Devils in Disguise the Carnegie Project, the Cherokee Nation, and the 1960S

Devils in Disguise The Carnegie Project, the Cherokee Nation, and the 1960s

daniel m. cobb

It’s not a question of who’s right and wrong. It’s a question of who’s got the power. Clyde Warrior (Ponca)

I suppose this is not a paper in the strict sense of the word, so much as it is the random thoughts of a confused man in rather troubled times, as I suppose we all are. Robert K. Thomas (Cherokee), “Cross-Cultural Cannibalism”

In the summer of 1963, Robert K. Thomas, a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago and faculty member at Wayne State University’s Monteith College, penned a letter to his advisor, the eminent anthropologist Sol Tax. Thomas had just arrived in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where he was to serve as the field director of a four-year cross-cultural education research project funded by the Carnegie Corporation in New York. After setting up his office at a local college, he went to visit Earl Boyd Pierce, general counsel of the Cherokee Nation. Sensing his host’s appre- hension, Thomas explained at length his reason for being there. The Carnegie Project research team would establish ties with the “tribal community”—people who spoke Cherokee as their first language and lived in small kin-related settlements spread across five counties in northeastern Oklahoma—and directly involve them in a program to promote literacy in English.1 This literacy, in turn, would empower traditional Cherokees to break through the structural isolation and marginality they experi- enced in their daily lives. Thomas considered the meeting with Pierce a qualified success. “I think I soothed his ruffled feathers,” he confided to Tax, “but he sure thinks you are the devil in disguise.”2 What was it about the Carnegie Project that would ruffle feathers, and what had Sol Tax done to be cast in such an unflattering light? To make sense of Thomas’s assertion it is necessary to considered it in the multiple contexts of the Cherokee community, the development of action anthropology, and the political culture of Cold War America. The importance of this latter point cannot be overstated, particularly because scholars have essentially written American Indians out of recent United States history. Indeed, Native people rarely appear—if at all—in syntheses devoted to the 1960s or the post-1945 period in general.3 This implicitly and perhaps unintentionally defines Indian history as tangential to the American story and therefore safely left at the margins. The following case study argues quite the opposite. It finds the Cherokee Nation at the center of a national and international culture war—at a time when the meanings of community, identity, poverty, and power were openly contested.

community, identity, and power in the cherokee nation before 1963 When Robert K. Thomas drove into northeastern Oklahoma, he entered a complex space shaped by generations of conflict and change. After being forcibly removed from its southeastern homeland in the 1830s, the Cherokee Nation reestablished itself in what was then called the Indian Territory. The Cherokee people so effectively reconstructed their national government, courts, and schools that they could boast a level of political stability and educational achievement far surpassing that of their non-Native neighbors. But everything changed during the late nineteenth century when the federal government inaugurated its policy of assimilation and allotment. This assault on tribal sovereignty led to legislation that dissolved their government, allotted their lands, and cul- minated in Oklahoma statehood in 1907. Over the course of the next several decades, non-Indians politically, legally, and demographically surrounded the Cherokees. By the 1960s, a majority of Oklahomans accepted the fiction that tribal authority had been subsumed by the state and that Cherokee history and peoplehood were, for all intents and pur- poses, things of the past.4

466 american indian quarterly/summer 2007/vol. 31, no. 3 In reality, the Cherokees survived this onslaught but not without being wracked by internal tensions. A clear division between those whose social lives revolved around close-knit traditional communities and others who accepted the dominant society as their own emerged throughout the twentieth century. Many in the former group had resisted allotment, arguing that the process violated their sovereignty. Whether or not they accepted or later lost their individual parcels of land, traditional Cherokees predominantly lived in small, isolated, and extremely impov- erished enclaves scattered throughout the back reaches of northeastern Oklahoma. Though lacking material wealth, they retained a strong sense of social cohesion and cultural integrity through the Cherokee language, kinship ties, and involvement in the Baptist Church or one of several sacred societies, or both. Conversely, the other group of Cherokees often chose to live in white-dominated towns such as Muskogee, Bartlesville, and Tahlequah. Generally more affluent and educated in non-Indian schools, they took pride in their heritage and legal identity as Cherokees, but they did not have social, cultural, or linguistic connections with the traditional communities.5 This cultural chasm became politicized through an unanticipated turn of events. In the wake of allotment, the federal government pro- vided for the continuation of a tribal political entity that would remain in existence long enough to finalize matters related to tribal lands and resources. Under this arrangement, the president of the United States appointed the principal chief. The Cherokee people, in other words, had no say in who would speak and act on their behalf. This may not have been so controversial had it remained temporary. But the appointed government actually gained power by securing a $14.7 million settlement in 1961 for the illegal taking of Cherokee lands. Per capita payments were to be distributed in 1964 to enrolled members, with the balance remaining in tribal coffers.6 By the early 1960s, then, a Cherokee government led by a federally appointed principal chief stood poised to reassert itself as a political and economic force in the northeastern part of the state. This may have made at least some local non-Indians and particularly leaders of municipal and county governments anxious, but it surely caused conflict within the Cherokee Nation. Black Cherokees, for instance, asserted their right to a part of the claims settlement by virtue of being descendants of slaves who gained membership following their emancipation from Cherokee

Cobb: Devils in Disguise 467 slaveholders after the Civil War.7 At the same time, members of the traditional communities spoke out more forcefully against the establishment. “I’ll just put it like this: The appointed chief of the Cherokees, Mr. [W. W.] Keeler, has good intentions for a Cherokee,” stated one critic. “But his techniques and tactics has never worked, never will. And just to put it plain as day, he just doesn’t know a Cherokee. He’s a white man.”8 The Carnegie Project arrived in northeastern Oklahoma as difficult questions about the meaning of community, identity, and the legitimate exercise of authority surfaced. The appointed leaders of the Cherokee Nation, acting upon what they defined as the best interests of their people, began to contemplate potential investments and strategies to consol- idate their power. Members of the traditional Keetoowah, Seven Clans, and Four Mothers societies simultaneously evidenced signs of organiz- ing to press for the popular election of the principal chief, in hopes of bringing to office someone who embodied their values. Moreover, both of these groups operated within a dominant society that preferred to believe that Cherokees had assimilated long ago.9

sol tax, robert k. thomas, action anthropology, and the meaning of peoplehood If the Carnegie Project entered into an already contentious situation, the personal histories and points of view of its central figures compli- cated matters even more. Sol Tax authored the initial grant and served as the overall project director. Born in Chicago and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he came from a German Jewish immigrant family. Tax received informal political tutelage at the dinner table from his socialist father and his academic training under anthropologists Ralph Linton and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown. By the time he joined Chicago’s faculty in 1944, he had conducted fieldwork in American Indian communities in New Mexico, Iowa, and the Great Lakes region and spent some ten years on a research project in Guatemala and Mexico under the direction of Robert Redfield. In his work as a teacher, researcher, and founding editor of Current Anthropology, Tax demonstrated a penchant for thinking about indigenous peoples in the context of international modernization and development.10 A desire to use social science as a means of promoting positive change led him to “action anthropology.” This approach called for “a partici-

