Cherokee Quotes

Give me strength, not to be better than my enemies, but to defeat my greatest enemy, the doubts within myself. Give me strength for a straight back and clear eyes, so when life fades, as the setting sun, my spirit may come to you without shame.

You make me feel like I have wings when you touch me.

May you live long enough to know why you were born.” —CHEROKEE BIRTH BLESSING

May the warm winds of heaven blow softly upon your house. May the Great Spirit bless all who enter there. May your mocassins make happy tracks in many snows, and may the rainbow always touch your shoulder.

As much as his heart remained rooted here, what lay beyond his country, beyond his nation, called to him like a cord buried deep within, pulling taut, drawing him away.

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.

A Native American tale where the Cherokee tells his grandson there’s a battle between two wolves in all of us. One is evil, the other good. The boy asks him, Which wolf wins? The Cherokee tells him, The one you feed.

A significant number of people believe tribal people still live and dress as they did 300 years ago. During my tenure as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, national news agencies requesting interviews sometimes asked if they could film a tribal dance or if I would wear traditional tribal clothing for the interview. I doubt they asked the president of the United States to dress like a pilgrim for an interview.

Now the ash of their aspirations lay bitter on his tongue. He was certain he would not have done differently, but oh, if only he had known how briefly the taste of the possible would be sweet on his lips.

And as the Cherokee walked farther from his mountains, he began to die.

A woman’s highest calling is to lead a man to his soul, so as to unite him with Source. Her lowest calling is to seduce, separating man from his soul and leave him aimlessly wandering. A man’s highest calling is to protect woman, so she is free to walk the earth unharmed. Man’s lowest calling is to ambush and force his way into the life of a woman.

I was no Cherokee. I was no warrior. I was nobody special. I was just a girl, scared and angry. When I saw myself in Daddy Glen's eyes, I wanted to die. No, I wanted to be already dead, cold and gone. Everything felt hopeless. He looked at me and I was ashamed of myself. It was like sliding down an endless hole, seeing myself at the bottom, dirty, ragged, poor, stupid.

They stood in the pool of lantern light, the house still around them. She placed a hand to calm his still heaving chest, the heat of his body fresh from travel. The coolness of her hand made him start, then he pulled her close. It was more than her body he needed.

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two "wolves" inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?" The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed.

I'm one-half Cherokee, one-half Irish, one-half Turkish, one-half Australian and one-half Korean." "Excuse me, but that's five halves," said Maggie.

It was like staring into the face of a familiar stranger. You know, that person you see in a crowd and swear you know, but you really don't? Now she was me - the familiar stranger. She had my eyes. They were the same hazel color that could never decide whether it wanted to be green or brown, but my eyes had never been that big and round. Or had they? She had my hair - long and straight and almost as dark as my grandma’s had been before hers had begun to turn silver. The stranger had my high cheekbones, long, strong nose, and wide mouth - more features from my grandma and her Cherokee ancestors. But my face had never been that pale. I’d always been olive-ish, much darker skinned than anyone else in my family. But maybe it wasn’t that my skin was suddenly so white ... maybe it just looked pale in comparison to the dark blue outline of the crescent moon that was perfectly positioned in the middle of my forehead. Or maybe it was the horrid fluorescent lighting. I hoped it was the lighting. I stared at the exotic-looking tattoo. Mixed with my strong Cherokee features it seemed to brand me with a mark of wildness ... as if I belonged to ancient times when the world was bigger ... more barbaric. From this day on my life would never be the same. And for a moment — just an instant—I forgot about the horror of not belonging and felt a shocking burst of pleasure, while deep inside of me the blood of my grandmother’s people rejoiced.

A Native American wisdom story tells of an old Cherokee who is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil—he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.

Looking back, one can almost imagine them stalking through the wild with specimen bottles and outsize nets, in determined pursuit of the Ojibwa adverb or the Cherokee pronoun.

A Cherokee elder was teaching his young grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil- he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt and ego. The other is good- he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. This same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too." The boy thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The elder simply replied, "The one you feed.

Praying for the people that hurt you may not change them, but it will change you.

I owned a Ferrari, a Range Rover, a Mercedes 560SL convertible, a Jeep Cherokee and a Nissan 300ZX. I can't remember the intricate decision tree I had to climb in order to determine which one to drive to work on any given day - it probably had something to do with the weather, or which car had more gas in the tank, or upholstery that best matched whatever shirt I happened to throw on that morning.

Given the proper incentive, no mountain, it seems, is too high to climb, no current too swift to swim, if one is a Cherokee.

Cherokee Saying - Love only has one eye - not two.

A big grinning Ozark moon crawled up out of nowhere and seemed to say, “Hi, neighbor! I’ve been looking for you. It gets kind of lonesome out here. Welcome to the land of the Cherokee!

