead of the Federal

government, or missionaries.

The Cherokee’s goal was to acculturate their own people in order to help them

integrate the new dominant society, therefore allowing their survival. Cherokee Nation

members established the Cherokee Female Seminary in 1851. It was nondenominational,

and exclusively for females. This school was founded neither by the Federal

government, nor by missionary agencies, and that made it very unusual among Indian

schools. Again, we can see here a tendency among the Cherokee people to adapt swiftly

to changing circumstances, and to be as much in control of the change as possible.

Once more, Sammy’s story illustrates such an attitude. His parents continued to fight

for their son’s recovery and, against all odds, strived to provide him with the best

education. As he explains later, Sammy attended public schools exclusively. Even

though, he does not speak about it as a slowing force, his physical condition may well

have prevented him from attending school “normally.” Yet Sammy not only attended

regular public schools, but his parents also insisted on him receiving the best possible

education. They wanted him to be prepared to enter successfully a world that did not

particularly encourage cultural plurality, nor welcome Native American people. The

resilience of this particular family is characteristic of the buoyancy of the entire Cherokee

people.

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Sammy explains that when he first went to school he could not speak English and

people at the school used to frown upon his speaking Cherokee with other Native

children. He tells me that “they wanted us learn to speak English and not to use our

language anymore.... That’s when I started losing my language” (interview by author

2004). Non-Native children used to laugh at Sammy and other Cherokee children when

they communicated in Cherokee. They begun to feel embarrassed and consequently

came to favor English.

By the time Sammy advanced to junior high school he had forgotten most of his

Cherokee. He could understand it more than speak it. His not being able to communicate

in his native tongue would upset members of his family. He tells me that:

my grandmother would say in Cherokee: I don’t understand you, I don’t understand

you, speak in Cherokee. Tell us in Cherokee! And of course, by then, I had forgotten

most of my Cherokee, and that’s when I started to get embarrassed. It was sort of a

total turn around (interview by author 2004).

While Sammy used to feel embarrassed in school because he could not speak English, he

now felt very self-conscious around Native Cherokee speakers because he could not

speak his ancestral tongue properly any longer. As Sammy (interview by author 2004)

got older, he says he “learned how valuable [his] native language is, and how fast [the

Cherokee are] losing it.” He adds “so that’s why today, I tried to keep it going and say

what I can in Cherokee.” Sammy taught himself the Sequoyah syllabary.

Sammy remembers a school his father attended, Sequoyah High School. It was a

boarding school operated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and operated for the education

of Native children. The school, as for many Federal boarding schools, promoted

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mainstream American culture, and was self-sufficient. They had a dairy farm and the

pupils worked their way through their education. Sammy (interview by author 2004)

recalls:

They had dairy farms. They raised chickens. They had.... All of this. The kids, they

wouldn’t just stay there. You sort of worked your way through the education. They

would have dairy farms, you’d get up early in the morning.... Some of the people

would have duties. Like they’d get up in the morning. The girls would make the beds,

do the laundry, and the boys would go out and feed the chickens or milk the cows.

And during the day, make sure that the cows were fed, and all this. They would raise

their own gardens.... So all the food and supplies they had, they raised themselves.

He also mentions the fact that the boarding school children would always stay among

each other and never had contact with the “outside” world.

Most of the time, he elucidates, those children were schooled through the boarding

school system because the parents could not afford to send them to a regular public

school. The boarding school system took care of all necessities, but this too had a price.

Sammy had heard stories of severe corporal punishments and abuse inflicted on children

who used Cherokee instead of English. Remembering this not so distant past, Sammy

tells me how glad and thankful he is to his parents for making the choices and sacrifices

they made, thereby allowing him to get the right tools to succeed in life. Sammy’s

parents wanted him to experience the outside world and therefore decided that Sammy

would not be schooled in a predominantly Native school, but in a regular public school.

On the question of the righteousness, fairness and efficiency of educating Native

children in Federal and mission schools, there seems to be no simple or right answer. In

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theory, forced acculturation could be viewed as what David Wallace Adams (1995) has

called “a war waged against native children” and what Scott Riney (1999) qualified as a

“weapon against Indian cultures.” In practice, however, the willingness of the Cherokee

Nation, for instance, to adapt to mainstream society may have seemed to be the only way

for them to survive. Like for any other culture, the Cherokee culture has certainly

changed over time. Sammy’s life history is an example of such a change. At the same

time, and in spite of policies of acculturation, or the necessity to be a part of

contemporary America, the Cherokee have not forgotten who they are or where they

come from. They have found ways to absorb within their own culture, the mainstream

surrounding way of life.

After graduating from Bacone College with an Associate Degree, Sammy tells me

that he came to Northeastern University in Tahlequah to get his Bachelor’s Degree.

There, he met his wife Dama. He had planned on finishing school, and so did Dama,

when they met and started going out. Sammy (interview by author 2004) declares that:

We got married, we quit school, and we started working. Later on, I went back. I got

a job, a permanent job, then I started going back to school, finally finished and

I got my degree. After I finished, Dama finished and got her degree. People used

to say that’s unusual to have two parents that have graduated and gotten

their degree and have children like that. Around here, it is unusual. Either one

has a degree or, maybe, none of them have a degree. Around here, you see a lot of

people getting their GED. They never finish high school. When they finally want

to go to College they go and get a GED.

I ask him if he knows why people do not finish high school.

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Sammy explains that a lot of time it is because they found someone, and got married

or just did not like school. He tells me that to be honest, he did not like school. He hated

school. He could have made better grades, Sammy tells me. He probably was not a four-

point student, but he could have been ranked if he put himself and his efforts into it.

Sammy reiterates the fact that at that age he was thinking about different things. He was

thinking about going outside. As he grew older, he went to Bacone and Northeastern.

He says that he then realized that: “hey, what you do when you’re younger affects what

you do when you grow up” (interview by author 2004). The bad grades he made in high

school were coming back on him, he explains. He realized he should have made better

grades. He declares: “all came out OK. It all worked out fine” (interview by author

2004).

Sammy (interview by author 2004) also states:

That’s what we taught our children. And my mom, and my grandma used to say: you

got to go through it before you realize what we are talking about. And I said: ah,

yeah, yeah.... And as I grow older now I realize what they was saying. I did go

through it, and now I wish I did work even harder. I tell my kids now, you need

to work hard. Same thing my parents would tell me, you know? But you know, we

got married and we had two children, two daughters. We raised them up. And now,

me and Dama has been married going on 28 years now. 28 years this coming

September.

He explains that Dama raised their children and that it is what she wanted to do.

Mostly, Sammy emphasizes, Dama wanted to make sure somebody was home when

their children came back from school. When they got older, she decided she wanted to

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work. As for him, Sammy (interview by author 2004) asserts: “I got a family I got to

raise. I got a family I want to support.” He also declares that “it wasn’t a have to case

with me. I wanted to. That makes me proud of today, knowing that, at least I supported

my family. I don’t feel that I was a burden to them. I feel good about that. That I could

support them, and provide for them, and all that” (interview by author 2004).

Apprenticeship

Sammy started working at the age of fourteen. He tells me that “it wasn’t because my

parents put me to work, it’s because I wanted to” (interview by author 2004). He worked

after school and on weekends. There was a man who lived in Tahlequah and owned a

jewelry store. He liked Sammy, and wanted to teach him how to work with jewelry, fix

watches and such. This gentleman was an older man, Sammy tells me. He asked

Sammy’s dad if his son would be interested in working. Then, he asked Sammy who

accepted.

The older man would teach him how to do engraving on jewelry and fix watches. On

slow days, Sammy would go out and sweep the sidewalks. Sammy speaks of how much

trust and faith this older gentleman put in him. He worked for him for at least two or

three years. Then, Sammy (interview by author 2004) declares: “I kind of got bored with

it. I wasn’t really interested in working in a closed environment like that.”

After a while, when Sammy entered high school, he started working for the Cherokee

Heritage Center. His sister worked there. She was giving tours of the Cherokee Ancient

Village (the “Indian Village” as Sammy calls it) to tourists that came through. One day,

Sammy followed her to work and noticed there were many of his school friends working

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there. He started enjoying visiting the place and pretty soon, was there everyday. The

supervisor at the time noticed Sammy and asked him if he wanted to work there. Sammy

accepted and became a staff member.