468 american indian quarterly/summer 2007/vol. 31, no. 3 pative ethnography in which the informants were coinvestigators and the investigators were students of the informants.” Action anthropologists immersed themselves in the communities they studied but were to limit their intervention to providing alternatives their hosts could use to confront the problems and challenges they faced. Through participant observation, the researchers drew theories about how different peoples negotiated cultural, political, social, and economic change.11 The Carnegie Project reflected Tax’s interests in both international development and action anthropology. In the original proposal, he argued that a study of how Cherokees acquired English could be applied to other peoples adjusting to globalization. “One sees the growing inter- est in reading ability on every hand,” he noted. “[The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization] devotes enormous energy to the problem as does every underdeveloped land that wishes to cease being underdeveloped.” The techniques and theoretical principles they would garner would be applicable to “the cross-cultural education problem in large parts of the world; e.g., Latin America and Africa,” he continued. “We shall learn something about teaching any language to the natives of any underdeveloped country.” Indeed, Tax planned to distribute their findings to organizations working in indigenous communities throughout the world.12 Robert K. Thomas added another dimension to the Carnegie Project. Thomas was born to parents of Cherokee descent in eastern Kentucky and raised by his maternal grandparents in northeastern Oklahoma. Though at times he referred to himself as “marginal,” he immersed himself in traditional knowledge as a child and maintained an abiding connection to tribal communities throughout his adult life. After serving in World War II, Thomas attended the University of Arizona, where he completed a bachelor’s degree in geography and a master’s in anthropology. Consistent with his identification with traditional Cherokees, Thomas devoted his thesis to the spiritual and political movement to resist allotment spearheaded by Redbird Smith. In 1953 he enrolled in the doctoral program at the University of Chicago to study with Sol Tax.13 By the time he arrived in Tahlequah in 1963, Bob Thomas had inter- nalized the principles of action anthropology and infused it with an anticolonial impulse. The administration of federal-Indian affairs, he argued, represented an example of internal colonialism, and the Cherokee Nation’s reliance on a government-appointed leader signi-

Cobb: Devils in Disguise 469 Before serving as field director of the Carnegie Project, Robert K. Thomas f( ar left, in hat) put action anthropology to work as director of the Workshop on American In- dian Affairs, a seven-week summer program for Indian youths held at the University of Colorado. His ideas regarding the nature of cultural change, pan-Indian identity, and internal colonialism continue to be influential. He is seen here at a Cherokee gathering in Oklahoma in August 1965. Courtesy of Albert L. Wahrhaftig.

fied its quintessence. Like many traditional Cherokees, Thomas looked upon W. W. Keeler, the successful businessman and executive officer of Phillips Petroleum who had held the position of principal chief since 1949, as “a very sincere and religious man.” But he considered Keeler’s leadership problematic because he did not involve himself in and had not formally received the consent of the larger Cherokee community. The Cherokees needed a full-time elected principal chief and governing council. Without that, they would remain subject to a colonial system.14 Through the Carnegie Project, Thomas meant to catalyze a grassroots movement to heal the traditional community and prepare the way for a renaissance. “The Cherokee tribe are a broken people,” he lamented to a friend in 1957. “The mixed-bloods are completely integrated into white society and the full-bloods are discouraged, broken into factions, and

470 american indian quarterly/summer 2007/vol. 31, no. 3 miserably poor. The old productive institutions are gone and nothing is taking their place. The full-bloods are withdrawing more and more from white society. They are not apathetic, they are actively resisting the white man by withdrawing from him and not participating in white society and this includes the ‘tribal government.’”15 Under Thomas’s direction, the Carnegie Project would address this “insulation and alienation from the institutions of the general society” and equip Cherokees with the tools necessary to present themselves “to whites as modern, ‘for real,’ worthy people.”16 Thomas invested the idea of peoplehood with profound meaning. He later identified it as consisting of four critical components: language, land, religion, and a sacred history. These inseparable and mutually rein- forcing ingredients allowed tribal people to adjust to new circumstances without losing their identity.17 When the Carnegie Project staff set about assisting Cherokee people in the creation of a newsletter, short story collection, community survey, language primer, radio program, and adult education courses in the Cherokee language, they did so with the reaffir- mation of peoplehood in mind. Though their aim sounded innocuous, it actually represented a potent challenge to conventional ideas about the place of Cherokees in Oklahoma society. For what non-Indians defined as fragmented conglomerations of “backwards full-bloods,” Thomas saw as structurally isolated but tenaciously persistent traditional communities—a people living in exile within their own homelands.18 The laborious task of formally plotting these settlements on a map fell to Albert Wahrhaftig, a doctoral student in anthropology at the University of Chicago. Born and raised in a liberal Jewish family in California, Wahrhaftig had recently returned from the Peace Corps, where he worked on community development projects in Latin America. Beginning in October 1963, Wahrhaftig drove countless miles of rough back roads with Hiner Doublehead (Cherokee) and Fines Smith (Cherokee), the grandson of Redbird Smith. Together they charted the location and population of enclaves such as Bull Hollow, Cherry Tree, Briggs, Lyons Switch, and Fourteen Mile Creek. In the end, their map detailed the location of some seventy distinct and viable tribal Cherokee settlements with approximately ten thousand residents—a devastating blow to the myth of assimilation and an unqualified testament to the tenacity of Cherokee peoplehood.19 After a year and a half, the Carnegie Project had produced impres-