Since this often seems to come up in discussions of the radical style, I'll mention one other gleaning from my voyages. Beware of Identity politics. I'll rephrase that: have nothing to do with identity politics. I remember very well the first time I heard the saying "The Personal Is Political." It began as a sort of reaction to defeats and downturns that followed 1968: a consolation prize, as you might say, for people who had missed that year. I knew in my bones that a truly Bad Idea had entered the discourse. Nor was I wrong. People began to stand up at meetings and orate about how they 'felt', not about what or how they thought, and about who they were rather than what (if anything) they had done or stood for. It became the replication in even less interesting form of the narcissism of the small difference, because each identity group begat its sub-groups and "specificities." This tendency has often been satirised—the overweight caucus of the Cherokee transgender disabled lesbian faction demands a hearing on its needs—but never satirised enough. You have to have seen it really happen. From a way of being radical it very swiftly became a way of being reactionary; the Clarence Thomas hearings demonstrated this to all but the most dense and boring and selfish, but then, it was the dense and boring and selfish who had always seen identity politics as their big chance. Anyway, what you swiftly realise if you peek over the wall of your own immediate neighbourhood or environment, and travel beyond it, is, first, that we have a huge surplus of people who wouldn't change anything about the way they were born, or the group they were born into, but second that "humanity" (and the idea of change) is best represented by those who have the wit not to think, or should I say feel, in this way.

#303. "Don't let yesterday use up too much today."~

A Rock, A River, A Tree Hosts to species long since departed, Mark the mastodon. The dinosaur, who left dry tokens Of their sojourn here On our planet floor, Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages. But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, Come, you may stand upon my Back and face your distant destiny, But seek no haven in my shadow. I will give you no hiding place down here. You, created only a little lower than The angels, have crouched too long in The bruising darkness, Have lain too long Face down in ignorance. Your mouths spelling words Armed for slaughter. The rock cries out today, you may stand on me, But do not hide your face. Across the wall of the world, A river sings a beautiful song, Come rest here by my side. Each of you a bordered country, Delicate and strangely made proud, Yet thrusting perpetually under siege. Your armed struggles for profit Have left collars of waste upon My shore, currents of debris upon my breast. Yet, today I call you to my riverside, If you will study war no more. Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs The Creator gave to me when I And the tree and stone were one. Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow And when you yet knew you still knew nothing. The river sings and sings on. There is a true yearning to respond to The singing river and the wise rock. So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew, The African and Native American, the Sioux, The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek, The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh, The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher, The privileged, the homeless, the teacher. They hear. They all hear The speaking of the tree. Today, the first and last of every tree Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river. Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river. Each of you, descendant of some passed on Traveller, has been paid for. You, who gave me my first name, You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, Then forced on bloody feet, Left me to the employment of other seekers-- Desperate for gain, starving for gold. You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot... You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare Praying for a dream. Here, root yourselves beside me. I am the tree planted by the river, Which will not be moved. I, the rock, I the river, I the tree I am yours--your passages have been paid. Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need For this bright morning dawning for you. History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage, Need not be lived again. Lift up your eyes upon The day breaking for you. Give birth again To the dream. Women, children, men, Take it into the palms of your hands. Mold it into the shape of your most Private need. Sculpt it into The image of your most public self. Lift up your hearts. Each new hour holds new chances For new beginnings. Do not be wedded forever To fear, yoked eternally To brutishness. The horizon leans forward, Offering you space to place new steps of change. Here, on the pulse of this fine day You may have the courage To look up and out upon me, The rock, the river, the tree, your country. No less to Midas than the mendicant. No less to you now than the mastodon then. Here on the pulse of this new day You may have the grace to look up and out And into your sister's eyes, Into your brother's face, your country And say simply Very simply With hope Good morning.

Before you judge a person you have to walk in their moccasins and live in their lodge for a month.

Let's have some precision in language here: terrorism means deadly violence -- for a political and/or economical purpose -- carried out against people and other living things, and is usually conducted by governments against their own citizens (as at Kent State, or in Vietnam, or in Poland, or in most of Latin America right now), or by corporate entities such as J. Paul Getty, Exxon, Mobil Oil, etc etc., against the land and all creatures that depend upon the land for life and livelihood. A bulldozer ripping up a hillside to strip mine for coal is committing terrorism; the damnation of a flowing river followed by the drowning of Cherokee graves, of forest and farmland, is an act of terrorism. Sabotage, on the other hand, means the use of force against inanimate property, such as machinery, which is being used (e.g.) to deprive human beings of their rightful work (as in the case of Ned Ludd and his mates); sabotage (le sabot dropped in a spinning jenny) -- for whatever purpose -- has never meant and has never implied the use of violence against living creatures.