Under the leadership of Chief Keeler, the Cherokee Nation created the Cherokee

Heritage Center, and the Cherokee Historical Society, in 1963. The Society operates the

Cherokee Heritage Center, which is located on forty-four acres of land in Park Hill,

Oklahoma. The Heritage Center is dedicated to the preservation of Cherokee culture and

history as well as to the education of the general public. It offers learning activities

designed to educate local students. I personally participated in some of the arts and crafts

activities, and learned how to weave a traditional basket. The Center includes an outdoor

amphitheater, a reconstituted ancient village, the Adams Comer Rural Village and Farm,

and the Cherokee National Museum.

The museum holds both permanent and temporary exhibits such as the yearly Trail of

Tears Art Show. The museum also hosts the Cherokee National Archives, which is the

legal depository of Cherokee Nation documents, and includes a rare collection of

Cherokee historical records, photographs, and documents. Added to that, the Center

possesses a genealogical library that provides research services, and operates the

Cherokee Heritage Pottery. The Cherokee Heritage Pottery is located in Ponim,

Oklahoma and offers various handcrafted decorative items.

I asked when Sammy became interested in learning how to make blowguns or bows,

and who taught him. Sammy tells me that when he was about fifteen or sixteen years old,

when he started working at the Indian village, he was taught how to make arrowheads,

blowguns, and even how to lead Stomp Dances. He explains that it was not to teach him

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his history or culture. It was so that he could work there. As he started learning, he

became more and more inquisitive. From then on, things started to pick up, Sammy

declares. He would inquire what blowguns were made for and the Elders would tell him.

Figure 5. Basket weaving organized by the Cherokee Cultural Center. Photographed by Juliette Sligar in July 2004.

Sometimes, the older Cherokee people would sit down with him, and they would tell

him stories. That is how Sammy became interested in traditional crafts. Sammy would

ask why baskets were made out of buck brush. Then, an older lady would sit there and

she would say: “years and years ago, when I was younger, I remember my mom taking

me out there and getting buck brush. We would walk two or three miles up the hill, go

into the woods, and pick it.” From there, Sammy got really interested and started

learning.

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Figure 6. Sammy and Ed Fields making blowguns. Photographed by Juliette Sligar in August 2004.

Sammy started learning traditional arts as he went along. Some of the Elders noticed

that he had taken an interest in that and they would sit with him. They would talk to him.

He believes that if one is not interested in his or her culture and history, people will not

take the time to teach him or her anything. Because, he was interested and showed

interest, the Elders would come, sit down, and say: ”1 want to teach you something.”

This is how Sammy got started, he states.

Sammy remembers William Cabbagehead. He explains that Mr. Cabbagehead passed

away, but that he used to live a house down from where Sammy’s family lived and was a

master artisan in blowgun and jewelry making. William Cabbagehead is the one who

taught Sammy how to lead Stomp Dances. Mike Flute taught him how to make bows and

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darts with the thistle for the blowguns. Sammy remembers that they took the time to

teach him.

The Elders knew that he would keep learning and maybe show this “down later on the

line,” Sammy explains. More and more people would approach Sammy when he started

leading Stomp Dances. They had respect for him, Sammy tells me, because he was not

just a little kid, running around and making noise. They started respecting him because

they saw that he really wanted to learn the culture. Therefore, they started taking the time

to teach him. Sammy really appreciates their sharing with him.

Sammy tells me that it never crossed his mind to make crafts to sell. His dad would

make jewelry. He also made carvings and sold his works. Sammy also carved wood

when he was younger. He explains that it is when they were in North Carolina that his

dad learned how to do woodcarving, and taught Sammy. They would come back to

Oklahoma during the week of the Cherokee National holiday and sell their woodcarving.

Sammy (interview by author 2004) declares that:

I would have my stuff to sell. But deep down, I didn’t care whether I sold it or not.

People would come and say: oh, that’s good, that’s great. And I got interested in

people really taking interest in what I was doing. So, that’s why even today, when

someone says, you do a good job, it kinda gives me a complement. And that’s

how, I guess, I started giving away to people, you know? But it wasn’t just because

they would say they like it that I would give it away. It’s like, things that I work on. I

put my heart into it. It’s something I love, enjoy doing. And so, when somebody

comes and becomes good friends or somebody I really think good about, hey, I want

you to have this. Because, that’s not a piece of wood. That’s not just a bow. That’s

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not a basket, or that’s not a marble. It’s part of me. Part of something I feel that came

from me, that I put a lot of work into. And, I want to share with people. That’s why I

give it away.

Figure 7. Sammy straightening a river cane over the fire to make a blowgun. Photographed by Juliette Sligar in August 2004.

Sammy laughs and tells me how Dama would get mad at him and ask why he does not

sell his works. She knows that he can make a little money out of it, Sammy declares.

I am truly impressed with Sammy’s attitude because like Dama, I know that he could

successfully sell his art. Sammy (interview by author 2004) elucidates:

Oh, yeah, yeah, I know I could.... But to me it was a kind of, like a gift or, given to

me by my Creator from my Elders who showed me how to build these things. And

that’s what I want to keep doing. Like I said earlier, I just want to keep my culture and

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history alive. Keep it going. And who knows it may never. I may pass away

tomorrow, you know? That’s what I mean. I don’t mean to put a lot into it

but it’s just.... I enjoy doing it.

Figure 8. Sammy picking dried wild thistle to make darts. Photographed by Juliette Sligar in August 2004.

Sammy’s wife also often points out how much of a perfectionist he is, Sammy says. He

explains that when one puts himself or herself into it, one wants to make it look good. He

knows it cannot be perfect, but he tries to get as close as he can.

Sammy stresses the fact that he learned much from the Elders as he grew up and came

closer to them. With his grandmother talking to him, telling him stories, with the Elders

telling him different things about life growing up as Cherokee, he learned a lot. He

declares:

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I grew up as Cherokee. I’m not ashamed to say we went hunting for wild

onions to pay bills. Cause that was our lives. That was our way of living. Eating

crawdads, and someone would say, oh, I wouldn’t eat a crawdad. And I say, well,

maybe that wasn’t the way you were bom or raised, but that doesn’t mean, hey, I

want to cut you down because you’re eating crawdads or, you’re not a human being

because you didn’t do this. And that’s what I was saying the other day. People come

and they think we’re mystic, or we’re some kind of.... We’re just like anybody else.

Every culture has its own culture and history. You know? At least that’s the way I

look at it, you know? But yeah, we went eating squirrels, hunting for rabbits, eating

deer, wisi [pronounced “ wee-shee”], what people call mushrooms, we gathered

those (interview by author 2004).

I have heard that wisi is a big mushroom, which Sammy confirms. He then reiterates that

because of the way they were bom and raised, they lived off the land. They knew how to

survive. He explains that they still live that way today and go out hunting for wisi, still

eat rabbits, and squirrels, or fish. He declares that they will never lose that. They will

always be doing that because that is the way they were raised.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 1 — . Figure 9. Detaching the skin of the thistle to expose a white, cotton-like material that will be used to attached to the dart and give it stability. Photographed by Juliette Sligar in August 2004.

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Figure 10. Sammy attaching the thistle to the dart’s body. Photographed by Juliette Sligar in August 2004.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER III

ADULTHOOD AND CHEROKEE LIFE IN MODERN AMERICA

Traditional Medicine and Spirituality

As I mentioned earlier, the Sequoyah syllabary distinguished the Cherokee among

any other Native groups. Many Cherokee intellectuals communicated their thoughts and

reached out to the rest of the community through newspapers and other written media

using the syllabary. The Cherokee Phoenix, for instance, was the first Native paper. It is

still in circulation although it is now mainly published in English. The missionaries also

extensively utilized the syllabary in their attempts to spread the Christian faith among the

Cherokee people. There was another use for the invention. It allowed traditionalists to

preserve their sacred formulas in writing, and to pass them on to the next generation.

As Mooney (1891:308) puts it:

these formulas had been handed down orally from a remote antiquity until the early part of the present century, when the invention of the Cherokee syllabary enabled the priests of the tribe to put them into writing. The same invention made it possible for their rivals, the missionaries, to give to the Indians the Bible in their own language, so that the opposing forces of Christianity and shamanism alike profited by the genius of Sikwaya (Sequoyah).

Such sacred formulas are contained in what is known today as The Swimmer Manuscript.

This manuscript was called after Mooney’s informant Ayuini, or “Swimmer.” The

manuscript was revised, built upon, and completed by Frans M. Olbrechts in 1925.

