From the First Rising Sun: The Real First Part of the Prehistory of the Cherokee People and Nation According to Oral Traditions, Legends, and Myths

By Charla Jean Morris

While in medical school (which I did not have the privilege of completing), once a week we had a small group discussion class called Focus On Problems. Each group had a leader, a member of the medical school staff or someone closely associated with the school, usually an MD or Ph.D. Our group leader was Dean of the Medical School, H. David Wilson, MD. One class period focused on working with patients of different ethnic backgrounds. Dr. Wilson asked me what were some of the traditions of my tribe in regard to medicine that would be helpful for a doctor to know. My reply was that I had been raised like a white, that I had grown up learning about various herbal and natural remedies, but that I knew nothing about the specific medical traditions, ceremonial or secular, of my people.I had always longed to know of the traditions of my people before that, but circumstances of my family history had not allowed it. That question in the Focus On Problems class caused that longing to intensify into a sharp pang of longing that would not be satisfied until many years later. While in the first two years of medical school as a nontraditional student, I was in an environment that encouraged the development of the knowledge of Native American traditions. We had Native American speakers that came and elaborated on Native American traditions. One area that was lacking was tribal histories, but what academics label prehistory. I commented to her that when white man came, they did all they could to destroy our social and religious fabric, so the old traditions were not passed down to most of the remaining members of the tribes. Now we know nothing of our old history. There is nothing left. The white side of my family history is easy to know, but not my Cherokee and Choctaw side. She replied by saying that, yes, many of our peoples have lost their old traditions, and it is sad.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463436445

Charla Jean Morris

Charla Jean Morris was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma just across the line out of the Cherokee Nation in Creek Nation in 1950. She came to life in the old Brick Muskogee General Hospital, a stout brick building that succumbed to termites and was torn down a few years ago. The building was just a few blocks from her first childhood home on K Street of that town. It was only two or three blocks, as the bird flies, from Spaulding City Park, where the citizens swam in a spring fed pool bordered with cypress trees all around the continuous stone step accesses to the pool until a cement pool as built across the street in the largest area of the park. The thing that impressed her about that old spring fed pool, now relegated to pond status, was that there was, and still is, an exact scaled down copy of Miss Liberty, our nation’s Statue of Liberty, in the middle of the shallow end. Her dad had joined the National Guard before she was born, but was allowed to come home at her birth. It wasn’t long until his Unit was drafted by the president for the Korean War of M.A.S.H. fame. While he was training as a radio man, including operation and repair, the family moved to Augusta, Georgia. When he was shipped off overseas, she and her mother moved back from Georgia into a duplex a few blocks down K Street from her Grandma Coodey’s house. When her dad came back, they moved forty miles to Tahlequah, where her dad completed his B.A. in Physics with a minor in English. They moved to various towns in Oklahoma while her dad taught in Adair public schools. Their residences included a country home east of Pryor, a house in Vinita, a house in Adair, and then a house west of Adair. While living there, her dad was asked to go teach for a church academy in Nebraska. There they lived in a rural setting on campus near Shelton, Nebraska. Next they moved to Las Vegas, New Mexico, where her dad finished his Masters in Math and Science. They had spent a summer before that in Berrien Springs, Michigan, and another summer in Emporia, Kansas, due to National Science Foundation Grants that allowed him to start on his Masters. The National Science Foundation also provided a grant for him to finish his Masters at Las Vegas. After that it was off to Roswell (yea, THE famous Roswell) New Mexico, where her dad taught math first in junior high and then in high school. All these moves are mentioned because during that time, no matter where they were at, her dad and mom made sure that all the children became close to nature, the Creator’s second Bible, the one thing that white schools could not train out of them from their Cherokee heritage. She learned some tiny bits of Cherokee culture at yearly family reunions. Other than that there was a great void in her personal knowledge of Cherokee culture. In Junior High in Roswell, she learned how to write in 9th grade journalism class. She was having difficulty getting things down on paper, and the teacher, Charlotte King, asked Jean to tell the story to her verbally. After listening to that, she suggested, “Write it like you just told it.” That suggestion started her first good ventures into writing. After that the privilege of becoming News Editor and then Assistant Editor of that school paper, the Sierra Eagle, came her way. After starting to attend Ozark Academy in Gentry, Arkansas, Assistant Editor was her job on the Mountain Echo the first year. The next two years, the job of Editor-in-Chief was passed to her. During the summers back home, several articles were written for the Southwestern Union Record, the voice of the Southwestern Union Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists. While at Gentry, her guidance counselor asked her, “Have you considered a career as a writer?” Replying yes, she added that her main goal for the future was to become an M.D. He dropped the subject then. Years later, after having her children, and then pursuing her medical goals as a non-traditional student to obtain an M.D., she was stymied by developing COPD due to years of having undiagnosed asthma, never having used tobacco products at all. After realizing that it would take years for her blood oxygen to return to normal, if ever, she once again picked up her pen to use for something besides churning out school assignments. Additional background is given in the book’s Introduction.