The Cherokee used to fear that taking a photo would make them lose their souls. Over exposure and desensitization is pretty close to losing one's soul. So they were right to quite an extent.

Plantation justice was mean and constant but the world was indiscriminate. Out in the world, the wicked escaped comeuppance and the decent stood in their stead at the whipping tree. Tennessee's disasters were the fruit of indifferent nature, without connection to the crimes of the homesteaders. To how the Cherokee had lived their lives.

Nothing saves the day so much as a good word. And nothing has been misused as often. There is power in a word, whether we read it, speak it or hear it. And we command and are commanded by the word. We scatter, we call forth, and we comfort. Words are tools, weapons, both good and bad medicine-but very beautiful when used lovingly. The word, or ka ne tsv in Cherokee, is power to help heal, or make sick people sicker by negative talk around them. The word gives confidence when it builds rather than destroys. Relationships have been shattered beyond repair by a run-away mouth. Prosperity has been dissolved by talking lack. Until we listen to our own voices and how we talk, we would never guess how we use our words.

I don’t have a whole lot of choice,” said Dr. Anderson, a pediatrician for many poor families in Cherokee County, north of Atlanta. “We’ve decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid.

A family is a place where a body can share the no-account things, can talk of the little matters important only to ourselves, where we can laugh and cry and tell of the day-by-day happenings and then forget them.

From the beginning there were drums, beating out world rhythm—the booming, never-failing tide on the beach; the four seasons, gliding smoothly, one from the other; when the birds come, when they go, the bear hibernating for his winter sleep. Unfathomable the way, yet all in perfect time. Watch the heartbeat in your wrist—a precise pulsing beat of life’s Drum—with loss of timing you are ill. —JIMALEE BURTON (HO-CHEE-NEE), CHEROKEE, 1974

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice. ~Cherokee Proverb

We recall that to the Cherokee, as to other people who have noticed how long it sometimes takes for humans to develop fully, adulthood comes--if it is coming at all--at the age of fifty-two.

The Cherokee Nation took a case against Georgia to the US Supreme Court. With Chief Justice John Marshall writing for the majority, the Court ruled in favor of the Cherokees. Jackson ignored the Supreme Court, however, in effect saying that John Marshall had made his decision and Marshall would have to enforce it if he could, although he, Jackson, had an army while Marshall did not.

There was no particular reason for the Canadian government to remember what had happened to the Cherokee in the 1840s. After all, most governments can't remember the promises that got them elected.

Teleportation is weird. Especially if you’re wearing your neighbor’s skin suit and using his body to get around the old fashioned way—by walking. Why don’t you pick me up in a 1990 black Jeep Cherokee?

One of the most important stories. Back when man first started destroying nature, the animals decided he was a threat. They all vowed to fight back. Each animal had a different way to kill humans. But the plants…they were kind and compassionate. They vowed the opposite—that they’d each find their own way to protect people. So, there’s a plant cure for everything, whatever disease or poison or wound. Some plant has the cure. You just have to know which one!

Okay, just so we're clear," Piper said, "I'll show you where Jason and I entered the maze, but I'm not doing the stereotypical Native American tracker thing. I don't know tracking. I'm not your guide." We all readily agreed, as one does when delivered an ultimatum by a friend with strong opinions and poison darts. "Also," she continued, "if any of you find the need for spiritual guidance on this quest, I am not here to provide that service. I'm not going to dispense bits of ancient Cherokee wisdom." "Very well," I aid. "Though as a former prophecy god, I enjoy bits of spiritual wisdom." "Then you'll have to ask the satyr," Piper said. Grover cleared his throat. "Um, recycling is good karma?" "There you go," Piper said.

Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis in history, I prefer to try to tell the story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the Constitution from the standpoint of the slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott’s army, of the rise of industrialism as seen by the young women in the Lowell textile mills, of the Spanish-American war as seen by the Cubans, the conquest of the Philippines as seen by black soldiers on Luzon, the Gilded Age as seen by southern farmers, the First World War as seen by socialists, the Second World War as seen by pacifists, the New Deal as seen by blacks in Harlem, the postwar American empire as seen by peons in Latin America. And so on, to the limited extent that any one person, however he or she strains, can “see” history from the standpoint of others.

No one noticed Witch Baby as she went back inside the cottage, into the room she and Cherokee shared. Cherokee's side of the room was filled with feathers, crystals, butterfly wings, rocks, shells and dried flowers. there was a small tepee that Coyote had helped Cherokee make. The walls on Witch Baby's side of the room were covered with newspaper clippings - nuclear accidents, violence, poverty and disease. Every night, before she went to bed, Witch Baby cut out three articles or pictures with a pair of toenail scissors and taped them to the wall. they make Cherokee cry. "Why do you want to have those up there?" Weetzie asked. "You'll both have nightmares.