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In Sacred Formulas o f the Cherokees, James Mooney gives an astonishing account of

how the most guarded and secret sacred Cherokee formulas came into his possession.

Shamans using the Sequoyah syllabary had written down all these formulas. Swimmer,

who was himself a shaman, had given some of his books to Mooney. Mooney’s account

is indeed a vibrant testimony that illustrates the legendary manner in which the Cherokee

master the art of integrating foreign tools and customs useful to better, but also maintain,

their way of life. After Swimmer gave Mooney the handwritten book containing the

formulas and treatments he had been entrusted with by the previous generation of

shamans, he was asked “whether other shamans had such books. ’Yes,’ said Swimmer,

‘we all have them’” (Mooney 1891:312).

Sammy could not walk until the age of six. He was paralyzed from the neck down

and the doctors had told his mom that he would never walk. Sammy (interview by author

2004) declares that:

My mom refused to believe that so she would work with me and we went to this...,

what we call a “medicine-man.” As Indians, Cherokee, we felt closer to a

medicine man. It was like a doctor, an Indian doctor; I guess you would say, to us.

He would get this deer antler. He would heat it up over a flame, he would pray over

it, and turn around and rub that bone all over my body. In the meantime my mom

would work with me, exercise with me, my legs, work my arms and whatever.

That represented for me to get up and move around. And so, from doing that and my

mom not giving up and working with me all the time, I started getting some movement

in my limbs.

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James Mooney (1900:231) reminds us in Myths o f the Cherokee, that among the

Cherokee “each animal had his appointed station and duty.” Mooney (1900:263)

continues by saying that “the deer, a ’wi, which is still common in the mountains, was the

principal dependence of the Cherokee hunter, and is consequently prominent in myth,

folklore, and ceremonial.”

In the book, Mooney explains that the Cherokee attribute special healing powers to

the feet of the deer. His feet are used to fight frostbite, as the deer is believed to be

immune to it. However, offended deer spirits that hunters forgot to appease could send

rheumatism to people. The deer is also believed to have won his horns from winning a

race against the rabbit. The rabbit, tsitsu (pronounced “ji-joo’), is malicious and a

trickster. He is often involved in races, but is also often beaten at his own game (Mooney

1900:262-263). The fact that Deer won against Rabbit in a race together with his special

powers can explain the traditional doctor’s treatment choices for Sammy.

Traditionally, the Cherokee world is strongly based upon notions of equilibrium and

order. In the Cherokee world, everything has its place and its function, and things have

to be respected to maintain harmony. In the book The Night Has a Naked Soul:

Witchcraft and Sorcery among the Western Cherokee, Alan Kilpatrick (1997:11) explains

that “according to the tenets of aboriginal Cherokee thought, order in the cosmos is

sustained, primarily by two human behaviors: balance and purification.” Additionally,

the Cherokee Nation web site (2004) informs visitors that “traditionally, the Cherokee are

deeply concerned with keeping things separated and in the proper classification, or

category.” It explains that, “when sacred items are not in use they are wrapped in

deerskin, or white cloth, and kept in a special box or other place.”

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While the subject of traditional medicine and healing is fascinating and vast, it is an

issue that the Cherokee do not discuss freely. Some of the information Sammy or others

shared with me, and some of the practices I was fortunate enough to witness, I am not at

liberty to discuss. There is however, some literature on the subject. Traditional medicine

derives entirely from the system of equilibrium so essential to the Cherokee. The system

originated from the belief that at the beginning of time, both humans and animals lived in

peace and harmony.

All spoke the same language. It was the time when the tribe had an additional clan

called Anitsakahi (pronounced “A-nee-ja-ga-hee”), the bears. The Anitsakahi ultimately

left the rest of the tribe. As they were departing, Anitsakahi offered songs to the

Cherokee to sing when they were hungry and wanted to call them. Anitsakhi promised to

give them their own flesh to eat. They also took the new name o f yona, or bear.

Other animals are very important to the Cherokee people. The owl and the cougar are

very much revered as, in the Cherokee genesis, they were the only animals that stayed

awake for the seven nights. In the very beginning, when animals and plants were first

made, Mooney (1900:240) underlines that “we do not know by whom,” they were

instructed to stay awake for seven nights. The first night, almost all the animals were

awake, but on the second night, more and more animals started to fall asleep. Finally, on

the seventh night, only the owl and the mountain lion remained awake. As a reward for

their conduct, they were given night vision and the power to hunt the animals that sleep at

night. That is why today, these two animals have nocturnal habits and can hunt in the

dark.

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As I was told once, the owl is also an omen of death. The owl possesses supernatural

powers. The Cherokee find the owl to look different from other birds, and to resemble

“an old man as he walks.” As for the cougar, the Cherokee Nation (2004) tells us that, “it

is an animal that has screams resembling those of a woman. He is an animal who has

habits that are very secret and unpredictable.”

When I ask Sammy if he still uses traditional medicine, he responds that his family

and he had gone back on several occasions for reasons other than his condition. He

explains that they consulted a traditional doctor:

because of other things that happened in our lives that we needed help with. Like

sickness or just things.... You don’t speak about medicine man a lot because it was

something that was sacred to us. But to explain it, they were like, if you had

problems at home, or something was happening you could go see them, and they

could help you. That’s what it was like to us. Yes, we went several times again.

We had people that we knew, people we trusted. Like today, people, they trust a

doctor and they go back to him. That’s the way it was with medicine men (interview

by author 2004).

Sammy also tells me that he had not used a medicine man for years, mainly because he

“kind of drifted away from that.”

Sammy elaborates in explaining that, growing up, he moved away from traditional

medicine because he went to school in public establishments, and he was taught a very

different culture than the one he was accustomed to. He explains that “in a public school,

they teach you a lot of things differently than one’s own culture. They don’t teach you

your [traditional] culture so I started shifting away from that culture” (interview by

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author 2004). He says that he would go, if he really needed to. Sammy sometimes asks

his mom for help. She knows how to read coffee cups and how to use certain plants as

medicine.

Sammy explains that if someone has a toothache, for instance, his mother knows what

medicine to use. He underlines the fact that his mother is not a medicine woman, but that

his grandfather was a medicine man. If he was not a “real strong medicine man,”

(interview by author 2004) Sammy’s grandfather knew medicine. He passed it on to his

daughter (Sammy’s mom), who has a good understanding of it. It is also customary

between friends or close ones to share certain cures. Sammy, however, wants to make it

very clear that he still goes to consult contemporary Western doctors when necessary. He

asks for his mother’s guidance when he needs a cure for back pain or for similar

problems. However, he turns to “modem” medicine for more serious conditions.

Later on, Sammy continues, as he got older, he started moving around and was able to

walk a little. He indicates that he used to crawl around until about the age of five or six

years old. At six years old, Sammy says, he was finally able to walk pretty well. From

there, he went on to grade school. Speaking of the medicine man, Sammy (interview by

author 2004) avows that “he hooked me up all the way except for my left leg. I have a

limp on my left leg but it was because I don’t have any muscle in my left leg. I don’t

even have a knee cap.” Imaginably, Sammy tells me how, still today, doctors are amazed

when they see him walking without a kneecap. He believes that he just learned how to

adapt to walk.

Sammy came back to Oklahoma, when he was about sixteen or seventeen years old.

He had several surgeries before that. The first surgery was on his right knee. His right

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leg was growing faster than his left leg. In order to stop the growth, the doctors operated

on his right knee but stopped the growth permanently. His second surgery was to

straighten one of his ankles as his foot was turned in. They put staples into his bone to

hold it together but it became infected, and they had to go back in and remove the staples.

Later on, his last surgery was designed to stop the growth on his left leg that had started

to outgrow the right one. Since the surgeons had stopped the right leg growth

permanently, it was irreversible. They had to go to the left one and stop the growth as

well. Sammy informs me that the procedure was apparently successful and that it is why,

he has such short legs. He laughs.

After the doctors measured his arms length and his upper torso, they determined that

he would probably have been about five feet seven inches. Since, they stopped the

growth of his legs; he is about five feet three or five feet four inches. He reminds me that

it never affected him as far as being able to get out and do things. He emphasizes that:

as a matter of fact, being handicapped like I was, I used to play softball. I used to

go out there and play softball, and participate in sports. I did a lot of things normal

kids would do. I mean (expresses amusement) considering what’s normal you

know? Whatever you think normal is. To me, I was just, another little small

normal guy, you know, kid, that was growing up playing sports and whatever. It

never really affected me. Even work wise, I had a lot of people say, just think you

don’t have to work for the rest of your life. You can get all this. But to me it

wasn’t that way. To me, I felt like that there was really nothing wrong with me

(interview by author 2004).