Cobb: Devils in Disguise 471 Albert Wahrhaftig worked with Cherokees to generate this map that shows the sizes and locations of Cherokee communities throughout northeastern Oklahoma. It was printed in English and syllabary (shown here) in the Carnegie Project’s bilingual publication, The Cherokee People Today (1966). Courtesy of Albert L. Wahrhaftig. sive results. Robert K. Thomas drew from his knowledge of the land and people to coordinate their efforts. Albert Wahrhaftig produced ground- breaking social and demographic data. Linguist Willard Walker, in coop- eration with Watt Spade, Key Ketcher, Alec England, Wesley Proctor, Sam Hair, and other Cherokee speakers conducted linguistic research and began compiling a collection of stories and a primer that could be used in formal and informal settings to learn Cherokee. Ponca youth activist Clyde Warrior had also come on board to serve as co-editor of a national periodical entitled Indian Voices. A twice weekly Cherokee language radio program delivered national and local news, while the cir- culation of the Cherokee Nation Newsletter increased. Project staff also worked with public schools, churches, businesses, and service agencies to begin adult literacy courses, employ Cherokee speakers, utilize interpreters, and distribute information in syllabary.20

on ruffled feathers: the carnegie project and the politics of anticommunism From an ethnomethodological point of view, it seems understandable that non-Indian Oklahomans might see the Carnegie Project as provoca- tive. The idea of an inclusive environment where Cherokee people could be Cherokee cut against the grain of conventional wisdom. It would also be reasonable to conclude that people such as W. W. Keeler and Earl Boyd Pierce would see things in a different light. They might even have perceived the research team’s efforts to accentuate the social and cultural distinctiveness of the Cherokee people as complementary to their efforts to reassert a national political identity. But these were not the ethnomethodological lenses worn by Keeler and Pierce. They defined the Carnegie Project as anything but altruistic. Moreover, they predicated this assessment on a prior encounter with Sol Tax that left them more than a little uneasy. To use Bob Thomas’s terminology, their feathers had been ruffled before the Carnegie Project ever made it to Oklahoma. Prior to submitting a grant to the Carnegie Corporation, Sol Tax coordinated a highly publicized event called the American Indian Chicago Conference. Convened in June of 1961, it brought together tribal del- egates from across Indian Country to formalize a statement on federal policy called the “Declaration of Indian Purpose.” Tax intended it to be a way for Indians to deliver to John F. Kennedy, newly elected as president

Cobb: Devils in Disguise 473 of the United States, a clear message regarding federal policy—that they wanted termination replaced by a commitment to self-determination. Principal Chief Keeler, however, believed Sol Tax to be in league with communists from the outset and sent Earl Boyd Pierce to serve as his eyes and ears during the organizational stages of the conference. Pierce came away convinced that something was indeed amiss and aggressively attempted to prevent the Chicago conference from making any pro- nouncements that might be construed as un-American.21 In truth, a profound faith in liberal democratic principles informed the declaration, but an equally profound devotion to anticommunism drove Earl Boyd Pierce. Cherokee on his mother’s side, he grew up in the small town of Ft. Gibson in Muskogee County, Oklahoma. Perhaps because of his work with the Justice Department in Washington dc some years earlier, he had come to venerate J. Edgar Hoover. And it may be that his roots in the Baptist Church also contributed to his conserva- tive political outlook. In any case, as relations between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated, the threat that communism posed to democracy seemed both real and pervasive. Pierce adopted a narrow view of what constituted legitimate dissent but applied it widely to civil rights activists, rebellious youths, and outspoken Indians.22 Between 1961 and 1963, individuals critical of the federal government cohered in his mind as a vast network labeled the “Tax forces.” These years certainly did see Native people across Indian Country take more aggressive stands against the devastating policy of termination and the violation of their treaty rights. At the same time, the founding of the National Indian Youth Council signaled the rise of a new generation of brazen activists. The fish-ins and marches in the Pacific Northwest caused Pierce to connect still more dots. By January 1964 Pierce’s list included personnel within the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Interior Department as well as actor Marlon Brando. As he contemplated his ever-expanding web of subversives, he wrote a telling letter to his principal chief: “In my position, I realize it is very easy for me to make two and two equal four, when in truth sometimes it may appear that I am trying to make two and three equal four.”23 The Carnegie Project came to fit seamlessly into the equation: the Tax forces, frustrated by the fact that Pierce had foiled their mischievous designs in Chicago, decided to take the fight to the Cherokees—indeed, to him. But he just as quickly resolved not to let that happen.24 Beginning

474 american indian quarterly/summer 2007/vol. 31, no. 3 in the summer of 1963, Pierce orchestrated an extensive campaign of espi- onage and subversion against the Carnegie Project. He spread rumors throughout tribal settlements and non-Indian communities about the research project’s connections to communist organizations; employed Cherokees to spy on Thomas, Wahrhaftig, and others; lodged complaints with the Bureau of Indian Affairs; and made public speeches condemning Sol Tax. The Cherokee general counsel then proceeded to send cop- ies of his correspondence with Tax and Thomas to a Federal Bureau of Investigations agent who, it would appear, was stationed in Muskogee.25

contesting community: the war on poverty in northeastern oklahoma The War on Poverty added still another dimension to this potentially explosive situation. After passage of the Economic Opportunity Act in August 1964, federal money began to pour into the state to fund a wide array of programs for the poor, including Job Corps, Head Start, Neighborhood Youth Corps, and Legal Services. But the most controversial component of the War on Poverty in northeastern Oklahoma, as well as the nation at large, proved to be the Community Action Program. Its guiding philosophy of maximum feasible participation held that people living in poverty should be empowered to design, implement, and administer programs that affected their lives. It was a principle that unsettled many congresspersons, mayors, governors, and welfare agencies throughout the country. Of equal importance, the legislation called for federal money to be sent directly to locally organized Community Action agencies that included people living in poverty on their governing boards.26 Questions immediately arose over what Community Action and maximum feasible participation would mean for Native people residing in nonreservation communities. The Office of Economic Opportunity (oeo) served as the administrative headquarters of the War on Poverty and immediately addressed the issue. In August 1964 it sent a Task Force on American Indian Poverty to discuss with the Cherokee Executive Council the possibility of focusing on northeastern Oklahoma as a demonstration area. The Cherokee Nation argued that it should possess exclusive power to administer all of the programs for tribal members by virtue of their legal status as Indians.