Our home was in a beautiful valley far back in the rugged Ozarks. The country was new and sparsely settled. The land we lived on was Cherokee land, allotted to my mother because of the Cherokee blood that flowed in her veins. It lay in a strip from the foothills of the mountains to the banks of the Illinois River in northeastern Oklahoma.

WILSON RAWLS was born on a small farm in the Oklahoma Ozarks. He spent his youth in the heart of the Cherokee nation, prowling the hills and river bottoms with his only companion, an old bluetick hound. Rawls’s first writing was done with his fingers in the dust of the country roads and in the sands along the river, and his earliest stories were told to his dog. Not until Rawls’s family moved to Muskogee and he could attend high school did he encounter books. Where the Red Fern Grows has become a modern classic and has been made into a widely acclaimed motion picture.

The Cherokee lives as a natural part of his environment and strives to complement it, not subdue or dominate it. It’s an Indian philosophy that is playing an increasing role in everyone’s life now that we realize that natural resources are limited and imbalance between man’s technology and nature is perilously close to disaster. —HUEY P. LONG, CHEROKEE

the medicine wheel is inside of you it not in a pile of stones the medicine wheel is inside the heart and body

Nothing so becomes us as stillness and quiet serenity.

There’s an old Cherokee tale in which a man tells his grandson, “There are two wolves fighting within me. One of them is angry and hateful, the other is generous and compassionate.” When the boy asks, “Which one will win, Grandpa?” the old man answers, “The one I feed.

I will own I was somewhat afraid of them although they were not, as you may imagine, wild Comanches with painted faces and outlandish garb but rather civilized Creeks and Cherokees and Choctaws from Mississippi and Alabama who had owned slaves and fought for the Confederacy and wore store clothes. Neither were they sullen and grave. I thought them on the cheerful side as they nodded and spoke greetings.

Weetzie and My Secret Agent Lover Man and Dirk and Duck and Cherokee and Witch Baby and Slinkster Dog and Go-Go Girl and the puppies Pee Wee, Wee Wee, Teenie Wee, Tiki Tee, and Tee Pee were driving down Hollywood Boulevard on their way to the Tick Tock Tea Room for turkey platters.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life.94 “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil—he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.” –CHEROKEE LEGEND

One day, a young boy went up to his grandfather, who was an old Cherokee chief. ‘Edudi?’ the boy asked. ‘Why are you so sad?’ The old chief bit his lip and rubbed his belly as if his stomach pained him unmercifully. ‘There is a terrible fight inside me, Uhgeeleesee’, the chief said sternly. ‘One that will not let me sleep of give me peace’. ‘A fight Grandfather? I don’t understand. What kind of fight is inside you?’ The old chief knelt in front of the boy to explain. ‘Deep inside my heart, I have two wolves. Each strong enough to devour the other, they are locked in constant war. One is evil through and through. He is revenge, sorrow, regret, rage, greed, arrogance, stupidity, superiority, envy, guilt, lies, ego, false pride, inferiority, self-doubt, suspicion and resentment. The other wolf is everything kind. He is made of peace, blissful tranquillity, wisdom, love and joy, hope and humility, compassion, benevolence, generosity, truth, faith and empathy. They circle each other inside my heart and they fight one another at all times. Day and night. There is no letup. Not even while I slumber’. The boy’s yes widened as he sucked his breath in sharply. ‘How horrible for you’. His grandfather shook his head at these words and tapped the boy’s chest right where his own heart was located. ‘It’s not just horrible for me. This same fight is also going on inside you and every single person who walks this earth with us’. Those words terrified the little boy. ‘So tell me Grandfather, which of the wolves will win this fight?’ The old chief smiled at his grandson and he cupped his young cheek before he answered with one simple truth. ‘Always the one we feed’. Be careful what you feed, child. For the beast will follow you home and live with you until you either make a bed for it to stay, or find the temerity to drive it out.

He retrieved his cigarettes from the glove box, wincing at the gravel. He sat on the front lawn in the shade of a tree and smoked. He should feel bad about this, but tobacco was the foundation of the nation. Smoking tethered you to history itself! It was a patriotic act, or once had been, anyway, like owning slaves or killing the Cherokee.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightening bug and the lightening ~Mark Twain

Diana wept a tear after we made love and said, My Earthly darling, I must bid you farewell… She could have been my wife, But her time, I didn't dare wish to waste.

Cherokee's American, Ned. It don't get more American than that.

So I picked the book up and did my usual 123 test. I don't bother reading the blurb on the back, or the first page - the writer's obviously going to be trying their hardest there, aren't they? It's how they're getting on by page 123 that's the real test. If they're crap at writing or bored with their story then you can bet they won't be making any effort at all by that point.