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The conversation, then, slides back to traditional medicine and Stomp Dances, which

Sammy used to lead.

I was quite curious about Stomp Dances. Sammy and Dama took me to one of the

Stomp Grounds the night before, and Sammy was asked to lead one the dances. I am still

enraptured by the magic of the moment. Sammy tells me that the Stomp Dances of

Southeastern Indians were once celebrated during the day. Once the Europeans came,

they disapproved of the ancestral tradition they did not understand. Because the dance is

performed around the sacred fire (fire made up of seven types of wood to represent the

seven tribes), the early settlers mistook it as a devil worshiping practice, and the

Cherokee long-established religion had to go underground. Since then, Stomp Dances

occur at night in secret locations. Today, they are invisible to those who do not know

their location.

The night Sammy and Dama invited me to join a Stomp Dance ceremony; we drove

for a little while. Then the car took a sharp turn and before long, I could not see the road

anymore. We were surrounded by complete desolation for a short while. All was silent

around us. Then I started discerning faint sounds. Only when we reached the Grounds

did I begin to recognize chanting and turtle-shells rattling. The scene was entrancing and

I will never forget the magic of that night. Men and women stomped around the fire.

Women wore leg rattles that rhythmically accompanied the chants. To traditional

Cherokee, the fire is sacred and bums continuously. Even though almost 99 percent of

the contemporary Cherokee are members of Baptist or other Christian churches, many

still attend Stomp Dances and are members of a Ground.

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Men are the ones singing. The leader sings an incantation, and the male followers

repeat in chorus while women rhythmically stomp. Their leg rattles are traditionally

made of tortoise shells filled with pebbles and only women wear them. They are called

the “Shell-Shakers.” Some however also use cans filled with pebbles. Stomp leaders

wear hats adorned by a large and high white feather. Only they can wear this adornment

for the ceremony. Women are equally important to men during Stomp Dances worship.

The leading Shell Shaker is the equivalent of the male dance leader. The Stomp Dance

leader leads the men while the leading Shell Shaker leads the women. She follows

directly behind the dance leader. Some say that women use tortoise-shell as rattles

because the surface of carapace looks like women dancing. It is customary that those

wearing cans instead of tortoise shells follow behind unless they are leading.

Members of the Grounds gather, share food and dance until dawn. The Grounds are

as holy to Cherokee traditionalists as a church to practicing Christians. It is the place

where they worship the Creator, Unetlanv (pronounced “oo-nae-tla-nan”). Ceremonial

observance entails sacrifices made by the ceremonial leaders. Prayers are said and a

special type of plant is consumed to purify the body. There is also the ceremony of

“going to water,” or river for ritual cleansing, and the smoking of the pipe.

Going to the water has been part of the Cherokee traditions for centuries. The river,

or "Long Man," is hallowed, and “going to the water,” is a purification rite. Cherokee

practiced this rite before and after important events such as stickball games, religious

ceremonies and such. Still today, the river, or any moving water, such as a creek, is

sacred. Traditionalists still hold great respect for this natural element, and some still

practice the ceremony of going to the water. I remember that, while traveling to Elder

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communities with my Cherokee friends, many times Sammy, Ed or Denis pointed out to

a creek and observed that there was a good place to go swimming or freshen. While I did

not really understand what that meant at the time, I now have a better grasp of why

spotting such places was important to them.

The Cherokee Nation (2004) explains in its web site that:

The Keetoowah's [traditional Cherokee] bible is not written on paper. The words are woven into seven wampum belts which are shown only in rare occasions. The belts are very old, and are made of pearls and shell beads, woven with seaweed fibers from the Gulf of Mexico. The history behind the belt is that many years ago, the tribe was preparing to go on to war with another tribe, when the medicine men foresaw which would survive, and cut the original wampum belt into seven pieces, giving one to each warrior. After the war, the belts were scattered, some being hidden and disappearing, the last one was recovered by Redbird Smith around 80 years ago.

In 1982, a team of non-Cherokee led by Bill Jones was allowed by the Keetoowah tribal

council to produce a documentary on Stomp Dances. The documentary is entitled “Spirit

of the Fire,” and came out in 1984. It is the first production ever to present the sacred

ceremony of Stomp Dances, the smoking of the pipe, and most incredibly, the display of

the Wampum belts, which are only shown on very sacred occasions. The documentary is

available in video or online, through the Keetoowah’s website at: http://www.keetoowah-

society. org/video .htm.

I asked if Sammy goes often to Stomp Dances, or whether he drifted away from them.

He tells me that they often went to them when he was young. He reiterates the fact that,

as a child, like for any other children, he did not really pay much attention to what was

going on. He declares that his mom and dad used to go to the medicine man before.

They would tell him what plant was good for what, that:

that plant over there is good for your back pain. This plant over here is good for so

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and so. This bark here is good for your ailment. So, if you ever get in a situation

when you need help, remember those. I’d say: OK, OK, OK.... But you know,

now, I wish Pd pay attention more. Now, I wish I’d remember what they were

talking about. And some plants I do know. Some plants are still out there. I’d

have to say the lily pad (interview by author 2004).

Sammy advises people that what he says about a plant does not mean we should go get

that plant, dig it up, and use it. He explains that there are things that medicine people did

to that plant before they used it for medicine.

Sammy does not know the things they do to fix the plant. He explains that what he

knows is the plants they use for the medicine. He informs me that:

They used to say that there is sixteen different cures for one plant, but not all

medicine men know each of these cures. One may know it’s a cure for diabetes.

Another one may know that it is a cure for back pain. Somebody else may know

that.... But they don’t all know how each one goes. That’s why I always say this.

Just because I tell you what that medicine can cure, don’t go do it. There was a lot

that we needed to, to fix it up to give you (interview by author 2004).

Sammy continues by saying that he remembers many people asking if he still uses

traditional medicine or goes to the medicine man. To him, all the medicine people get

from the hospital comes from plants. The Cherokee used them directly.

He continues by telling me that if someone was feeling bad in the morning, or if

something was wrong with this person, the medicine man or woman would go out in the

woods and get some plants. By the afternoon, the person would be better. The

difference, he declares, was that the medicine came directly from the plant. Today,

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modem medicine involves getting the plant, grinding it down, putting additives to it. It

weakens the medication, Sammy asserts. The doctor will tell the patient to take some

pills. After having taken all the pills, within three or four days, he or she should feel

better. Sammy declares that it is obvious that someone would feel better after three or

four days but that if one wants to cure a problem right away, going directly to the plant

will provide the patient with the whole and strong potency of the medicine. It will cure

the person.

Sammy remarks that one has to know what he or she is doing. He elucidates:

that one gentleman told me that if you go and look in a pond and you see a lily

pad, go way down to the root and those stems and roots go way down to the

ground, get to the tip of that root, and take it, and boil it, and drink it. They cure

back pain or any back problems you have. But don’t do it because as I said, there

is a little bit more to doing that than just going and getting it, and boiling it in hot

water and drinking it. They prayed over it. They did other things to it before you

did it. See that’s why I say, you got to be careful (interview by author 2004).

During our conversation, Sammy (interview by author 2004) tells me that they never

really talk about ancestral medicine, “the only reason I’m saying this to you is because,

you understand it. But I’m not going to get in front of a crowd and say this cures back

pain or this cures cancer, or else.”

He continues by saying that the Cherokee have gotten lazy. They go to the Hastings

hospital (tribal hospital, open to all tribal members with free medical services). Sammy

believes that because it is easy to go to modem hospitals, they have forgotten what plants

can do and how to use them. He recognizes, however, that there are still today Cherokee

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people who know traditional medicine. It is, however, impossible for outsiders to ask the

name of a medicine man or woman. One has to know people who know him or her, and

they need an introduction.

Tolerance. Intertribal, and Native-Non Native Relationship

Sammy tells me that when he married Dama, her grandfather did not like him because

of the fact that he is Indian. But after a while, Sammy explains, after he associated with

her grandfather, talked to him, the grandfather said “hey, he don’t act like he’s an Indian.

He don’t talk like he’s an Indian.” Sammy wondered how he is supposed to act or talk

but he emphasizes the fact that he appreciates, today, that his mom sent him to public

school because, he says, he learned how to get along with people. I am curious about

what “talking like an Indian” may mean.

