Native American Poetry Class Jan-Mar 09

DT-1

Discussion Topic – (DT-1)
Please write what Native American you think that you have in your background. If you do not, please tell me what kind of Native American you would be. This should be no less than 500 words. Please put your word count at the bottom of your item. Submit in 'Bitem' format only.


Well, that is the big question.  Do I have a relative who is Cherokee or not?  For two generations at least, members of my mother’s paternal family have been rumored to have German and Cherokee heritage.  We think it was Rosa Lee Wacaser’s (my great granddaddy Oden’s mother) relatives (Father was German I think but we know little about the mother).  Every other line in the family can be traced way back to Britain but not this Rosa’s mother.  So, that one is suspected for being Native American. 
 
Then I went to Cherokee, NC and did some research and found over two pages full of Buffingtons (my mom’s maternal grandmother’s side) on the reservation when it included parts of Northeast Alabama.  Both maternal sides have been in Gadsden, Sand Mountain, Turkeytown, Ball Play, Blount County, and Steele/St. Clair County since before Alabama became Alabama.  These all were historically Cherokee areas back then.  Before that, they were in North Georgia, North Carolina, then Virginia right after England or Wales or Germany.  So my gut feeling is that there had to be at least one intermarriage in all that.  Ironically, my mothers side is mostly dark skinned (for white folks), green eyed and with light hair and the men on that side of the family have about three chest hairs combined.  I have dark brown hair, brown eyes, dark skin with an olive tint, and almost no visible hair on my arms (some with dark hair w/o NA ancestors seem to have dark hair on their arms also, and pale skin, I have heard anyway). My father and my oldest son are the only other two who look like this in about three generations on both sides (except my dad’s mother who is pales as  a ghost but has dark hair and eyes and very English in descent).

My father’s father is the same-green eyes, dark weathered skin, light hair.  And his side is also rumored to have Creek Indian descent but no one knows who.  They were all from Kellyton/Sylacauga/Autauga Counties and also from back before Alabama was Alabama.  And we also can trace most (but not all) of the lines back to Germany, Wales, and England. 

It was my mom’s paternal grandmother who once flatly denied being Indian, saying her family told her when she was young that she was “Black Dutch” and no one, absolutely no one, ever talked of having Indian blood because folks she knew lost their land or were chastised even when she was a child (she was born in 1906).  She said her mother (who we are pretty sure was not NA, was really busy trying to match her up with the right man and hooked her up with a young preacher man (despite the fact that she was sweet on a salesman she had been going to dances with).  The young preacher man just happened to be a snake handling Church of God minister (since the age of 16) from Blount County, Alabama.  Ironically, this man brought the supposed Native American blood but like I said, no one talks of it and we couldn’t prove it.  Granddaddy Oden was a tall lanky man who died in 1978 when I was just 7.  I can still remember him carving apples and letting them sit outside on the back porch railing for days while they shrunk into tiny heads.  He made them like old Appalachian doll faces. He never broke the peal as he was peeling, it used to fascinate me so much.  He’d tell stories and rock out there and wore overalls ALL the time, even though they lived in the city of Gadsden then. He wore suits though, with string ties, on Sunday and preached all day every Sunday til he died.  His brother just died last year at 104 yrs old-also a preacher. 

I often wondered if his family, a few decades back, were forced to take on these religious views to more assimilate and keep from being sent on the Trail of Tears.  I find the silences and dead ends as intriguing as the lines we can trace way back.  I have trouble feeling honored by knowing that so many of my ancestors may have pushed the NA out of their territory.  I just don’t know.

Deep in my heart, though, that if reincarnation does occur, my soul did a journey at some point in a Native American life. There is something about how I feel when I hear drums, the deep, rhythmic drums and the dancing. Its like cell memory or something.  I’ve been in several sweat lodge ceremonies with my father and his wife and friends and that is more Lakota, I believe.  However, I was not really surprised to find that I felt equally at home during those ceremonies.  My father also feels this way, we have talked about this in fact.  He said he never could get his father to tell him much about his dad’s family.  His dad was a fun loving, irresponsible drunk who wasn’t so fun loving at home.  He was ashamed of his father and wasn’t so close to his father’s family.  He didn’t want to talk about them so he didn’t.  Dad just finally decided that if he didn’t have NA blood, he at least shared the spiritual interest and has continued for over ten years to study and be a part of some ceremonies and maintain friendships with the people who ran the old sweat lodge we went to.  He has cleared a space on his property to build a dome for that purpose. 

All this leads up to hopefully answer the question, if I was NA, what kind would I be.  Well, judging from where I was born and my parents ancestors, I would say ¾ chance of being Cherokee and about ¼ chance of being Creek.  That is, the lines we think might have led there.  But most of all, inside me, I am attracted to and led by the need to learn about this possible ancestry because it is what I feel inside me to do.  I know there is a connection somewhere and instead of worrying about what percentage of blood is in my veins from one tribe or another, I’d rather learn as much as I can so that I can teach my children to have respect and honor those who lived on this land where we live now.  I work in the town that had a huge battle between the Creeks and Cherokees.  Jackson Trace, near our house, was part of the pathway Jackson cut through the state to transport the Native Americans during the Trail of Tears.  My older son is also very interested in all of this and seems to share mine and my father’s soul memory of sorts-and I want him to feel knowledgeable and open minded as he gets older. 

Wado
SWPoet
1148 words (Sorry, might should have given a maximum word length too.)







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