Jackson became a national hero when in 1814 he fought the Battle of Horseshoe Bend against a thousand Creeks and killed eight hundred of them, with few casualties on his side. His white troops had failed in a frontal attack on the Creeks, but the Cherokees with him, promised governmental friendship if they joined the war, swam the river, came up behind the Creeks, and won the battle for Jackson.

When I read her two books, The House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story and Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, I experienced something like a “happy” shout in church. Before I read these books, the Afro-Euro-Creek characters of Wood Place were still rolling around in my head. I was sure my novel was possible, but I didn’t yet have the nerve to write it. Reading Tiya Miles’s

Hickock whistled and rolled his eyes. "Wow!" he said, and then, summoning his talent for something very like total recall, he began an account of the long ride--the approximately ten thousand miles he and Smith had covered in the past six weeks. He talked for an hour and twenty-five minutes--from two-fifty to four-fifteen--and told, while Nye attempted to list them, of highways and hotels, motels, rivers, towns, and cities, a chorus of entwining names: Apache, El Paso, Corpus Christi, Santillo, San Luis Potosi, Acapulco, San Diego, Dallas, Omaha, Sweetwater, Stillwater, Tenville Junction, Tallahassee, Needles, Miami, Hotel Nuevo Waldorf, Somerset Hotel, Hotel Simone, Arrowhead Motel, Cherokee Motel, and many, many more. He gave them the name of the man in Mexico to whom he'd sold his own 1940 Chevrolet, and confessed that he had stolen a newer model in Iowa.

In the 1830s, the forced removal of Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles from the fertile lands of the southeastern United States, under the direction of President Andrew Jackson, amassed even more land for cotton cultivation and expansion of the wealth of white people. As Native Americans made the involuntary treks to what would become Indian Country or Oklahoma, white Americans dislocated approximately one million African Americans through the domestic slave trade, moving them from the Upper South to the Lower South and westward, destroying families, and severing community ties in order to create plantations and cultivate cotton.

We have taken many paths we would not have chosen, and we have done many jobs we did not want to do. We have carried burdens we did not want to carry and dealt with impossible people we did not like. It is strange that the road we did not want to take is the one that brought us more quickly to the place we wanted to be. At times, the waywas hostile, but when we needed a hand there was one. When we needed courage, it was there. What we call problems and unjust circumstances have away of teaching us integrity and how to be peaceful. It makes us wonder how many other rewards we have missed because we resisted something that looked like too much responsibility.

Well, I see black and white and red and yellow, even green—getting together. And their weapons are shining clean—but I'm not talking about swords, knives, and guns. I'm talking about the power of God and the new rising sun.

The soul of man, the justice, the mercy that is the heart’s heart in all men, from Maine to Georgia, does abhor this business . . . a crime is projected that confounds our understandings by its magnitude, a crime that really deprives us as well as the Cherokees of a country for how could we call the conspiracy that should crush these poor Indians our government, or the land that was cursed by their parting and dying imprecations our country any more? You, sir, will bring down that renowned chair in which you sit into infamy if your seal is set to this instrument of perfidy; and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world.

At the next Goat Guys show, the band came on stage with their wings, their haunches, their horns. The audience swooned at their feet. Cherokee spun and spun until she was dizzy, until she was not sure anymore if she or the stage was in motion. Afterwards two girls in lingerie and over-the-knee leather boots offered a joint to Raphael and Angel Juan. All four of them were smoking backstage when Cherokee and Witch Baby came through the door. Witch Baby went and wriggled onto Angel Juan's lap. He was wearing the horns and massaging his temples. His face looked constricted with pain until he inhaled the smoke from the joint. "Are you okay?" Witch Baby asked. "My head's killing me.

Four wonderful books on early Creek and Cherokee histories are Michael Green’s The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis; Claudio Saunt’s A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733–1816; Theda Purdue’s Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540–1866; and Angela Pulley Hudson’s Creek Paths and Federal Roads: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves and the Making of the American South.

During the long healing process, I fell back on my Cherokee ways and adopted what our elders call "a Cherokee approach" to life. They say it is "being of good mind." That means one has to think positively, to take what is handed out and turn it into a better path.

Disabled Cherokee scholar Qwo-Li Driskill has remarked that in precontact Cherokee, there are many words for people with different kinds of bodies, illnesses, and what would be seen as impairments; none of those words are negative or view those sick or disabled people as defective or not as good as normatively bodied people.9 With the arrival of white settler colonialism, things changed, and not in a good way. For many sick and disabled Black, Indigenous, and brown people under transatlantic enslavement, colonial invasion, and forced labor, there was no such thing as state-funded care. Instead, if we were too sick or disabled to work, we were often killed, sold, or left to die, because we were not making factory or plantation owners money. Sick, disabled, Mad, Deaf, and neurodivergent people’s care and treatment varied according to our race, class, gender, and location, but for the most part, at best, we were able to evade capture and find ways of caring for ourselves or being cared for by our families, nations, or communities—from our Black and brown communities to disabled communities.