Sammy explains that, for instance, Dama can tell if someone she meets for the first

time is a fluent Cherokee speaker because of the tone of his or her voice, or the way he or

she talks. Sammy (interview by author 2004) continues:

See I don’t speak or sound like a Cherokee, or an Indian as they say, or Native

American. Let me correct this as we are talking here. I don’t mean to say Native

American or Indian.... Remember, I told you we’d rather be called First People.

But, I am so used to say that over time that I got into the habit of saying that, but in

reality we like to be called First People. Anyway, going back to this, there is just

something about how they speak. Some of my friends are like that. They’ll

come up and speak and you can tell they speak Cherokee.

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Sammy speaks Cherokee as well but he believes that because he went to public schools, it

made a difference.

Sammy takes pleasure in recalling school memories. He remembers:

they taught me how.... See, they used to get me up in class and we had to get up

and speak. Recite the Gettysburg Address or.... Things like this in school. Like in

history class and stuff. They would make you get up there and speak. I really liked

that when I was younger, and I studied. I would read to myself, out loud or

whatever, and I would repeat the words so I’d say it right. From what I learned, I

guess m y..., accent or whatever..., kind of changed. Even my sister, the way she

talks, sometimes you can tell that she..., like they say, speaks like an Indian or

whatever (interview by author 2004).

Sammy states that he understands what his wife’s grandfather was saying. He takes my

example to point out that I have an accent and that one can tell I am French. He states

that if I get acclimated, if I live in the United States for a long time, pretty soon I may

loose my accent. Sammy thinks that this is what happened to him.

Sammy declares that he does not know if he has a Native American accent, and if he

may have lost it. He explains:

I used to try to speak more correctly. I would never say: hey, you all come here! I’d

say: everyone, please come here. Get the right pronunciation. If somebody

said: have you ate yet? A lot of people here say that. I would say: have you

eaten yet? I tried to use the correct way to speak English. That’s the way I was

taught in school (interview by author 2004).

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Sammy thinks he adapted, learned to speak that way, and that, as his wife puts it, “he

doesn’t speak like the rest of the Cherokee people.”

Going back to the “accent” matter, I attended a conference on Native American

studies at Yale University. To conclude the conference, we were invited to a concert held

by a famous Cheyenne singer. In between each song, the singer would tell us a story or

recall an anecdote. At one time, he mentioned his father and his father’s “Indian accent,”

and proceeded to imitate it. I must admit that I had never noticed the “accent.” However,

and after he mentioned it, I started paying more attention.

Soon, I realized that various Natives I had met had an underlying intonation to their

speech that sounded alike whether they were Cherokee or Lakota. I was told by a Lakota

friend that it is the “rez accent.” Many of the First Peoples I have met and had this accent

did not speak their parents’ tongue fluently nor consider it their main language. It is,

therefore, quite unlikely that the “accent” is related to bilingualism. Additionally,

discussing the sounds of Indian English, William L. Leap (1993:45) states in his book

American Indian English that “ancestral language sound systems may or may not predict

the characteristic features of pronunciation for a community’s Indian English codes.”

Again, it was odd to notice such a commonality since there are several hundreds

different tongues among the First Peoples. If some argue that there may have been a

single linguistic root to all Native American tongues, most agree that these languages

cannot be attributed to a sole and universal root. As stated in William L. Leap’s

(1981:211) article “American Indian Language Maintenance,” “it is estimated that at the

present time as many as 200 different Indian languages are spoken by tribes within the

United States.” There are however, commonalities of sounds among Native languages.

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More likely, and because it is a natural occurrence for groups of people sharing similar

realities and issues to develop a sense of fraternity and belonging, Native Americans have

created a common identity, and with it, an “identity accent,” or what Sammy calls an

“Indian accent.”

Native tribes who used to be traditional enemies in earlier times have come together

because they share the same struggles and are faced with a wide range of very similar

concerns. Some of their struggles concern the preservation of their cultural heritage and

native language. One should not ignore, however, that if these issues are common to all

Native tribes, “each tribe has its own language maintenance needs, and no two of the

solutions made in response to them by different tribes are necessarily equivalent” (Leap

1981:209). Other questions address issues of repatriation, health and such. This has

created a distinctive Native identity, which started to emerge by the end of the 19th

century, and resulted in the emergence in the 20th century of movements such as the

American Indian Movement (AIM), the Native American Church, or other Pan-Indian

organizations that are still active today.

Just as a brief historical background, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was created in

March 11,1824 with the intention to control American Indian tribes. With this, the

Indian Removal policies began in 1830 and were followed by the Civil War (1861-1865).

By the end of the 19th century, “influential groups in American society combined with the

Federal government in a sustained campaign to remake Indians in the image of white

American citizens” (Calloway 2004:336). In the midst of these never-ending government

strategies to turn the myth of “vanishing Indian” into reality, Native Americans

developed survival strategies and began to organize.

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The 20th century was a period of increasing awareness of the Native cause. In 1924,

Native Americans were granted the right to vote by the Indian Citizenship Act, and in

1934, the Indian Reorganization Act established modem tribal governments. Through

Native activism in the 1960s and 1970s, legislation such as the Indian Self-Determination

and Education Assistance Act of 1975 and the Tribal Self-Govemance Act of 1994 were

passed. The ability of the Natives to survive 500 years of incredible adversity, their new

found ability to set aside their differences and unite, allowed them to resist unpopular

policies. These unified movements, however, do not completely compromise their

cultural singularity. Throughout the centuries, cultural particularities and richness have

endured.

I have wanted to mention the question of tolerance. I wondered if the Cherokee were

accepting of Sammy’s handicap. I remember going through some hardship when I was

young because of poor eyesight. The common understanding about Native American

people is that they tend to embrace physical differences and treat those with a handicap as

unique, yet full member of the tribe. I wondered if other Cherokee people embraced

Sammy’s “difference,” or if his handicap made it hard for him as a child. To that,

Sammy responds that, as I may have noticed since I arrived, the Cherokee people are the

most compassionate people that he has ever seen or known.

He declares that the Cherokee have feelings for people even when those people do not

belong to the tribe. To him, even if they are from other races, they (the Cherokee) have

compassion. If someone who is not a Native American comes here (Oklahoma), they

open the door for him or her. They go and make sure they are doing fine. They have

always been that way, Sammy says. He has noticed that on a personal basis, he has never

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had problems with being handicapped among his own people. They always treated him

the same as anybody else, and that includes children, declares Sammy. Although, he

agrees that some children would come to him and ask what is wrong, or what happened

to him, he emphasized the fact that they did not make fun of him.

It changed a bit when Sammy went to public school, he explains, as there were times

when a few people would make fun of him. He continues by stating: “I am not talking

for all Native Americans cause I’m Cherokee, but it was always, you know, the other

races or something.... And at times, it was because they didn’t understand” (interview by

author 2004). Sammy explains that when his friends want to go golfing. They do not put

him aside. It is never that way. Sammy speaks ofblowgun shooting and how his friend

Ed would say, “let’s go shoot blowguns!” but never, “can you shoot a blowgun?” or, “can

you go and play golf? Does it hurt if you walk along?”

Sammy continues by declaring that it was always that way with him and with a lot of

people he knows. There were other handicapped Cherokee. They joked around, he

recalls. A good friend of his, Johnny Ash, passed away a few years ago. He died of

leukemia, clarifies Sammy. He continues, “he used to limp like I did but he limped on

the right leg. I limp on the left. We would always laugh and joke about it. We’d go

golfing and they’d ask: what is your handicap? We’d say: we walk with a limp”

(interview by author 2004). Sammy tells me that they joked about it. People felt at ease

with the subject and knew that he was not uncomfortable about it. It was fun and they

enjoyed it, Sammy clarifies.

I am also curious about how Eastern Cherokee people reacted to him and his handicap

as well as to the fact that his family is from Oklahoma, and therefore Western Cherokee.

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Sammy responds that he was not treated any differently because of his handicap. He was

just like another person. Even when he went to school outside, in a public school, he was

not treated any different. They were treated differently, Sammy states, because they were

from Oklahoma. Because of that, they could not use the health facilities, nor go to the

Eastern Band’s school. Sammy insists on the fact that he is not saying that the Eastern

Band were bad people. He just wants to mention some of their laws, and that part of it

was that Western Cherokee could not share what the Eastern Band had.