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© 2011 by Charla Jean Morris. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 07/18/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4634-3645-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-3644-5 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011912695

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter One Grandmother, Tell Us a Story

Chapter Two Our Turn

Chapter Three Gluskapi

Chapter Four Before the Great Flood

Chapter Five Creation Stories before the Great Flood

Chapter Six Atlantis: Before or After the Great Flood Or Both?

Chapter Seven The Power of Light

Chapter Eight The Kituwa Legend

Chapter Nine After the Great Flood

Chapter Ten Story and Legend of Enoch

Chapter Eleven Story and Legend of Seth and More of What Life Was Like Before the Great Flood

Chapter Twelve The Mayans’ and Their Brothers’ Migrations and Travels

Chapter Thirteen Noah’s Reminiscing after the Flood

Chapter Fourteen The First Holy Mountain

Chapter Fifteen When They Left the Ark: the First Scattering

Chapter Sixteen The Second Scattering

Sources and Readings

About the Author

Dedicated to:

Wilma Pearl Mankiller, who passed away this spring,

April 6, 2010.

Wilma is and will be missed.

I have always admired Wilma and her

staunch stand on Native American issues,

and not only her talk stand, but also her actual

physical action, eager action, which she put into those stands.

I also have appreciated, and still appreciate, her work as an author.

Wilma was a good friend that gave good advice and insight

over the past two and one half years while finishing this prehistoric work.

That help gave direction in doing the final research needed

to finish writing this work.

Many thanks for her help.

This work is also dedicated to her family, who will carry on her work

to help and encourage Native people and to also

carry on her work benefitting the Cherokee Nation.

In Memoriam

This work is part of a continuing memorial

for Wilma Pearl Mankiller.

Acknowledgements

First of all thanks to my son David and daughter Charla who did not discourage the writing of this book.

The core basis of a large part of my historical research for this book, and future volumes of this series, is based on the work of my Aunt Lula Lee Morris Boggs, a Cherokee and retired school teacher. While working she spent some of her spare time looking into family genealogy and helped one of her younger sisters, Ada June Morris Leaf, compile a 4¼ by 5½ booklet with a family tree of mostly living relatives and some work a few generations back. Then when Aunt Lu retired, she became in dead earnest about finding family genealogy and spent the first few years of her retirement tracing family genealogy. Her work took her back as far as anyone could go on the Native American side, and on the European side she went back through Julius Caesar of Rome and Boadicea and Old King Cole of what is now England. Boadicea took her within 30 years of BC history. With her base and my own research on other genealogical lines, I was able to trace five family history lines back to Noah.

After that the problem of tracing Native American prehistory had to be tackled. Choogie Kingfisher, who was then with Cherokee Nation Cultural Resources, has been an advisor in this and has pointed me in the right directions in this research several times. He gave me the impetus to go ahead and get From the First rising Sun published.

The manuscript was to be reviewed by Wilma Mankiller, but unfortunately that task was cut short due to the worsening of her illness. Wilma Mankiller was a past Cherokee chief, the first woman chief of the present Cherokee Nation and an author in her own right.

Also thanks needs to be given to my friends Ann Hottal and Rick Pearson for their encouragement to finish this volume.

Introduction

While in medical school (which I did not have the privilege of completing), once a week we had a small group discussion class called Focus On Problems. Each group had a leader, a member of the medical school staff or someone closely associated with the school, usually an MD or Ph.D. Our group leader was Dean of the Medical School, H. David Wilson, MD. One class period focused on working with patients of different ethnic backgrounds. Dr. Wilson asked me what were some of the traditions of my tribe in regard to medicine that would be helpful for a doctor to know. My reply was that I had been raised like a white, that I had grown up learning about various herbal and natural remedies, but that I knew nothing about the specific medical traditions, ceremonial or secular, of my people.