All right," I said, waving the cup away and dabbing moisture very carefully from my lips. "I'm fine." I breathed shallowly, feeling my heart begin to slow down. "Well. So. At least now I know why you've been coming back from the Cherokee villages in such a state of-- of--" I felt an unhinged giggle rising, and bent over, moaning as I stifled it. "Oh, Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. And here I thought it was thoughts of me, driving you mad with lust." He snorted then himself, though mildly. He put down the cup, rose, and turned back the coverlet. Then he looked at me, and his eyes were clear, unguarded. "Claire," he said, quite gently, "it was you. It's always been you, and it always will be. Get into bed, and put the candle out. As soon as I've fastened the shutters, smoored the hearth, and barred the door, I'll come and keep ye warm.

Pleme Cherokee više ništa nije posjedovalo. Ali nisu se ukrcali u kola, i zato su nešto uspjeli sačuvati. To se ne može ni vidjeti, ni nositi, ni jesti, ali nešto su sačuvali. Nisu se vozili. Nisu jahali. Hodali su. Vladini vojnici su jahali ispred njih, pokraj njih, iza njih. Muškarci plemena Cherokee su hodali i gledali ravno pred sebe i nisu gledali ni u zemlju, ni u vojnike. Njihove žene i djeca slijedili su ih i nisu gledali vojnike. Za njima su tandrkala prazna kola koja nisu služila ničemu. Kola nisu mogla ukrasti dušu plemena Cherokee. Zemlja im je bila ukradena, njihova domovina; ali pleme Cherokee nije dopustilo da im kola ukradu dušu. Dok su prolazili kroz naselja bijelog čovjeka, ljudi su stajali uz rub puta i gledali ih. U početku su se smijali. Kako su Cherokee glupi, hodaju pješke, a prazna kola tandrču iza njih. Cherokee nisu okrenuli glave na njihov smijeh, i uskoro je smijeh prestao. Nakon nekog vremena počeli su umirati. Njihova duša nije umrla, niti je izgubila snagu. Umirala su djeca, starci i bolesni. U početku su im vojnici dopuštali da se zaustave sahraniti mrtve. Ali onda ih je sve više i više umiralo - na stotine, na tisuće. Više od jedne trećine plemena Cherokee pomrlo je za vrijeme marŠa. Onda su im vojnici rekli da mrtve smiju sahranjivati svaki treći dan. Jer vojnicima se žurilo, htjeli su što prije obaviti tu stvar sa plemenom Cherokee. Vojnici su rekli da mrtve mogu natovariti u kola; ali Cherokee su ih odbili staviti u kola bijelog čovjeka. Hodali su i nosili svoje mrtve. Dječak je nosio svoju mrtvu sestricu i noću spavao na zemlji pokraj nje. Ujutro bi je ponovo uzeo u naručje i hodao dalje. Muž je nosio svoju mrtvu ženu. Sinje nosio svoju mrtvu majku, svog oca. Majka je nosila svoju mrtvu bebu. Nosili su ih u naručju. I hodali. I nisu okretali glave; nisu gledali ni vojnike, ni ljude koji su stajali uz rub ceste i promatrali kolonu kako prolazi. Neki od tih ljudi su plakali. Ali Cherokee nisu plakali. Nisu pokazivali svoj plač. Nisu htjeli bijelom čovjeku pokazati svoju dušu; kao što se nisu htjeli ni vozili u kolima. Taj je marš nazvan „Marš suza“. Ne zato što su Cherokee plakali; jer oni nisu plakali. Ljudi su taj marš nazvali Marš suza jer to zvuči romantično i opisuje tugu onih koji su stajali uz rub ceste i promatrali kolonu. Marš smrti ne zvuči romantično. Ne može se pisati poezija o ukočenoj mrtvoj bebi u rukama svoje majke, o otvorenim bebinim očima koje bulje u plavo nebo, dok majka hoda. Ne može se pjevati pjesma o ocu koji na zemlju polaže teret mrtvog tijela svoje žene da bi ležao pokraj njega preko noći i ustao i nosio ga dalje sljedećeg jutra... oca koji kaže svom najstarijem sinu da ponese mrtvo tijelo svog najmlađeg brata. I da ne gleda... ne govori... ne plače... da se ne sjeća planina. To ne bi bila lijepa pjesma. Zato taj marš zovu "Marš suza".

A small boy searches for a way to explain life with all its complexities. His Cherokee grandfather smiles and explains life in all its simplicities. Many years later, another small boy talks about the simple things of life, while his father describes how complex life is today. Inside, the father feels the not-so-distant words of his grandfather speaking softly: You are not just alive, you are part of all life itself. You are kin to all things, and everything has life . . . and memory. Things have a way of coming full circle—as a way of completing the Circle, and creating opportunities for life, love, growth, feeling, and learning.

