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CHEROKEE STORIES
THE STORYTELLERS Most of the material Mooney gathered for his research on the Cherokee was provided by elders of the tribe who had acquired this knowledge from their elders in the traditional way, passing the information on from generation to generation. Below is Mooney's description of these elders:
Suyeta, "Tbe Chosen One", who preaches regularly as a Baptist minister to an Indian congregation, does not deal much with the Indian supernatural, perhaps through deference to his clerical obligations, but has a good memory and liking for rabbit stories and others of the same class. He served in the Confederate army during the war as fourth sergeant in Company A, of the Sixty-ninth North Carolina, and is now a well preserved man of about sixty-two. He speaks no English, but by an ingenious system of his own has learned to use a concordance for verifying references in his Cherokee bible. He is also a first-class carpenter and mason.
Among informants in the western Cherokee Nation the principal was James D. Wafford, known to the Indians as Tsuskwanun'nawa'ta, "Worn-out-blanket," a mixed-blood speaking and writing both languages, born in the old Cherokee Nation near the site of the present Clarkesville, Georgia, in 1806, and dying when about ninety years of age at his home in the eastern part of the Cherokee Nation, adjoining the Seneca reservation. The name figues prominently in the early history of North Carolina and Georgia. His grandfather, Colonel Wafford, was an officer in the American Revolutionary army, and shortly after the treaty of Hopewell, in 1785, established a colony known as "Wafford's settlement," in upper Georgia, on territory which was afterward found to be within the Indian boundary and was acquired by special treaty purchase in 1804. His name is appended, as witness for the state of Georgia, to the treaty of Holston, in 1794. On his mother's side Mr. Wafford was of mixed Cherokee, Natchez, and white blood, she being a cousin of Sequoyah. He was also remotley connected with Cornelius Dougherty, the first trader established among the Cherokee. In the course of his long life he filled many positions of trust and honor among his people. In his youth he attended the mission school at Valleytown under Reverend Evan Jones, and just before the adoption of the Cherokee alphabet he finished the translation into phonetic Cherokee spelling of a Sunday school speller noted in Pilling's Iroquoin Bibliography. In 1824 he was the census enumerator for that district of the Cherokee Nation embracing upper Hiwassee river, in North Carolina, with Nottely and Toccoa in the adjoining portion of Georgia. His fund of Cherokee geographic informaiton thus acquired was found to be invaluable. He was one of the two commanders of the largest detachment of emigrants at the time of removal, and his name appears as a councilor for the western Nation in the Cherokee Almanac for 1846. When employed by the author at Tahlequah in 1891 his mind was still clear and his memory keen. Being of practical bent, he was concerned chiefly with tribal history, geography, linguistics, and every-day life and custom, on all of which subjects his knowledge was exact and detailed, but there were few myths for which he was not able to furnish confirmatory testimony. Despite his education he was a firm believer in the Nunne'hi, and several of the best legends connected with them were obtained from him. His death takes from the Cherokee one of the last connecting links between the present and the past." Mooney also made use of a manuscript written by a Cherokee woman name Wahnenauhi, or Lucy Lowery Hoyt Keys, as a source for the stories as well. We feature Wahnenauhi in our Native American Women in History section. (Photographs on this page from Bureau of American Ethnology Nineteenth Annual Report) History, Myths and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees, a compilation of Mooney's reports to the Bureau of American Ethnology, is available in the Native Nashville Online Book Store.
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