Cobb: Devils in Disguise 475 The oeo operated under a different definition of Indianness. The tribal government would be eligible to receive federal money, but, given civil rights regulations mandating that programs equitably include all members of a given area, it would have to guarantee equitable representation for the non-Indians living there. This meant, for instance, that if the Cherokee Nation received a Job Corps grant covering three counties, anyone residing within them would be eligible to participate, regard- less of race. Since Indians composed such a small percentage of the total population in northeastern Oklahoma, they would necessarily be in the minority.27 The Carnegie Project staff did not know of this policy and therefore viewed Community Action’s pledge to effect maximum feasible participation to be in line with their own efforts to empower tribal communities. Immediately after passage of the Economic Opportunity Act, Bob Thomas inquired into the possibility of integrating its bilingual projects into county Community Action agencies through Head Start, adult literacy courses, and a bilingual driver’s education program. He also attempted to convince War on Poverty officials to recognize that the success of the antipoverty campaign would rest on a realistic definition of community.28 The National Conference on Poverty in the Southwest, convened in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in January 1965, afforded an opportunity for the staff members of the Carnegie Project to present their case. Albert Wahrhaftig made the long trip to Albuquerque, discussed the issue with oeo staff, and then submitted a formal paper entitled “Indian Communities of Eastern Oklahoma and the War on Poverty.” It would not do to incorporate Cherokees in countywide agencies, he argued, because they defined community in “nongeographical” terms such as kinship, shared language, and common places of worship. If the oeo failed to realize this, Native people would withdraw and Community Action would have done nothing to address the structural isolation that exacerbated Cherokee underdevelopment.29 Clyde Warrior, the young Ponca activist who served as Thomas’s co- editor for Indian Voices, drafted a position paper for the conference in which he carried this analysis a step further. Born and raised in north- central Oklahoma, he well understood the depth of racism in and around his hometown of Ponca City. Warrior embraced the idea of empowering local communities but questioned whether the War on Poverty would

476 american indian quarterly/summer 2007/vol. 31, no. 3 be able to speak to the deep-seated problem of internal colonialism. “I do not doubt that all of you are men of good will and that you do intend to work with the local community,” he observed. “My only fear is what you think the local community is.” Warrior went on to illustrate, much as Wahrhaftig had done, that the areas oeo considered a community were hardly that in terms of relationships. “There is no Kay County, Oklahoma, community in a social sense,” he said of the region surround- ing his people. “We are not a part of it except in the most tangential legal sense. We only live there.”30 Despite these misgivings, the Carnegie Project worked in close coop- eration with federal and state field representatives from the Office of Economic Opportunity to ensure tribal Cherokee involvement. In the spring of 1965 they coordinated meetings at local churches and public buildings in Hulbert, Tahlequah, and Jay, where bilingual interpreters facilitated communication. Hundreds of Cherokees attended, taking heart in the belief that they would be able to design and administer programs for their own communities. However, the oeo’s determination that it could not fund exclusively Indian Community Action agencies without violating its own civil rights provisions quickly became a stumbling block. The results, as Wahrhaftig and Warrior had warned, proved catastrophic, for equitable representation did nothing to change the power relationships that had marginalized Cherokees.31 In November 1965 Thomas explained the consequences to the oeo. As soon as antipoverty officials left the area, he wrote, “the county committee meetings were conducted solely in English without interpreters, and the Indian participants were completely ignored.” “To many Cherokees, this whole fiasco has become just another example of the white man’s deceit: The Federal Government’s failure to live up to its promises and the utter futility of the Cherokees to improve their lot and secure any justice at the hands of their white neighbors or the U.S. government,” Thomas continued. “I don’t know if either our project or the oeo will be listened to ever again or if the damage can be repaired.” Thoroughly disheartened, traditional Cherokees disengaged. “Cherokees have had it with whites,” he fumed. “Their recent dealing with the oeo in Oklahoma may only compound the problem. Their enthusiasm could easily rebound into disillusionment and further withdrawal, and the cycle of poverty only be further entrenched as a result.”32 According to the Office of Economic Opportunity, the question of

Cobb: Devils in Disguise 477 whether Cherokees had secured equitable representation in War on Poverty programs ultimately hinged not on definitions of community but personal identity. Blood therefore took precedence over belonging.33 If they believed blood quantum offered a more objective measure, personnel on the ground discovered that it engendered problems of its own. For instance, when a field representative discovered that the teacher- supervisors at two Head Start centers in Delaware County identified themselves as “part-Cherokee,” she found herself unable to determine whether their participation fulfilled theoeo ’s stringent civil rights man- dates. In a letter to her superiors, she explained the situation and then asked, “Does that count?”34

community action as communist subversion As the struggle over Community Action heightened conflicts between Natives and non-Natives over how to define identity and community, it also aggravated tensions between the Carnegie Project and the Cherokee Nation. When Earl Boyd Pierce learned that Thomas had actively sought direct funding for traditional Cherokee communities, he fired off a letter to Principal Chief W. W. Keeler. Once again, he warned of what he believed to be their ulterior motives. “I do not think there is any doubt that the main effort to drive a wedge between the Executive Committee and the full bloods has been launched,” he speculated, “and that Tax and his associates are calling the shots.” Just as the idea of viable tribal societies violated the way most non-Indian Oklahomans understood the world in which they lived, Pierce could not imagine tribal Cherokees taking independent action. Perhaps it offended his sense of noblesse oblige. If people he defined as poor and ignorant did not need outside meddlers to engage in acts that he found problematic, maybe they did not need the establishment’s “help” either.35 As we have already seen, Pierce took pride in being an enrolled Cherokee. And he did not shy away from a fight if he thought it served the interests of the tribe. In 1960 Pierce participated in a protest against derogatory depictions of Indians on television. Greater still, he took the lead on more than one occasion in pursuing claims against the federal government that opened the door to the revitalization of the Cherokee Nation. But he also loved his God and country and simply could not countenance the thought of political activists, radical intellectuals, and Jews stirring unrest and causing dissension in his part of Oklahoma.