I had always longed to know of the traditions of my people before that, but circumstances of my family history had not allowed it. That question in the Focus On Problems class caused that longing to intensify into a sharp pang of longing that would not be satisfied until many years later. While in the first two years of medical school as a nontraditional student, I was in an environment that encouraged the development of the knowledge of Native American traditions. We had Native American speakers that came and elaborated on Native American traditions. One area that was lacking was tribal histories, not recent tribal histories, but what academics label prehistory. I remember one of the speakers sitting at my table after her presentation. I commented to her that when white man came, they did all they could to destroy our social and religious fabric, so the old traditions were not passed down to most of the remaining members of the tribes. Now we know nothing of our old history. There is nothing left. The white side of my family history is easy to know, but not my Cherokee and Choctaw side. She replied by saying that, yes, many of our peoples have lost their old traditions, and it is sad, but there is hope because there are ways to find our prehistory and there are people working on finding our prehistory right now." Well, that was indeed good news.

One thing I did learn on my own before coming back home to Oklahoma was during and after my psychiatry clerkship. The first day of that clerkship at the VA hospital my attending physician asked if I was Native American and what tribe I was with. After answering him, one of the first things he had me do was to go work with a Native American on the psychiatry wing. He told me the man’s background. He was a leader in his tribe and was on full disability due to his military service. His friends were taking advantage of him and taking his money from him. Well, he had been a leader in his tribe before he became an alcoholic. He had been in and out of the psychiatry wing several times with the same problem, and my attending physician said that they had never been able to do anything with him. He always came back, usually after a few weeks. Then he told me that even if I wasn’t of the same tribe as the patient, that since I am Native American I might be able to do something to help him. When I entered the patient’s room, he looked droopy, like one defeated and not happy with himself. I took the patient’s history, and etc., for my SOAP (Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan) for the patient report to my attending. After getting that information, I asked him if he believed in the Creator. His answer was yes, so I asked him if he minded if I prayed right there to the Creator for him and he said that no he didn’t mind. We bowed our heads together and asked the Creator to help him. The prayer went like this: Our Father Creator, we come to you today to ask help for _____. _____ believes in you, and he knows he needs Your help. He knows how he is supposed to serve You in being a leader in his tribe and the example he is supposed to give to the people around him, especially to the young ones coming up. His money is supposed to be used to support himself and to help those worthy rather than feeding his alcohol habit and the alcohol and drug habits of his friends and letting them steal from him. He knows all of this already, but he cannot give up his habits by himself. He needs Your Strength, or he may never get out of this hole that he is in, this hole that he hates, so we ask for Your help because You are strong and can do all things. Now, Our Father Creator, we thank You for all the things that You have done for us in the past. We also thank you for the many things you are doing for us presently. We also thank you for the help You are going to give to _____ in the future to heal him and be the man You want him to be serving You. Now, Our Father, we give all the glory to You, knowing we can do nothing to truly help ourselves once we have fallen. We know Your will is to help us when we need it and ask for it, and we pray according to that will, Thy Will. We ask this all in Your Creator Son’s Name Jesus. Amen. I noticed that after the prayer that he didn’t look crestfallen any more. I finished my clerkship there and went on with the second part of the clerkship elsewhere. I never knew what happened to that patient until I did my Internal Medicine clerkship over a year later. My psychiatry attending saw me in one of the many hallways of that VA hospital, said hi, and then asked me if I had heard what had happened with that patient. I told him I hadn’t, and he said that the patient finished their whole program, including follow up appointments. Then he said, I don’t know what you did with that patient, but he is good. He is back to his own self the way he was before the alcoholism, and all of his follow up appointments have shown that he is remaining to be his old self. I smiled and told him that I hadn’t included it in my patient report because this is a government VA hospital, but I prayed to the Creator with him in the privacy of his room. I learned not too long after that the fact that most Native Americans are very spiritual, and praying to the Creator is part of what a properly trained medicine man would have done for him. Now I prefer to call a true medicine man a priest, or priestess if a medicine woman, because the terms medicine man, medicine woman, or shaman tend to lead non-Native Americans, and even some Native Americans, to call them wizards and witches. That promotes the notion that they are evil and work with evil spirits. I will concede that there have been so-called medicine men and medicine women that have been evil and have worked with the evil spirits instead of the Creator and can genuinely be called witches and wizards rather than priests and priestesses.

If I had not had the privilege of going to medical school, I would have seen the need for this book only dimly, but the experiences there clarified the need and focused it sharply.