500,000 halos outshined the mud and history. We washed and drank in God's tears of joy, And for once…and for everyone…the truth was not a mystery. Love called to all…music is magic. As we passed over and beyond the walls of Nay, Hand in hand as we lived and made real the dreams of peaceful men— We came together…danced with the pearls of rainy weather, Riding the waves of music and space…music is magic…magic is life… Love as never loved before… Harmony to son and daughter…man and wife…

There’s an old Cherokee legend about two wolves at war. It’s good food for thought on the topic of self-control. One night a grandfather was teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.” The boy paused to think for a moment before looking up at his grandfather. “Which wolf will win?” He asked. The wise man simply replied, “The one that you feed.”  Hearing that story, I’m reminded of the scripture that says, And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. – Galatians 5:24

My first lessons were to respect all life, protect Mother Earth, and nurture the plants and herbs. I look whenever I go home to the Reservation to see if comfrey, fennel, catnip, rosemary, and many of the plants that we care for are still growing in the backyard. Sure enough, they are always there, reminding me that life does go on.

Shortly after the American Revolution, Craig decided to start a new life in a freer place. Joining his brother Lewis, he led an exodus of six hundred people to what is present-day Kentucky. The group called itself “the Travelling Church.” The Kentucky they arrived in was a place of transition, new and unknown. To many, even the state’s name was a mystery. The Cherokee said it meant “dark and bloody ground,” but the Iroquois’s interpretation of Kanta-ke translated to “meadow-land.” The Wyandote interpreted it as “the land of tomorrow,” while the Shawnee claimed it meant “at the head of the river.” Others said it was simply a name invented by white people. The frontiersmen who had lived

An old Cherokee chief is teaching his grandson about life: “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. “One is evil—he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, self-pity, arrogance, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, self-doubt, and ego. “The other is good—he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, truth, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, compassion and faith. “This same fight is going on inside you—and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old chief simply replied, “The one you feed.

As for the Cherokees, they faced a set of laws passed by Georgia: their lands were taken, their government abolished, all meetings prohibited. Cherokees advising others not to migrate were to be imprisoned. Cherokees could not testify in court against any white. Cherokees could not dig for the gold recently discovered on their land. A delegation of them, protesting to the federal government, received this reply from Jackson’s new Secretary of War, Eaton: “If you will go to the setting sun there you will be happy; there you can remain in peace and quietness; so long as the waters run and the oaks grow that country shall be guaranteed to you and no white man shall be permitted to settle near you.

Nobody ever listens. People will tell you whatever they want to hear themselves say. Nobody cares if you feel better, just so long as they do.

Though Wilder blamed her family’s departure from Kansas on “blasted politicians” ordering white squatters to vacate Osage lands, no such edict was issued over Rutland Township during the Ingallses’ tenure there. Quite the reverse is true: only white intruders in what was known as the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma were removed to make way for the displaced Osages arriving from Kansas. (Wilder mistakenly believed that her family’s cabin was located forty—rather than the actual fourteen—miles from Independence, an error that placed the fictional Ingalls family in the area affected by the removal order.) Rather, Charles Ingalls’s decision to abandon his claim was almost certainly financial, for Gustaf Gustafson did indeed default on his mortgage. The exception: Unlike their fictional counterparts, the historical Ingalls family’s decision to leave Wisconsin and settle in Kansas was not a straightforward one. Instead it was the eventual result of a series of land transactions that began in the spring of 1868, when Charles Ingalls sold his Wisconsin property to Gustaf Gustafson and shortly thereafter purchased 80 acres in Chariton County, Missouri, sight unseen. No one has been able to pinpoint with any certainty when (or even whether) the Ingalls family actually resided on that land; a scanty paper trail makes it appear that they actually zigzagged from Kansas to Missouri and back again between May of 1868 and February of 1870. What is certain is that by late February of 1870 Charles Ingalls had returned the title to his Chariton County acreage to the Missouri land dealer, and so for simplicity’s sake I have chosen to follow Laura Ingalls Wilder’s lead, contradicting history by streamlining events to more closely mirror the opening chapter of Little House on the Prairie, and setting this novel in 1870, a year in which the Ingalls family’s presence in Kansas is firmly documented.