478 american indian quarterly/summer 2007/vol. 31, no. 3 The Carnegie Project’s recent machinations involving the War on Poverty suggested a kind of domino effect. It would begin with Al Wahrhaftig’s securing the directorship of the Cherokee County Community Action agency. From there, Pierce wrote to Keeler, “they evidently believed they could run rough-shod over you, and show up here with 3 or 4 thousand dollars of oeo money, or more, and with these funds literally take over the Cherokee people.” “From that point on,” he concluded, “they were convinced that the other tribes in Oklahoma and elsewhere would fall in line, and get on their bandwagon.”36 Given these dire circumstances, the embattled lawyer felt compelled to introduce a resolution titled “Against the Enemies of Our Country” at the annual convention of the National Congress of American Indians (ncai) in November 1965. It called on every “patriotic American citizen” to resist the “diabolical joint policy” of the Soviet Union and “Red China,” by supporting the government’s foreign policy “to contain the spread of the menace of Communism, the deadly enemy of the free people of the world.” The resolution went on to urge “every citizen who loves America” to “proclaim his or her absolute loyalty to the government of the United States.” Pierce brought it to a close with a ringing endorse- ment of Indians’ “devotion to their fatherland and to the government under which they dwell” and a proclamation that any ncai member found also to be a member of a subversive organization would be immediately expelled.37 This missive surely targeted Indian and non-Indian ncai members affiliated with activist organizations such as the National Indian Youth Council and the Carnegie Cross-Cultural Education Project. But it seems equally likely that he meant for it to intimidate anyone who already had or might consider establishing connections with that Jewish anthropologist from the University of Chicago. “The main enigma is the breadth and reach of Sol Tax,” Pierce speculated in still another letter to Principal Chief Keeler written during the month after he introduced his “Against the Enemies of Our Country” resolution. “He seems to have fingers reaching into several levels of business and Government, and as of this date, I do not even know his correct name or whence he cometh.” Nonetheless, he felt confident anticipating that Tax and his allies would launch “some kind of grotesque and bizarre action” in the near future.38 Here was the general counsel’s worst nightmare seemingly come to life. The social and cultural chasm separating the establishment from

Cobb: Devils in Disguise 479 the traditional communities conjured some of the shadows he detected. These shadows became ghosts when Sol Tax initiated the American Indian Chicago Conference and then followed it with the Carnegie Cross-Cultural Education Project. But it took the political culture of Cold War America—that pervasive milieu in which the ideology of anticommunism conflated fact and fiction—to transform these ghosts into monsters. And so Sol Tax, Robert K. Thomas, Albert Wahrhaftig, Willard Walker, and virtually everyone with whom they associated—and still others they did not even know—appeared as though they were devils in disguise.39

final words In the end, Earl Boyd Pierce and the Cherokee establishment had little cause for alarm. The Office of Economic Opportunity’s conception of the geographical community forced the Carnegie Project to do what- ever it could merely to promote traditional Cherokee involvement in Community Action. Moreover, Pierce’s campaign to undermine the Carnegie Project bore fruit as members of Cherokee and non-Indian communities refused to cooperate with them. “I’m getting so annoyed with the Southern White mentality,” an embittered Bob Thomas wrote to Sol Tax of having endured three years of constant harassment, “[it’s] like I’m being nibbled to death by a herd of ducks.”40 But the story did not actually end in the summer of 1966. The Carnegie Project remained in Oklahoma well into the following year and became even more entangled in the internal politics of the Cherokee Nation.41 Not long after the collapse of the War on Poverty in the summer of 1965, an autochthonous revitalization movement swept through traditional Cherokee communities. Al Wahrhaftig accepted the role of English language secretary, and the Carnegie Project supported the Original Cherokee Community Organization’s (occo) critical stance toward the established government as well as its proactive steps toward building institutions within traditional communities. During the next five years, the Original Cherokees broadcast the radio program, published the Cherokee Nation Newsletter, and initiated a controversial test case over treaty-protected hunting and fishing rights.42 Controversy also swirled around the Cherokee Nation’s decision to invest some of the remaining $2 million from the claims settlement into

480 american indian quarterly/summer 2007/vol. 31, no. 3 This flyer was distributed by land and air during protests against the opening of the “Cherokee Village” in 1967. Earl Boyd Pierce undoubtedly noted the connection between the Five County Cherokee Organization and the National Indian Youth Coun- cil. Courtesy of Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries. a Cherokee Cultural Center that would include an amphitheater and living history area called the Cherokee Village. With backing from the National Indian Youth Council, the occo picketed the opening of the Cherokee Village in the summer of 1967. They argued that both the village, as well as a dramatic performance of the Trail of Tears, misrepre- sented the Cherokee people and squandered money that could have been better spent on generating permanent full-time jobs. Having recently earned his pilot certificate, Al Wahrhaftig agreed to help distribute leaf- lets condemning these business decisions by plane. For the first and only time in history, the Cherokee Air Force took to the skies.43 By the late 1960s the Cherokee Nation included community representatives in its governing system, a strategy the Carnegie Project initially viewed as an attempt to co-opt the occo’s grassroots movement. In August 1971 the Cherokees finally held their first democratic election. W. W. Keeler, for more than two decades the appointed principal chief, won by a convinc- ing margin. Today the main tribal complex is named after him, and he is remembered generally as a figure pivotal to the reassertion of Cherokee sovereignty. General Counsel Earl Boyd Pierce persisted in his efforts to root out subversives well into the 1970s. He is revered by many for his pursuit of claims on behalf of the Cherokee people. A powerful political and economic force in the state, the Cherokee Nation continues to negotiate the politics of race, blood, and nation.44 The amphitheater and Cherokee Village remain—as do the resilient kin-centered communities interspersed throughout five counties in northeastern Oklahoma.45 The Carnegie Project staff carried on as well. Sol Tax finished his career at the University of Chicago no less committed to tribal self-determination than before. Robert K. Thomas spent most of his later years at the University of Arizona, where he served as a major figure in the development of American Indian Studies and became widely regarded as an esteemed Cherokee elder. Clyde Warrior, the ebullient leader of the National Indian Youth Council, outspoken critic of colonialism, and co-editor of Indian Voices, died tragically in 1968. Long after their depar- ture, Albert Wahrhaftig and Willard Walker published articles based on the knowledge they acquired while in Oklahoma. In 2002 the Cherokee Nation honored Wahrhaftig by inviting him to return to Tahlequah. They asked him to share his experiences with the up-and-coming generation of tribal leaders and to travel the back roads again so that he could tell them what had changed and what had remained the same.46

482 american indian quarterly/summer 2007/vol. 31, no. 3 In September 2002 the Cherokee Nation invited Albert Wahrhaftig to return to Oklahoma, where he visited with Principal Chief Chad Smith, former principal chief Wilma Mankiller, members of the tribal government, youths, and old friends. He is shown here (far left) in conversation with (left to right) Richard Allen, Marvin Jones, and John Ross. Courtesy of the author.