Not long after the experience with the above mentioned guest speaker, one holiday I took my children to Red Clay, Tennessee, while visiting my daughter in the Chattanooga, Tennessee area. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the State of Tennessee had made a state park of that sacred place, and I wanted to see what they had done with it, as well as acquaint my children, David and Charla, with some of their family history. Red Clay had been the new Council Grounds of the Cherokee in the early 1800s, established as such when the state of Georgia banned Cherokees from owning any land in Georgia and banned them from having any meetings within Georgia’s state boundaries. The exception to that meeting stipulation, of course, was that they could have meetings in Georgia about the selling or giving of Cherokee lands to Georgians or to the state of Georgia. Later Red Clay was also the place of one of the round-up camps where the area Native Americans, mainly Cherokees, were placed in stockades before the forced march to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma over the Trail of Tears.

The State of Tennessee, in cooperation with the Cherokees, had done a beautiful job restoring the site. The springs had been cleaned out, and there were hiking trails running through the woodlands mixed with grasslands. The park was well manicured. Historic walks were included among the trails and one got a real sense of the Cherokee way of life just before the Trail of Tears. One thing that really impressed me was that the Eternal Flame of the Cherokees was maintained and lit.

Well over twenty years before (before the children were born), their father and I had run down into Georgia while living in the area and decided to head back to Tennessee on the back roads to Collegedale, where we were living at the time. Most of the roads were gravel, but one section of the road was a one-lane dirt track leading through thick woodlands. Red Clay was on that stretch of road. All there was to the place was a sign that said Red Clay and another sign a few hundred feet further that said, Historical Marker with an arrow pointing to an opening in the woods through which another one-lane dirt track road entered.

Once we had driven through the opening, we could see well-aged wooden railings that hemmed in a circled area. The dirt track made a loop around the entire small circle. There were openings in the rail fence for foot access. We got out and looked for the historical marker within the dirt circle. It described the small structure behind it, which looked like a Biblical stone altar, stating that it had been built to protect and house the Eternal Flame of the Cherokees. However, the flame was out and was not being maintained at that time. According to Cherokee tradition and old Cherokee law, the sacred flame should never have been allowed to be extinguished at all for any reason. After all, the Cherokees were Keepers of the Fire. Our ancestors had first learned from the Creator how to capture, tame, and make fire, the Ancient Red, and shared their knowledge with neighboring tribes. That is the story passed down by some of our ancestors. Another story passed down is that the Creator gave the gift of the Ancient Red (another name for fire) to us by showing us how to make fire by twirling a stick point hard in a wooden well that had been formed in another larger stick. The friction made heat, and the heat made fire. That Eternal flame also represents the flame or light of clear mind that comes when one aligns himself or herself with (or comes closer to) the Creator. This symbolism made it even more important to keep the eternal fire burning. It was a symbol of their connection to the Creator, as had been the Seventh-day Sabbath in their very earliest culture (as well as many other early cultures.) The Ancient Red also represents the Sacred Fire, which is The Spirit of Knowledge. We need to be constantly learning. Last year’s (2009) 57th Annual Cherokee National Holiday theme was Learn from All I Observe. It represents and advances The Spirit of Knowledge.

