Rose Stremlau, Cherokee Families in the Era of Allotment

This past summer, funded by a Center for the Study of the American South’s summer research grant, I journeyed to Oklahoma City and began researching my dissertation on Cherokee families and allotment. I learned so much both about my topic and acts of God. By acts of God, I mean the twists and turns that even the most thoughtful and organized graduate student could not possibly plan for. An example of an act of God would be two rental cars breaking down. After the first breakdown, I was nearly jumped by a bunch of yahoos while waiting for the wrecker. The second breakdown, however, occurred within sight of the Chickasaw bingo parlor. Were things looking up? Would I win enough money to fund the rest of my dissertation research? If I needed a third sign that God disapproved of my dissertation topic, I got it. I did not win a thing and lost money. I drove into Oklahoma City wondering what I should do to appease the powers that be and end my string of bad luck.

Fortunately, once I arrived, my visit to the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS) was uneventful and productive. Since they spend most of their day assisting patrons who want to prove their great-great-great grandmother was Indian so that they can receive government assistance, the staff there treats dissertating graduate students like V.I.P.s. During my first day at the OHS, I met with their head archivist and oral historian. I explained the question that I wanted to answer in my dissertation – What happened to Cherokee families during allotment, the dismantling of tribal resources and government in preparation for Oklahoma statehood? Both staff members provided suggestions for additional sources. In particular, the head archivist on Indian materials, Bill Welge, took great interest in my topic. He provided me with a list of nearly thirty possible sources for answers to my question. And that was off the top of his head. Amazingly, he showed me a collection of records of Indian competency hearings, proceedings in which Indians tried to prove they were “civilized” enough to control their own affairs and end government wardship, that they had just received and that no scholar has used before. I skimmed through page after page of Cherokee people describing their way of life during the early twentieth century. Bingo! (No pun intended.) Maybe the God of dissertations didn’t hate me after all?

In my grant application, I wrote that I wanted to look at two genealogy collections: the Emmett Starr collection and the James Carsolowey collection. Because I knew I needed to get background on Cherokee families before diving into government records, I began with these genealogies. After a few hours, I put the Starr collection aside. While I will likely return to it later in my research process, Starr’s genealogy charts were so thorough as to be overwhelming to someone who has not yet identified the particular communities and families that she is going to focus her research on.

The James Carsolowey collection proved far more useful. Carsolowey’s collection, intended to pick up where Starr left off, is an unorganized as Starr’s is thorough. Carsolowey’s research is loosely arranged into six volumes of notes that supposedly relate to the title of the volume, but I couldn’t determine a difference among them. While frustrating to work with, the collection provides countless unique insights into Cherokee society at the turn of the century. He must have just written down what the old folks told him happened to whom, when, and why. In one particularly useful section, notations of marriages, births, and club activities are printed alongside a schedule of the Dawes committee’s activities in the Cherokee nation. This collection reminded me that even in what historians agree was a devastating time for the Cherokee people, life went on, in many ways much as it always had gone on before. While I was not able to glean any key themes from Carsolowey’s collection, the material prompted me to ask several new questions, particularly regarding class. For example, I noted the same last names over and over again in marriage and birth announcements. And yet, in lists of town residents, only a few families of many bear these last names? How do I get to the rest of the Cherokees, the majority of the Cherokees, if the genealogies do not include them in as much detail as this more visible group?

After reading through the Carsolowey collection, I spent the remainder of my visit listening to oral histories. Most of the interviews I listened to were conducted in the 1960s and 1970s by OHS staff members with Cherokee elders. While I selected the tapes based on the interviewees age and tribal affiliation and not gender, I found the women’s interviews to be far more useful than the men’s. Most of the men interviewed described their personal accomplishments; clearly, the OHS had interviewed a select group of men who had attained notoriety. Most served Cherokee communities as political or religious leaders, and they described their rise to prominence. It was one Horatio Alger story after another. On the other hand, women spoke of home life. Instead of recounting their rise to personal glory, women talked about growing up, getting married, raising children, and living in their communities. Many of these women had also worked as schoolteachers. They seemed to know everyone’s business and were willing to talk about it. While my favorite interview was one in which a women spent the better part of an hour giving a detailed description of how they utilized the different parts of the pigs that they butchered on their farm (including a fascinating account of the making of head cheese), the rest of the interviews provided a wealth of detail on domestic economy, kinship, and relations with non-Indians.

Several key themes emerged from these interviews. While the Dawes commission struggled to determine who was Cherokee, the Cherokees seemed to have no doubts as to who was and was not one of them based on the way a person behaved and their kin ties. While federal policies favored those who had white fathers, the daughters of mixed-race marriages spent more time talking about their mothers and their maternal relatives suggesting Cherokee kin were more important in their lives. In contrast to historical accounts that suggest the rapid economic dislocation of Cherokee people, several women talked about the continuity of their domestic economies. They describe the division of labor in their marriages as very similar to that of their parents. Finally, while most books on Cherokees discuss the same several prominent men, these women suggest that the real movers and shakers in community life (not necessarily politics or economics) were women. Moreover, only one woman described the accomplishments of her male relations. The rest, however, bragged of the achievements of their female kin. The oral histories turned some of my expectations, based on my secondary readings, on their heads.

As I drove away from Oklahoma City, I reflected on all that I had learned and noted that perhaps I had had such a productive visit to the OHS because God, in fact, approved of my dissertation topic after all. While driving my upgraded luxury rental car with heated seats and a lower back massager, I realized that this trip had opened numerous roads ahead of me. I no longer see one narrow path that I need to take, but I see many, equally interesting ways that this dissertation can develop.

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