While scholars typically think of the Carnegie Project in terms of the publications it produced, this essay has focused on the experiences of many of the people involved. The story that emerges is not merely about a squabble between Indians and anthropologists in the state of Oklahoma. Instead it is about how Native and non-Native people engaged in the politics of community, identity, poverty, and power in Cold War America. Historians regard the 1960s as a tumultuous decade in which longstanding assumptions regarding who could speak, about what topics, and through which discursive procedures were called into question.47 These were years of disillusionment and anger, of divisions that left deep wounds in need of healing. The Cherokee Nation stood at the center, not the margins, of this history. Situating the story of the Carnegie Project in the context of a culture at war with itself allows us

Cobb: Devils in Disguise 483 to see that there were no devils in disguise, only people who seemed that way amidst the confusion of troubled times.

notes

The first epigraph is from an interview with Clyde Warrior recorded by Stan Steiner in Tahlequah ok in September 1966 (tape 15, series 8, Stan Steiner Collection, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford ca). The second epigraph is from page 5 of Robert K. Thomas’s “Cross-Cultural Cannibalism,” an unpublished manuscript (archived in folder 10, box 146, series 4, Sol Tax Papers, Department of Special Collections, Joseph Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago il [hereafter cited as Tax Papers]). 1. I use the terms “tribal” and “traditional” interchangeably in this article, in keeping with the Carnegie Project’s own use of these sometimes slippery and somewhat unsatisfactory concepts. The five counties are Adair, Cherokee, Sequoyah, Delaware, and Mayes, but there were settlements in Muskogee County as well. See Albert L. Wahrhaftig, “The Tribal Cherokee Population of Eastern Oklahoma,” Current Anthropology 9 (December 1968) pt. 2: 510–18. 2. Robert K. Thomas to Sol Tax, 25 August 1963, folder 6, box 119, series 4, Tax Papers. 3. See James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Harper, 1986); Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam, 1993); Howard Brick, Age of Contradiction: American Thought and Culture in the 1960s (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). 4. Rennard Strickland, The Indians of Oklahoma (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 35–54, 72–73; John H. Moore, “The Enduring Reservations of Oklahoma,” in State and Reservation: New Perspectives on Federal Indian Policy, ed. Robert L. Bee and George Pierre Castile, 92–107 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992). 5. Albert Wahrhaftig, “In the Aftermath of Civilization: The Persistence of Cherokee Indians,” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1975), 20–90. Rather than dichotomizing between full-bloods and mixed-bloods, Sturm succinctly notes that “Cherokee society can be visualized as a diverse body of multiply constituted individuals who coalesce in socially significant ways around one or more subjectivities, or different aspects of identity.” Circe Sturm, Blood Politics: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 25.

484 american indian quarterly/summer 2007/vol. 31, no. 3 6. Wahrhaftig, “In the Aftermath,” 57–58. 7. Circe Sturm, “Blood Politics, Racial Classification, and Cherokee National Identity: The Trials and Tribulations of the Cherokee Freedmen,” American Indian Quarterly 22, nos. 1–2 (Winter–Spring 1998): 230–58. 8. Wesley Proctor, interview by Faye Delph, 19 November 1968, vol. 18, pp. 3–4, Doris Duke Indian Oral History Collection, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma. 9. Albert Wahrhaftig, “Making Do with the Dark Meat: A Report on the Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma,” in American Indian Economic Development, ed. Sam Stanley (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1978), 464–80. 10. George W. Stocking Jr., “‘Do Good, Young Man’: Sol Tax and the World Mission of Liberal Democratic Anthropology,” in Excluded Ancestors, Inventible Traditions: Essays Toward a More Inclusive History of Anthropology, ed. Richard Handler, vol. 9, History of Anthropology (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 171–264; Sam Stanley, “Community, Action, and Continuity: A Narrative Vita of Sol Tax,” Current Anthropology 37, no. 1 (February 1996): s131– s133, s135, s137; Sol Tax, “Last on the Warpath: A Personalized Account of How an Anthropologist Learned from American Indians,” unpublished manuscript, 1968, folder 2, box 273, series 8, Tax Papers. 11. John W. Bennett, “Applied and Action Anthropology: Ideological and Conceptual Aspects,” Current Anthropology 37, no. 1 (February 1996): s35. 12. Sol Tax and Robert K. Thomas, “An Experiment in Cross-Cultural Education, 1962–1967,” Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Indian Education: Hearings before the Special Subcommittee on Indian Education on the Study of the Education of Indian Children, 90th Cong., 1st and 2d sess., pt. 2, 19 February 1968 (Washington dc, 1969), 940, 941. 13. James Treat, Around the Sacred Fire: Native Religious Activism in the Red Power Era (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 40–59; Steve Pavlik, introduc- tion to A Good Cherokee, A Good Anthropologist: Papers in Honor of Robert K. Thomas, ed. Steve Pavlik (Los Angeles: American Indian Studies Center, 1998), xiii–xviii. A version of his thesis was later published as Robert K. Thomas, “The Redbird Smith Movement,” in Symposium of Cherokee and Iroquois Cultures, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 180, ed. William N. Fenton and John Gulick (Washington dc: Smithsonian Institution, 1961). 14. Robert K. Thomas, “Colonialism: Classic and Internal,” New University Thought 4, no. 4 (1966–67): 37–44. For more on Thomas’s theories, see Albert L. Wahrhaftig, “Robert K. Thomas and the Monteith Theory,” in Pavlik, ed., A Good Cherokee, 9–16, and Otto Feinstein, “From Experience to Theory, From Theory to Experience: Robert K. Thomas and the Tradition of Book VII of Plato’s Republic,” also in Pavlik, ed., A Good Cherokee, 261–73. For the quote, see Thomas to Helen Peterson, 2 October 1957, “Keeler, W. W. (Consultant, bia”