Sammy continues stating that it is the reason why they went to school outside the

reservation. He is glad he did because they got to associate with people on the outside.

Even Eastern Cherokee people who lived outside the reservation were required to go

outside to public schools, Sammy states. Some Eastern Cherokee went to school with

Sammy. However, he says, if one was from there and lived in the reservation that is

where he or she went to school (reservation school).

Sammy tells me that the children from his school took him under their wings and

protected him. He says:

I guess up there they were considered as Appalachian people. They lived up in the

mountain flanks. A lot of them weren’t rich, or poor, you know, like anybody else.

But, if anything, I guess to me, it seemed like they had more of a chance to be, you

know, opposite: hey, we don’t want you here. We don’t need you here. How

come you limp? Why is it? But they never said that. As a matter of fact, when I left

North Carolina, a lot of the kids I went to school with up there, they wrote to

me and I kept writing back to them. We kept in touch. After a while, we quit

writing and I wonder to this day where they are and what they do (interview by author

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2004).

The question that comes into my mind at that point is whether the “Appalachian people”

were welcoming to Cherokee people in general.

Sammy explains that if the Cherokee were not from there, it was all right. He states

that if one were from the Eastern Band, from that reservation, the Appalachian people

looked at him or her differently. He declares that it was weird. He continues saying that

when he was growing up, his mom and dad took them everywhere. To them, there was

not a difference in race or color. Sammy thinks that the North Carolinians picked up on

that.

He proclaims:

They knew that they weren’t Cherokee, and we knew that they weren’t but we

treated them with respect and I guess, in return they treated us with respect. But

down there, in the Eastern Band, there was a difference. You were ever Indian or

you were white. And you don’t associate with whites or you don’t work with

white people because of what they did to the ancestors and all that. They had

animosity against the whites there. A lot. Where here, you know, we go and....

Like I said, we go to Tulsa Airport. We go to the malls. We go to Muscogee. We

go visit. And we associate with everybody. There is no: oh, there is an Indian, or

there’s a white person, or there’s a Mexican. Here, it’s not that way. I

mean, I’m sure it’s out here too. It’s happened. But not as bad or not as much

(interview by author 2004).

Sammy recalls that the Cherokee from the Eastern Band became attached to his family

towards the end of his stay.

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Sammy declares that they started latching on to them as friends, real close friends.

When they first got there, the Eastern Cherokee stared at them wondering what the

Oklahoma Cherokee look like or, how they speak or live. Because they were from a

different area, they thought Sammy and his family were different. Sammy explains that

in a way, the Eastern Cherokee were afraid of them. His mom would wonder why they

were like that.

Cultural Heritage and Preservation

With regard to the Cherokee language as well as to the differences that emerged

between the Eastern and Western Cherokee, Sammy explains that the language the

Eastern Band speaks is very different from the one the Western Cherokee speak. For

instance, Sammy elucidates, people in Oklahoma, would say “osiyo, tohitsuT’

(pronounced “o-see-yo, toe-hee-ju”) to greet each other. It means, “hello, how are you?”

There, in North Carolina, they would say “ aholiju” {pronounced “a-hoe-lee-ju which ”)

carries the same meaning but in a different way.

The list of differences is extensive. Santa Claus for instance can be literally

translated as “man with a white beard.” Sammy tells me that it is Santa Claus to them,

that it is a descriptive word. In North Carolina, however, they call him, “Billy goat.” To

Sammy and other Oklahoma Cherokee, a billy goat is just a goat. However, to the

Eastern Cherokee, the goatee of the goat symbolizes Santa’s beard. That is how they

represent Santa Claus. Sammy tells me that each side understands what the other saying

even though it is said in a different way.

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Both branches argue that the other one does not speak the right Cherokee language. I

was curious about Sammy’s opinion. He declares:

Well I don’t know.... Well I take a lot of what the Elders say, because a lot of

them, they bring their whole history, they tell what happened. So, to me, this one

Elder told me that when they left there, they took not only their people, they took

their culture and their history with them. So, now they are trying to rebuild their

language up there, and trying to teach their young ones. But who’s to say that

that’s the language they’re speaking? But again, who’s to say we’re right? To

me, I tend to believe we brought our history and culture. And, we live it more,

than they do up there. We keep it closer to us than they do up there (interview by

author 2004).

Sammy tells me that the Western Cherokee go to North Carolina and visit with the

Eastern Cherokee regularly.

He says that all they (the Eastern Cherokee) are really teaching them is their version

of Cherokee language. As far as culture is concerned, he says, they have a museum that

tells about how the Eastern Cherokee once lived and how they made their canoes and all

this. And then, he continues, they have the Indian village like the Oklahoma Cherokee

do, where they show the Eastern Cherokee working, making arrow heads and blowguns

and other things like this. Sammy insists that the difference is that, in North Carolina,

they are not sharing it or teaching it the way they are in Oklahoma. It is just a small

museum up there, he asserts. In Oklahoma, they are living it and teaching it.

Sammy and I went to visit an old Cherokee cemetery one morning. He takes this as

an example to insist that “we was picking up rocks and stuff? This is to make stone

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marbles out of them. So see, we’re not just talking about it, and we’re not only showing

pictures. We’re still doing it” (interview by author 2004). He continues reiterating that

he does not make traditional crafts to sell. He just wants to continue doing it so it stays

alive. He hopes that someone else will learn and do that.

Turning to me, Sammy (interview by author 2004) declares:

it is like how we are going to make blowguns this evening when you come down. We

are going to teach you how to do it so maybe..., and listen, maybe if this whole state

of Oklahoma, all these Native Americans, all of the sudden disappear. Not die, but just

disappear and go somewhere else, and they come back, and somebody, later on in the

years, in your time, comes up and says: what’s this? This river cane stuff? You can

say that it’s a blowgun. How do you make it? They made it this way. Because

we showed you. See? Our history and our culture will still be living on through you.

See? Or even the stories we tell. You will be able to tell the stories, see? This

way our history and culture is still living on. Even if it’s through you, see?

I feel invested of great responsibilities. Even If Sammy and I highly doubt that the state

of Oklahoma and all the Native Americans will suddenly go away, I promise to do my

best to learn the arts he is willing to teach me. I am much honored by his trust.

Sammy’s goal is to teach people, through classes and such, he declares. His aim is

not to go in the streets, and sell his art to make a profit, but to keep his people’s history

and culture alive. He wants to underline that there is nothing wrong with people making

baskets and selling them because sometimes, that is how they survive. That is how they

make their living. He explains that this is just him, as an individual. This is the way he

works. Another individual may make them (baskets) and sell them and that is great, he

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claims. Sammy tells me that he needs money too, for gas and everything else. He may

even have sold one or two to make a little money. He insists that he is not saying that it

is wrong or right. He is just saying that he just wants to keep his heritage and culture

alive.

Cultures and languages, however, evolve. About 15,000 Cherokee people forcibly

left North Carolina and Georgia at the time of the removal. Less than a couple hundred

stayed in North Carolina. The people who stayed hid in the mountains for some time and

were finally granted the right to remain on the Cherokee ancestral territory. Sammy

reminds me that the ones who did run away and hide in the mountains were the younger

people. It was not the Elders. The Elders could not move very fast, he says. They could

not run so, Sammy explains, they were more or less captured and brought back. A lot of

the history and culture, and the language, came with these Elders. The younger ones

might have known some, but a lot of it they have forgotten, Sammy explains.

Various accounts of the events that precipitated the creation of the Eastern Band by a

small group of Cherokee may vary slightly in content. However, in essence, the oral

accounts I was given while in Oklahoma, together with the written accounts scholars such

as Mooney or Ehle have offered, are similar. During the removal, soldiers would go in

Cherokee homes, destroy what they could not take, and force the people to follow them.

During one of those dreadful days, an old full blood Cherokee by the name of Tsali

(pronounced “ja-lee”), or Charlie, was in his home with his wife and children. The

soldiers came in and ordered them out. They proceeded to rampage through the house

and bum the crops. Meanwhile some soldiers began brutalizing Tsali’s wife because she

was unable to walk fast.

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Outraged, Tsali enticed his sons to fight back. Because he was speaking Cherokee,

the soldiers did not understand what was happening. Soon, Tsali and his sons killed two

men, and the family, then fled in the mountains. Andrew Jackson asked Tsali and his

sons to surrender. In exchange he would allow the few others still hiding in the

mountains to remain. Tsali and his children courageously turned themselves in and were

immediately executed. However, and for once, Jackson kept his word. Soldiers ceased

to search for Cherokee fugitives. Later those are the ones who became the Eastern Band

of Cherokee.