The Eternal Fire at Red Clay was allowed to go out during a time when Native American Traditions and ways of life were still being repressed and suppressed to a much greater extent than they are now in America. The budding and flowering of the multicultural ideals and education of the late seventies helped to start reversing that trend. When the seeds of Native American self-determination ideals also started resprouting, the full return of the practice of those traditions, at least those which had not been lost, also became a reality instead of just a hope. It is fortunate that the coals of the Eternal Fire were taken on the Trail of Tears when our Cherokee ancestors were forced to move west. The fire now at Red Clay was relit from the fire maintained from those coals taken to the west, so though it may have seemed that the Eternal Fire of the Cherokee went out because it was out at Red Clay, the eternal fire has never been broken. The Eternal Flame in Cherokee, NC, in front of the Museum of the Cherokee, was relit from the Eternal Flame of the Cherokee carried west by tribal members and maintained constantly by stomp ground keepers and members. Later the Eternal Flame in the west was also transferred to the front of the Cherokee Nation Tribal Complex in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. It should be noted here that the Cherokee Nation that moved here to the west is legally called The Cherokee Nation and not The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma as some call the Nation. The Cherokee Nation is the official and legal name of the Nation and is the only federally recognized Cherokee tribe. The Eastern Band of the Cherokees of the Qualla Boundary near Cherokee, NC, and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees in Oklahoma are Federally recognized Bands of The Cherokee Tribal Nation proper; in other words, those bands are part of the official legal Cherokee Nation. There has been very much of confusion and debate concerning that point, but the above information states the legal facts. In fact, the Kituwa Cherokees remained the active part of the tribe while the federal government temporarily did away with the Cherokee Nation and its government as a whole. This was done because Oklahoma Territory became the State of Oklahoma, an official state of the United States of America. If the Kituwas, who were not then organized as a band, had not remained active and stood up for the rights of the whole tribe during that time, there would be no official Cherokee Nation as it exists now. If land belongs to the Kituwas, it also belongs to the Cherokee Nation. It belongs not just to the Cherokee Nation, but belongs jointly to the Cherokee Nation AND to the United Kituwa Band AND to the Qualla Boundary Cherokees, if one wants to get truly technical. The Qualla Boundary belongs to the Cherokees there AND the Kituwas AND the Cherokee Nation proper. To put this another way, if we look back into our written history and oral traditions, we find that the Kituwas and Qualla Boundary Cherokees, as part of the Cherokees, are also owners, with all of us, of the same total land base given to us in Indian Territory. We all own all three land bases jointly. Since we all own the land together, why do we not all realize that, accept it, and therefore stop fighting about it and work together? Now I say, So much for that little soap-box speech and back to the topic at hand.

I had very little knowledge of my Native American roots on that first visit to Red Clay, Tennessee. All I knew at that time was that I was 7/32 Cherokee, and 1/8 Choctaw, that I was descended from Pocahontas on my dad’s side, and also from Mary Queen of Scots on my mother’s side. After that I went on a genealogy journey for years that encompassed tremendously more than just those little tidbits of family history. This genealogy research was stimulated by the genealogy research work of my Aunt Lula Morris Boggs. Her family genealogy work reached back before Roman times.

This epic prehistorical work includes real incidents as well as oral accounts of the old real traditional Cherokee way of life before white man came after Columbus. This part of the historical work, the first volume, goes back to the beginning of man’s time on earth and reveals what research has found of the Red man’s beginnings. It tells some of the stories handed down by the Cherokees and other tribes about life from the first Creation of life in this world through the Great Flood. A later volume, or volumes, of the series also similarly dips some back into European family history after the Great Flood and shows the contrast, clash, and melding between cultures as the two sides of the family, Native American and European met.

At the beginning of my journey to prepare for writing this novel, I hunted for a guide that would help me direct my research into our prehistory. I was directed to one of the tribe’s cultural experts, one that was surprisingly young but well educated in our ancient culture and history and well educated in storytelling. He told me, You are starting a journey in finding our culture. Everyone has to make his or her own journey. It’s something you have to guide yourself on with the help of the Creator. I can give you some general direction, but each person has to make his or her own journey. He was allowed to read a section of this book, and he listened on the phone as I read some additions to the book. Later he asked, When are you going to publish your book? There is a lot of valuable information in there. That prodding by Choogie Kingfisher, and the occasional prodding of my friend Rick Pearson, spurred me on to finish the research and writing of this first volume of the work entitled From the First Rising Sun.

At first I had difficulty deciding whether or not this work was to be called a historical novel or not. Then I decided that this first volume had no fictionalization in it like historical novels. The parts that non-red people would call fictional are the so called legends and myths. We have teaching stories involving animals that seem like fiction to others. We believe that those stories are based on true happenings before the Great Flood. This book required 8 years of research. Therefore, since it is thoroughly researched, I would call this a nonfiction prehistorical work.

The Storytellers of the Beginnings

Throughout time since the end of the second world (the world wide Great Flood), the storytellers have served as a form of entertainment for which they have remained popular throughout the ages. They also served in the preservation of history and legend. In the early times after that destructive catastrophe, the storyteller used mainly the voice as the medium of expression. The history and legends were then once again passed down orally from generation to generation. The earlier former written and recorded media of expression, in the ages before the Great flood, had been destroyed and forgotten by most, and new written media once again had to be developed. Noah, or Wesa as we know him, and his sons created a system of writing after the flood. It continued to be used in China and has changed very little except for the stylization of the combined radicals. The Southeast Asians have their own adaptive scripts from this original written language. The sea peoples, one of the main roots of our culture, used it until a system of runes was developed. In fact, many of the runes looked like the original symbols, or radicals, of that first post flood language that Noah taught. Other cultures forgot the writing systems. It took several centuries for written media to be developed for the general population use. Until then, oral storytellers passed down myth, legend, and history from generation to generation. Storytellers told the stories in the evenings around the fire. In old Cherokee society the storytellers were trained. Training the storytellers helped to make sure that the stories were told accurately. Depending upon the society, other societies may or not have followed this practice. In any event, stories were passed from generation to generation orally. As forms of writing developed for general use, and subsequently because printing presses also came on the scene, the storyteller today has also turned to the printed page as another main medium.