Cobb: Devils in Disguise 485 folder, box 66, series 3, National Congress of American Indians Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Suitland, Maryland (hereafter cited as ncai Papers). 15. Thomas to Peterson, 4 October 1957, “Keeler, W. W. (Consultant, bia)” folder, box 66, series 3, ncai Papers. 16. Willard Walker, “An Experiment in Programmed Cross-Cultural Education: The Import of the Cherokee Primer for the Cherokee Community and for the Behavioral Sciences,” unpublished manuscript, March 1965, p. 1, “Teaching Materials: Walker, Willard, ‘An Experiment in Programmed Cross- Cultural Education,’” folder, box 28, series 17, Helen L. Peterson Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Suitland, Maryland. For the quotation regarding Cherokees as “for real” people, see Sol Tax and Robert K. Thomas, “Education ‘for’ American Indians: Threat or Promise?” The Florida Reporter (Spring/Summer 1969): 17. Ray Fogelson argues that Thomas saw the project as being about “the renewal of Cherokee literacy but more profoundly concerned with Cherokee self-determination and preparing the way for resur- gent Cherokee nationhood through representative government.” Raymond D. Fogelson, “Bringing Home the Fire: Bob Thomas and Cherokee Studies,” in Pavlik, ed., A Good Cherokee, 105. 17. Tom Holm, J. Diane Pearson, and Ben Chavis, “Peoplehood: A Model for the Extension of Sovereignty in American Indian Studies,” Wicazo Sa Review 18, no. 1 (2003): 11–17. The use of the term “religion” is, of course, somewhat problematic insofar as it tends to convey a sense of rigid doctrine and institutional- ized belief. “Spiritual tradition” might be more adequate, but I have decided here to follow Thomas, Holm, Pearson, and Chavis. 18. Albert L. Wahrhaftig, “Community and the Caretakers,” New University Thought 4, no. 4 (1966/1967): 56. Albert L. Wahrhaftig and Robert K. Thomas, “Renaissance and Repression: The Oklahoma Cherokee,” Trans-action 6 (February 1969): 42–48. 19. Albert L. Wahrhaftig, interview by author, tape recording, Tahlequah ok, 7 September 2002; Thomas to Tax, received 10 January 1964, folder 6, box 119, Tax Papers. For a more detailed map than the one found in these pages, see Wahrhaftig, “Tribal Cherokee Population,” 511. 20. Willard Walker, correspondence with author, 16 November 2004; Tax and Thomas, “An Experiment in Cross-Cultural Education,” 945–49. Much of the language material was printed in Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Indian Education, pt. 2, 643–841. Testifying to the staying power of the Carnegie Project’s work, my teacher used the Cherokee Primer in class when I studied Cherokee during the late 1990s. 21. For an extended discussion, see Daniel M. Cobb, “Talking the Language of the Larger World: Politics in Cold War (Native) America,” in Beyond Red Power:

486 american indian quarterly/summer 2007/vol. 31, no. 3 New Perspectives on American Indian Politics and Activism, ed. Daniel M. Cobb and Loretta Fowler (Santa Fe: School of Advanced Research Press, 2007). 22. It should also be noted that Earl Boyd Pierce questioned the authenticity of Robert K. Thomas’s Cherokee identity and challenged him to prove his ances- try by tracing it to tribal membership rolls generated during the early twentieth century. This behavior was surely informed by a desire to protect Cherokeeness, and that was understandable, particularly given the depth of graft and fraud visited upon Cherokees by imposters. See especially Angie Debo, And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes (1940; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968). The advent of the multimillion-dollar claims settlement and the attempt by Cherokee Freedmen and others to secure a portion of it may have heightened Pierce’s distrust of Thomas. But it is also true that he was equally vigilant with others. For another example, see Steven Crum, “Almost Invisible: The Brotherhood of North American Indians (1911) and the League of North American Indians (1935),” Wicazo Sa Review 21, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 54. 23. Earl Boyd Pierce to W. W. Keeler, 25 January 1964, “ncai Executive Committee—Correspondence, 1956–1965 [2 of 3]” folder, box 19, and Pierce to W. G. Angel, 29 January 1964, “Sol Tax—Correspondence & Reports Concerning ’64” folder, box 27, Earl Boyd Pierce Collection, Cherokee National Archives, Cherokee Heritage Center, Tahlequah, Oklahoma (hereafter cited as Pierce Collection). 24. Pierce to Robert Burnette, 25 September 1963, “ncai Executive Committee— Correspondence, 1956–1965 [2 of 3]” folder, box 19, and Pierce to Paul M. Niebell, 5 August 1964, “Sol Tax—Correspondence & Reports Concerning ’64” folder, box 27, Pierce Collection. My argument, drawn primarily from Pierce’s own papers, confirms the accuracy of what Rosalie Wax, Albert Wahrhaftig, and others later reported. See Rosalie H. Wax, Doing Fieldwork: Warnings and Advice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 281–83, 303, 307, and Albert L. Wahrhaftig, “Looking Back to Tahlequah: Robert K. Thomas’ Role Among the Oklahoma Cherokee, 1963–1967,” in Pavlik, ed., A Good Cherokee, 93–104. Given my access to Pierce’s papers, however, I have been able to develop the specifics of his assault and to unearth just how extensive it proved to be. By the end of the decade, he had bound Sol Tax, Herbert Marcuse, the Students for a Democratic Society, Angela Davis, Marlon Brando, select members of the ncai, and others in a revo- lutionary communist-Zionist conspiracy that purportedly took its orders from the Kremlin. 25. Thomas to Tax, 2 April 1964, folder 6, box 119, Tax Papers; Pierce to Robert French, 9 May 1963, Thomas to Pierce, 31 May 1963, Pierce to Thomas, 17 June 1963, Pierce to Paul M. Niebell, 5 August 1964, and Pierce to Keeler, 31 December 1964, all in “Sol Tax—Correspondence & Reports Concerning ’64” folder, box 27, Pierce Collection. In addition to his own letter writing, he also tried to convince