I ask Sammy if he knows how many Elders survived the Trail of Tears. He answers

that probably most of the Elders passed away. The younger ones, he says, are the ones

who survived the Trail and came through. He does not know he says, but if any did, it

was probably just a handful. At this moment, Sammy and I sit still. There is a long

silence with an atmosphere of gravity. A few minutes later, I break the stillness and ask

him if the people who came to Oklahoma may also have lost most of their ancestral

knowledge. Does Sammy think that it is possible that a lot of the culture died with the

Elders who did not survive?

“No,” Sammy answers. He thinks that a lot of them probably shared their culture

with the youth as they came along because they were together all the time. He is sure

that a lot was lost coming to Oklahoma but the majority of it survived. He also reminds

me that a lot of the richer Cherokee came by boat. Therefore, he says, quite a few Elders

came over. But as far as walking through the Trail, some was certainly lost. Sammy also

believes that the Cherokee have become lazy and that too contributes to the loss of

ancestral knowledge.

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He declares:

Why go track through the woods on a hot day like today? Just go sit in an air

-conditioned hospital and wait for your medicine. See? See how lazy we’ve

gotten? Even when we go to the store. When I go to the store. It may be across

the highway or the street but yet we jumped in our car and we go across the street.

That’s what’s killing us today.... We don’t do that no more and that’s why we

get so obese. And that’s why a lot ofNative Americans today are getting diabetes....

To me, life was a lot more simpler, more healthier back then (interview by

author 2004).

Sammy tells me that his parents and Elders told him that they have to live in two worlds:

the Cherokee world and the Western world. It is instilled into their minds, he states, but

to him, all they have to do is to work together and adapt to each other’s culture.

Humor and Friendship

On many occasions, I have witnessed the Cherokee legendary sense of humor. In the

few days following my arrival, I found myself part of the joke making process. It seemed

that the more my Cherokee friends teased me, the more they felt comfortable around me,

felt they could trust me, and knew I felt the same. Soon my Cherokee name, galvquodi

atsilvsgi (pronounced “ga-len-qwo-dee a-ji-len-sghee,” and meaning “precious rose”)

became “ju lik’sh” (pronounced “ju-lee-kk-sh”). The latter relates to bodily functions.

My “baptism” had the room filled with laughter at the time, and ever after, whenever I

was asked what my Cherokee name may be.

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I wondered if Sammy knew the reason behind the Cherokee sense of humor. In

addition, I was curious as to why they were so prompt in seeing the comic side of serious

situations. Sammy responds that it is a stress reliever to many Native Americans. He

emphasizes the fact that in olden times, they were not used to be so stressed, and when

you have to face so many adverse situations, developing a solid sense of humor is a

survival tool. He also reminds me that constant seriousness is very bad for health and

promotes sickness.

Sammy had called for a storytelling night. He informed me that it was in my honor,

and I was very touched by this attention. All ofhis friends joined in to share a hog fry

and other traditional delicacies. The gathering went well into the night. Some had scary

stories to tell, and waited for dusk to fall. We sang and talked. A friend of the family

brought snakes in so we could play with them. We all sat around a fire and enjoyed each

other’s company. Sammy organizes social gathering of the sort because he feels that it

perpetuates ancient customs when people would gather around the fire and share stories.

He also very much enjoys being around his friends.

Sammy (interview by author 2004) explains:

What I really like and enjoy is peace of mind. Just being able to sit, visit and enjoy

people and have them enjoy themselves. I don’t go for any personal gain. I don’t

go for any materialistic value, you know? It’s nice to have if you can afford it. It’s

nice to have if you can do it. But if you don’t.... I’m just.... This might sound

corny. This might sound kind of weird, you know? But to me it’s just having

peace of mind, being able to be by dear friends, do what I want to do. And

sometime, it’s good just to be by yourself and to enjoy life. And other times, it’s

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good to have people around you to enjoy life with. And I think, that’s why I do a

lot of these gatherings at the house, you know? It’s not to win popularity or gain

popularity, it’s to.... I enjoy the company. You know? Or like when you come

down, you know? I say, hey we’re gonna have a good friend here I want you to

meet. I want to share you with them. Let them know you.

Sammy and his friends are always joking around and laughing. It is a delight to spend

time around them.

Sammy insists on the fact that he is not trying to impress anybody. He states that if

people want to come and see him, visit with him, talk to him, what they see is what they

get. He continues by stating that one can hear that saying all the time, but that is the way

he feels. He stresses that his home is open to anyone who wants to be there, to sit down

and visit and share. He says that he will share whatever he has with them. If they do not

like the way he dresses, who he is or the way he acts, that is just him. He believes that

people have to just accept the way he is. That is the way he has always been. That is

what his parents taught him, to just be himself. Be humble and be himself. To him,

money does not buy happiness. Money does not buy freedom (interview by author

2004).

He emphasizes that he feels rich because he has many friends. He would drop

everything he is doing right now to go help them if they needed help, Sammy asserts.

However, he also knows that if he needed help they would come and help him. To him,

that is being rich. Sammy explains that they are surrounded by casinos. Everyday he

hears people say, “oh, we won 15,000 dollars,” or, “we did this.” He says that he is

happy for them, but that it is not him. He continues stating that even if he had 25 cents to

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spend, he would not put it in some machine. He would use it on his granddaughter or his

children for a piece of gum or candy, something they would enjoy. Moreover, he states,

he would enjoy by giving them some enjoyment out of that, instead of going and putting

it in and losing it. He is not much of a gambler, Sammy says.

Sammy declares that Dama does not smoke or drink or anything like this, and he

respects her ways. He gives me the example of the day before, when Dama and I went

shopping with their daughter to underline the fact that he is satisfied being by himself

sometimes, and he has a good time. Sometimes on weekends, if Dama has to work, he

will go out and build a fire and work on blowguns, he tells me. Working with his hands,

working and doing something are his enjoyment. Sometimes he does not even know

what he is making. He works on a basket and suddenly realizes that he finished it. He

tells me that when he was talking about peace of mind, this, he affirms, gives him peace.

Sammy works with Ed. Together with another coworker, Ben, they produce an online

class where people can learn the Cherokee language. Sammy and Ed have known each

other a long time. The ambience in the office is relaxed and pleasant. Again, much of

the business is conducted on a joyful note. Sammy tells me that for the six months we

emailed each other before meeting in person, jokes of all sorts were flying around the

office as to who I was and what I wanted.

Sammy (interview by author 2004) explains:

oh, your girlfriend did this, or, oh, you got a girlfriend. You know? We always joke

around. If s just something we enjoy doing. We are always in good spirits I guess.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have our down time. Sometimes, we sit around and we

may be stressed out, or we may feel bad, or something didn’t go right that day.... We

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are like everybody else. We get emotional, problems once in a while. Sometimes, we

may sit down and hope that things were better, something like that. But, it’s

everybody.

Sammy believes that it is a question of attitude. This behavior is not limited to Sammy’s

circle of friends. Many times during my stay, I noticed that many of the Cherokee

coworkers, acquaintances, family and friends have a delightful sense of humor. Much of

their interaction is conducted on a witty note.

I» -

1» 1»

■■■ MB Figure 10. Storytelling gathering at Sammy and Dama’s. Sammy is wearing a white tee- shirt and is sitting straight across the fire while on his right, his wife Damais sitting on a stool with her feet on a child camping chair. To the left is Tonya, their older daughter. Photographed by Juliette Sligarin August 2004.

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Storytelling

A big part of Sammy’s life revolves around storytelling. However, when we visited

other Elders with Sammy, I was surprised to see that they did not tell traditional stories.

They spoke about their experiences, which were fascinating, but they did not share

ancestral tales with us. Sammy reminds me that he had warned me before I came. He

insists on the fact that one has to earn the Elders’ trust. For instance, he says, if we went

back again to see Nathaniel T. and his family, now that they know us, trust us, they

would tell us many stories.

Nathaniel T. is one of the Elders we visited in an isolated area to record oral history.