Perhaps I should mention here why we know Noah as Wesa, or cat. It took me a while to figure out. I didn’t understand it until way after I had studied the cultures of some of our ancestors, the Maya and the Inca. To many of our peoples, Noah, and then Shem were leaders of the Snake people. That is why some authors call Noah a Naga, a snake person, a leader of the sea, or water peoples. The Jaguar is very sacred to our ancestors and is used to represent ancient leaders and gods. Noah was the first Jaguar after the flood, and that is why he is called cat by our people.

Since we are mentioning the printed page here, there are non-Native American men and women who have written about us, have written their theories of where we came from. Though such works have not been protested very loudly in the past, they really tell nothing of our real origins and traditions. Since most non-native people believe these erudite men and women, it has seemed useless to protest, but you can be sure that the elders among us who know our true history hurt when they hear those theories. They hurt in their very souls and hearts. They have waited, myself included, for one of us to write of our true origins so that there would not be so many speculations about us.

Grandmother Storyteller

The branch of Cherokee society in which I grew up didn’t have many regular storytellers; at least I didn’t know of many. The old traditions and ways of life had been suppressed through white man’s political, social, and religious policies. My grandfather Joe Morris, after riding boxcars to escape boarding school, would not even teach his children the Tsa-la-gi language when they asked. He told them they would be better off without it. I asked him about his early years a few times, but he would never talk about them except for riding the boxcars, and he never told us about the old traditions. I can only suppose he felt we were better off without knowing them in the white man’s world. Though he never talked about it, I often wondered what had happened to him there in the boarding school that he felt it necessary to escape it by riding and hiding in boxcars, and that he felt it necessary to protect his children by not teaching them the language and old traditions.

However, in some areas traditional storytelling was carried on by Grandmothers any time during the day when asked by the children of the village or town. Under these circumstances, the story came to be told in answer to a question or questions. The old stories could be told anytime in answer to a question. Otherwise, they were restricted to winter nights. Grandmothers would tell the stories as they did their household work (shelling peas, shucking, washing, drying, and grinding corn, snapping beans, gardening, cooking, baking, darning, quilt-making, mending, etc.). If there were a large family gathering, Uncles would tell stories in the evening before going to sleep. Most of the time when the Uncles told the stories, we were already in our beds, usually on pallets or cots, indoors or outdoors, depending on the weather. I never heard stories those evenings from the old traditions. Most gatherings were in the summertime and such stories were only to be told on evenings in the cold of winter. I always thought I never heard them at family gatherings because my uncles didn’t know them. They may or they might not have known them, but it may just have been that they were abiding by the old rules of native storytellers. I never really understood the reason for this rule until I read some of the old stories, realized the Br’er Rabbit stories and the Turtle and the Hare stories were actually Cherokee traditional stories, and that Br’er Rabbit was short for Brother Rabbit. Cherokees originally told these stories as happening when the animals could still talk, and therefore, even though they can no longer talk, they can still understand human language. The stories were not only about rabbits and turtles but also about eagles, buzzards and other birds, and possums and bats and snakes and bears and wolves and foxes and frogs and other animals. The old stories were not always flattering to some of the animals, especially to the snakes. Therefore it was tradition for the stories to be told in the winter when the snakes were hibernating so they wouldn’t be insulted and come out and pester the storytellers and their listeners. That was the reason for telling the traditional stories in the evenings during winter. When I was really young as a preschooler, I remember hearing some of the older people in the extended family gatherings talking about the Br’er Rabbit stories they had heard some other people telling and saying they shouldn’t be telling those stories now unless they want the snakes to come out. At that age I had no idea why such a statement was being made, and it created such a sense of wonderment in me at the time, but I now understand why the elders said that.