Cobb: Devils in Disguise 487 his old friend and then-ncai executive director Robert Burnette to secure fbi files on Thomas. Pierce to Robert Burnette, 25 September 1963, and Burnette to Pierce, 15 November 1963, “ncai Executive Committee—Correspondence, 1956–1965 [2 of 3]” folder, box 19, Pierce Collection. I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request in 2001 seeking fbi files relating to Thomas, Tax, Wahrhaftig, and the Carnegie Project but received a negative response. 26. Daniel M. Cobb, “Philosophy of an Indian War: Indian Community Action in the Johnson Administration’s War on Indian Poverty, 1964–1968,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 22, no. 2 (1998): 71–103. 27. Forrest Gerard, Trip Report Summary, 3–14 and 23 August 1964, attached to Carruth J. Wagner to Philleo Nash, 22 September 1964, “Community Action Task Force” folder, box 7, Records Relating to the Office of Economic Opportunity, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Record Group 75, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington dc (hereafter cited as Records of bia); William Finale to All Superintendents, Cherokee, Miccosukee, and Seminole Agencies, 4 March 1966, “Community Action Programs Information to the Field” folder, box 7, Records Relating to oeo, Records of bia; Memo from E.B.P., 19 June 1965, “Sol Tax—Correspondence & Reports Concerning ’65” folder, box 28, Pierce Collection. 28. Thomas to Neil Morton, 28 October 1964, folder 6, box 119, Tax Papers. 29. Notes, folder 3, box 72, and Wahrhaftig to Tax, 22 February 1965, folder 1, box 155, series 4, Tax Papers; Wahrhaftig to Keeler, 1 June 1965, “Sol Tax— Correspondence & Reports Concerning ’65” folder, box 28, Pierce Collection; Albert L. Wahrhaftig, Indian Communities of Eastern Oklahoma and the War on Poverty (Chicago: Carnegie Cross-Cultural Education Project, 1965), 4, 10, 26. See also Wahrhaftig, “An Anti-Poverty Exploration Project: A Suggestion for Non-Reservation Indian Communities,” Journal of American Indian Education 5, no. 1 (October 1965): 1–9, and “Community and the Caretakers,” New University Thought 4, no. 4 (1966/1967): 54–76. Circe Sturm provides the following useful definition of community: “As Cherokees use the term, community references their social geography, the actual interaction among various kinds of people as it occurs in particular locations.” Sturm, Blood Politics, 132. 30. The organizers apparently prevented Warrior from giving his talk at the National Conference on Poverty in the Southwest because they considered it too controversial. It was later published as Clyde Warrior, “Poverty, Community, and Power,” New University Thought 4, no. 2 (Summer 1965): 5–10. 31. For a case study of how this process played out in Cherokee County, see Daniel M. Cobb, “‘Us Indians understand the basics’: Oklahoma Indians and the Politics of Community Action, 1964–1970,” Western Historical Quarterly 33, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 41–66. See also Pierce to Keeler, 22 May 1965, “Sol Tax—Correspondence & Reports Concerning ’65” folder, and Thomas to Jack Conway, 19 November 1965,

488 american indian quarterly/summer 2007/vol. 31, no. 3 pp. 2–3, “Conway, Jack—Letters 1965” folder, box 28, Pierce Collection; Wahrhaftig, “In the Aftermath,” 61; and Wahrhaftig, “Making Do,” 481. 32. Thomas to Conway, 19 November 1965, pp. 3, 4, 5, Pierce Collection. 33. Contests over blood and belonging, as anthropologist Circe Sturm has shown, result in “personal, political, and social conflicts” over “who is really Indian, how do we know, and who gets to decide.” Sturm, Blood Politics, 4. 34. Ele Chassy, inspection letter to Ed Terrones/Jack Gonzales, 3 February 1966, “hs Delaware County, Okla.” folder, box 118, Inspection Reports, 1964–67, Records of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Record Group 381, National Archives and Records Administration II, College Park md. 35. Pierce to Keeler, 29 March 1965, “Sol Tax—Correspondence & Reports Concerning ’64” folder, box 27, Pierce Collection. 36. Pierce to Keeler, 14 December 1965, “Sol Tax—Correspondence & Reports Concerning ’64” folder, box 27, Pierce Collection. 37. “Report to the Tribes,” ncai, 1 November 1965, “Report to the Tribes— Convention Proceedings” folder, and “Against the Enemies of our Country,” ncai Resolution 1965, “Convention Resolutions 1965” folder, box 14, series 1, ncai Papers. 38. Pierce to Keeler, 14 December 1965, “Sol Tax—Correspondence & Reports Concerning ’64” folder, box 27, p. 2, Pierce Collection. 39. I have drawn the allusion to shadows, ghosts, and monsters from Stanley Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 217–22. 40. Thomas to Tax, 7 July 1966, folder 8, box 119, series 4, Tax Papers. 41. This entanglement was due in part to the arrival of a second research team from the University of Kansas under the direction of Murray Wax and Rosalie Wax. For Rosalie’s account of their experience, see Wax, Doing Fieldwork. 42. Albert Wahrhaftig, “Institution Building among Oklahoma’s Traditional Cherokees,” in Four Centuries of Southern Indians, ed. Charles M. Hudson (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1975), 140–45; Albert L. Wahrhaftig and Jane Lukens-Wahrhaftig, “New Militants or Resurrected State? The Five County Northeastern Oklahoma Cherokee Organization,” in The Cherokee Indian Nation: A Troubled History, ed. Duane H. King, 223–46 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1979). 43. “Guest to Our Homeland” leaflet, folder11 , box 29, Stan Steiner Collection, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford ca; Wahrhaftig, “Making Do,” 431–33; Wahrhaftig interview; Della Warrior, interview by author, tape recording, January 4, 2005. 44. See Sturm, Blood Politics, and coverage of the Freedmen issue in such newspapers as Indian Country Today.

Cobb: Devils in Disguise 489 45. Wahrhaftig, “Institution Building,” 144–45; Wahrhaftig, “Making Do,” 486; Willard Walker, correspondence with author, 16 November 2004. 46. Albert L. Wahrhaftig, “Impressions and Reflections: A Week in the Cherokee Nation, Sept. 6–12, 2002” and “Stories for Young Cherokees,” unpublished manuscripts, in author’s possession. I had the good fortune of spending time with him during his visit. 47. Eric R. Wolf, Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 57.

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