While I was inside with the lady of the house, looking at pictures and chatting, the men

went outside and stood on the porch. Then, Sammy tells me, Nathaniel started telling

stories. He told stories, funny stories, Sammy informs me, just like Sammy and his

friends always tell. Sammy continues by stating that as soon as they got out of the

environment (of the interview), our host felt more comfortable. Sammy insists that if we

went back today, Nathaniel would do the same thing with me. I remember Nathaniel’s

mother, a respected Elder. She asked me if I would have the chance to return before

leaving Oklahoma. I took several pictures of her and her daughter and sent some after I

came back to Washington, DC.

Sammy informs me that now we do not need to call them if we wish to visit. We can

just show up, he says. Just step by and say “hi.” He reminds me, however, that if one

were to step on their toes, one would lose their trust and might as well forget about them

talking to him or her ever again. He clarifies that there would be no angry words said.

Nothing would be said. However, the Elders would be selective in what they tell.

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Sammy explains that some Cherokee officials wanting to meet the Elders would say,

“let’s go down and visit.” They would show up in these three piece suits, Sammy

informs me, and have three or four people with them. Naturally, the Elders became

suspicious and reserved.

Sammy and I had a similar experience. Five or six people from the Nation came to

visit some Elders. Sammy and I were among them. There were too many people. It was

too official and the interviewed Elder did not feel at ease. The interview had a very

official tone and Sammy and I felt frustrated when it ended because we knew the Elder

refrained from opening up.

I am curious about how Sammy became a storyteller. Laughing Sammy informs me

that it is because he is just a crazy person. He continues by stating that he does not take

many things seriously. He likes joking around a lot, he says. Therefore, when he had the

opportunity to begin telling stories, he did. He tells me that he told stories all the time

when he was growing up. He did not consider himself a storyteller until after he met his

friend Sequoyah, he explains.

His friend Sequoyah introduced him to the art of public performance and to

storytelling for children. That is where he picked it up, Sammy asserts. Before then, he

explains, he would sometimes even make up stories and tell them to his parents just to

make them laugh. He was always that way, he states. He was a comedian, or, the class

clown. Even now, he tells me, if it gets serious in a room, like in a staff meeting, soon he

will say something stupid or try to break the ice, and people will start laughing. He

enjoys doing that. It came easy for him to tell stories. And, Sammy declares, he loves

children.

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He explains that kids come up to him and they sit down and they listen to him, and he

can relate to them, he says. He loves doing that. He also explains that many storytellers

use props. Sequoyah used puppets, he tells me. But himself, Sammy states, he just sits

down and tell stories. Sometimes, the children remember him. He imitates: “I remember

you! Tell us about the hand! Tell us the one about the upside down nose! And I say: oh,

oh OK.... See, they love it. I love going down there and doing that. I really love doing

that” (interview by author 2004). He continues, “like I said, Cherokee people, you get a

bunch together and they always gonna start laughing. They’ll laugh at anything”

(interview by author 2004). I have to admit that I truly enjoyed the storytelling sessions

Sammy took me to, at least as much as the children did.

Sammy tells me that he can talk for days. Sequoyah and he always tell people when

they do presentations that they can do it for 45 minutes, an hour, three hours; or they can

do it all day. Sammy remembers a time when they went to Arkansas. Sequoyah, Tiffany

(Sammy’s youngest daughter) and he went to Little Rock to do a presentation. They

started at 8 o’clock in the morning and did not leave before past 4 o’clock that evening.

It was for schoolchildren, Sammy explains. He tells me that they went all day long and

they still had stories they could tell. As they were coming back, they looked at eachother

and declared, “I guess we really can talk all day long!” Sammy says that it was ashock,

but it was fun.

Sammy announces that he always tries to be accessible when somebody calls him for

a presentation. He says he learned that from his mom and dad. He was also taught to be

on time where he is supposed to be. Sammy (interview by author 2004) explains:

I was always taught that. My sister and me was always taught that. And I guess, I

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learned that from them. Like Dama said this morning, if I gotta be somewhere at 1:00,

I’m gonna be there at 12:30. And that’s the way we were.... Sometimes....

Like this past weekend, I had to do storytelling for this conference at 1:45. So I

finished what I had to do. I had to run some errands. At about 12:001

showed up up there and I said, well I’m a bit early, you know? But I didn’t mind

sitting around and looking around down there, so.... But I’d rather be early than

having them having to wait on me or, you know, having to try to find the place.

So, I just feel more comfortable.

As I shared with Sammy his work routine and daily life, I can attest that on the many

instances (I can recall at least three times within two weeks), people solicited him for

storytelling sessions; he always made a point to find the time to perform. That included

for him to volunteer during his time off and weekend.

Following this session of interviews, Sammy shared some of his most memorable

stories with me and allowed me to record them. Most of them are traditional. Sammy, as

any storyteller, may have added a bit of his own style to them. As I was wrapping up this

biographical work, I copied the recordings on a CD and sent them to Sammy, hoping that

someday, long after Sammy and I are gone, someone may stumble upon them and gain

from them the same enjoyment and spirit of sharing we did.

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CONCLUSION

When I began the project, I had no particular idea about how it would develop. The

most important thing I hoped to accomplish was to produce a study that would ultimately

serve the Western Cherokee in their efforts of cultural preservation. The research and

writing of this thesis took about a year from beginning to completion. During that year,

Sammy and I slowly became acquainted. We came to trust each other and the life history

project was bom. If I hoped it would help and complement already existing efforts of

cultural preservation by the Western Cherokee, and provide a realistic glimpse at

contemporary Cherokee traditionalists’ realities, I never expected I would gain such dear

friends as I did in Sammy and his wife Dama.

My project constitutes a modest tool in complex cultural realities. Nonetheless, I

trust that it demonstrates through Sammy’s experience the incredible spirit of resilience,

adaptation and survival, the Cherokee continue to exhibit. Against all odds and

predictions, the Cherokee continue to strive to keep their culture alive. It is fascinating to

witness how contemporary Western Cherokee traditionalists, and in this case Sammy,

negotiate contemporary American living with ancestral traditions. At the beginning of

the third millennia, a time marked by unequal technological advances, the Cherokee

Nation of Oklahoma has fully embraced the tools of today’s society towards language

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and culture revival and preservation. But, orality also remains the preferred medium of

cultural exchange and apprenticeship among traditional Cherokee people.

At some point in our conversations, Sammy (interview by author 2004) declared:

My mom, my dad, Elders told us we are going to have to live in two worlds. And like

I said, going to school, public school and all this, I see, we don’t have to live in two

worlds. All we have to do is to work together. You know? Sure if you want to call it

that, sure I had to learn how to work computers if I want a good job. Sure I going to

have to do this.... But it’s not living in two worlds, that’s adapting to each other

culture, you know?

Right there and then he puts in plain words the outlook I embraced at the beginning of

this research. When looking at today’s traditional Western Cherokee, one will not see

complete acculturation. On the other hand, one will not see intact ancestral and

traditional life ways either. The Western Cherokee have adapted and live at the same

time in a world of continuity and change. In their contemporary culture, mainstream

society and traditional beliefs interweave and coexist.

In American Indian Autobiography, David Bramble cites a passage fromSun Chief,

the autobiography of a Hopi in which the author describes that he and his twin had been

united into a sole body by a shaman before birth. Bramble writes (1988:1):

Talayesva seems so confident that the world is as the Hopis know it to be. He speaks so confidently about this time when he was twins. He speaks with such confidence about this ’’powerful way to unite babies.” It shakes my sense that the world is as I know it to be. The Indian autobiographies are full of such moments.

Most of us have experienced on occasions such a sense of wonder as to whether our

perceptions of the world are really reflecting the world as it is. Most certainly, Sammy

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together with many other contemporary Cherokee I had to chance to meet perceive the

world in a very different way than I do.

I have strived throughout the study to present as accurate a picture as I could manage.

As I have mentioned in some instances, prospects for cultural survival among the

Western Cherokee are not necessary assured. Nonetheless, I propose to conclude this

study on a positive note. In an article written some time ago, entitled “Atlamaha

Cherokee Folklore and Customs,” James H. Howard (1959:134) declares that “often

many folktales, superstitions, and customs of small cultural enclaves, which have long

been subjected to the seemingly overwhelming dominance of a major culture, survive

with surprising vigor.” While Howard speaks of the Atlamaha Band of the Cherokee

tribe in his article, such statement is certainly true of the Cherokee culture as a whole.

And almost fiftyyears later, Howard’s message of hope for Cherokee oral traditions and

cultural preservation is being realized through the life and work of Sammy Still and

others like him.

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