Since one of my grandmothers was white, she never indulged in being a storyteller. Ironically, she was the one descended from Pocahontas. Pocahontas was one of the Powhatan tribe, so named by yonegas, whites, of the era because her father Powhatan was the chief of the local tribe. I have since learned that today’s descendents of the Powhatan that moved to what is now West Virginia due to the influx of white colonists call themselves Cherokees because the Powhatan were part of the prehistoric Cherokee nation. My other grandmother was raised in a family in which her father never even knew of his Choctaw heritage until after he was an adult. Her grandmother, a full-blood Choctaw Princess, a daughter of a chief, died in childbirth with the youngest of 10 boys. Because of the negative sentiments of the times towards Native Americans, Grandma’s white grandfather thought it would be easier on his boys while growing up if they didn’t know their Choctaw heritage, and if no one else knew their true blood heritage either. The boys were raised as white and learned society’s contempt of the savage heathen Indian that eats dogs. Imagine the shock when the youngest turned 21 and their father gathered his sons around him and told them of their true blood lineage! They so despised being Native American that they never registered on the Dawes rolls when the times came. It was fortunate for them, since they desired not to be known as Indians, that they lived in Texas during the times of Dawes Commission Rolls enrollment. It was also fortunate that no one else knew of their true lineage, or they would have been rounded up, possibly jailed, and forced to register anyway, as happened with the Cherokees, Choctaws, and other tribes in Oklahoma. It was unfortunate for them that they felt as they did about their blood heritage. They lost a valuable part of their cultural heritage because of it.

My Choctaw grandmother never told stories while she worked. Instead she sang or hummed. Though it provided a very cheerful background, it left me with no grandmother storyteller example. With this personal background, I will have to imagine a grandmother storyteller, using as my basis my friends’ descriptions of their grandmother storytellers and the female storytellers that I had in vacation Bible school, summer camps, camp outs, Sunday School, Sabbath School, family worship, etc. My grandmother storyteller in this historical novel will tell stories and also be our guide to the other old storytellers of the past. Let’s listen in on grandmother and some of the old oral storytellers, the people that preserved not only a tradition of old myths, fables, and parables, but also preserved legend and history.

The first volume of this work is the stuff of myth and legend. Except for the sacred texts of the world, the legends are all that are left of our knowledge of the history of those earliest times. Many of the Semitic texts are considered legend though they were written as actual history. Such texts exist within other Jewish literature and in Arab countries, including Egypt, and in Eastern countries, including Pakistan, India, Tibet, and China. Unfortunately, even the Israeli texts, upon which the Christian Bible is based, are considered legend. Many authors have tried and are trying to reconstruct ancient history through literature research and interpretation of archeology. Right now such knowledge and interpretation is in flux, ever changing. One thing I discovered in my research is that our most ancient Cherokee traditions came from times before the Great Flood. That’s why the title of this first volume is called From the First Rising Sun. The second volume of the series may have some fictionalization of events between the time of the last great previous total world destruction (the Great Flood) and the start of now known written family history. It may be noted here that there has been a great destruction and start of a new world since the Great Flood. It was by fire, but it was not a total destruction. It did, however, cause civilization to have to start again from scratch. The third section of the book covers history of family members throughout the ages down to the present. Let’s hear what Grandmother Storyteller has to say about it all.

The author,

Charla Jean Morris-Gentry

Chapter One

Grandmother, Tell Us a Story

Cherokee Grandmother was always busy, but she was also willing to tell a story at almost any time. We couldn’t and wouldn’t interrupt her when she prepared for her day, when she had her personal devotions and prayers, and afterwards when she danced for life and then went to water. Though she was Christian, she still maintained the morning dance, the remnants of the old morning sun dance in which her ancestors thanked the sun for life. Instead of thanking the sun, she now thanked the Creator for the sun and the life that it gives. She thanked Him for the breath we have that gives us life and a clear mind and the ability to work, for the food and water He provides, for her children and grandchildren. In the old times, this morning dance was believed to give long life.

In actuality, this Dance for life was started way back in the Garden of Eden as part of their morning worship as celebration and thankfulness to the Creator for the coming of the light of day. When this dance was transferred to sun worshipping ways no one knows for sure. Those who maintained this dance and old Cherokee breathing rituals lived to be nearly 130, and sometimes 140, and were vibrant and healthy even in old age. Going to water was the daily ritual cleansing that had been established by the Creator and taught to First Man and First Woman in the Garden of Eden.

Breakfast was over and we had finished our morning