I saw him with her last week, at a coffeehouse near my apartment. They were holding hands. She’s captivated him.” “The Lakota Captive.” Leta made a line in the air with her hand. “I can see it now, the wily, brave Lakota warrior with the brazen white woman pioneer. She carries him off into the sunset over her shoulder…” Cecily whacked her with a strand of grass she’d pulled. “You write history your way, I’ll write it my way,” Leta said wickedly. “Native Americans are stoic and unemotional,” Cecily reminded her. “All the books say so.” “We never read many books in the old days, so we didn’t know that,” came the dry explanation. She shook her head. “What a sad stereotype so many make of us-a bloodthirsty ignorant people who never smile because they’re too busy torturing people over hot fires.” “Wrong tribe,” Cecily corrected. She frowned thoughtfully. “That was the northeastern native people.” “Who’s the Native American here, you or me?” Cecily shrugged. “I’m German-American.” She brightened. “But I had a grandmother who dated a Cherokee man once. Does that count?” Leta hugged her warmly. “You’re my adopted daughter. You’re Lakota, even if you haven’t got my blood.

An old Cherokee man was teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he told the boy. “It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil — he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” After a few moments to make sure he had the boy’s undivided attention, he continued. “The other wolf is good — he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside of you, boy, and inside of every other person, too.” The grandson thought about this for a few minutes before replying. “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee man simply said, “The one you feed, boy. The one you feed…

warfare would be waged west of the Mississippi as it had been earlier against the Abenakis, Cherokees, Shawnees, Muskogees, and even Christian Indians. In the Civil War, these methods played a prominent role on both sides. Confederate regular forces, Confederate guerrillas such as William Quantrill, and General Sherman for the Union all engaged in waging total war against civilians. The pattern would continue in US military interventions overseas, from the Philippines and Cuba to Central America, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The cumulative effect goes beyond simply the habitual use of military means and becomes the very basis for US American identity. The Indian-fighting frontiersmen and the “valiant” settlers in their circled covered wagons are the iconic images of that identity. The continued popularity of, and respect for, the genocidal sociopath Andrew Jackson is another indicator. Actual men such as Robert Rogers, Daniel Boone, John Sevier, and David Crockett, as well as fictitious ones created by James Fenimore Cooper and other best-selling writers, call to mind D. H. Lawrence’s “myth of the essential white American”—that the “essential American soul” is a killer.

All right," I said, waving the cup away and dabbing moisture very carefully from my lips. "I'm fine." I breathed shallowly, feeling my heart begin to slow down. "Well. So. At least now I know why you've been coming back from the Cherokee villages in such a state of-- off--" I felt an unhinged giggle rising, and bent over, moaning as I stifled it. "Oh, Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. And here I thought it was thoughts of me, driving you mad with lust." He snorted then himself, though mildly. He put down the cup, rose, and turned back the coverlet. Then he looked at me, and his eyes were clear, unguarded. "Claire," he said, quite gently, "it was you. It's always been you, and it always will be. Get into bed, and put the candle out. As soon as I've fastened the shutters, smoored the hearth, and barred the door, I'll come and keep ye warm.

May I whisper in your ear from my heart so you'll clearly hear. There are people so dear… They're like children… Naked in a cold world… Beautiful children In an old world. May I take you away from the evils of today to the dreams of tomorrow? You know that Heaven has no sorrow. We know that Heaven has no tomorrow. Hear the sound of the magic drums… Hearts are beating for the Sun, Sending Evil on the run. Now watch the wind…

Across history, racist power has produced racist ideas about the racialized ethnic groups in its colonial sphere and ranked them—across the globe and within their own nations. The history of the United States offers a parade of intra-racial ethnic power relationships: Anglo-Saxons discriminating against Irish Catholics and Jews; Cuban immigrants being privileged over Mexican immigrants; the model-minority construction that includes East Asians and excludes Muslims from South Asia. It’s a history that began with early European colonizers referring to the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole as the “Five Civilized Tribes” of Native Americans, as compared to other “wild” tribes. This ranking of racialized ethnic groups within the ranking of the races creates a racial-ethnic hierarchy, a ladder of ethnic racism within the larger schema of racism.

On October 1, 1838, the first detachment set out in what was to be known as the Trail of Tears. As they moved westward, they began to die—of sickness, of drought, of the heat, of exposure. There were 645 wagons, and people marching alongside. Survivors, years later, told of halting at the edge of the Mississippi in the middle of winter, the river running full of ice, “hundreds of sick and dying penned up in wagons or stretched upon the ground.” Grant Foreman, the leading authority on Indian removal, estimates that during confinement in the stockade or on the march westward four thousand Cherokees died. In December 1838, President Van Buren spoke to Congress: It affords sincere pleasure to apprise the Congress of the entire removal of the Cherokee Nation of Indians to their new homes west of the Mississippi. The measures authorized by Congress at its last session have had the happiest effects.

The rise of the western crews may have shocked eastern fans, but it delighted newspaper editors across the country in the 1930s. The story fit in with a larger sports narrative that had fueled newspaper and newsreel sales since the rivalry between two boxers—a poor, part-Cherokee Coloradoan named Jack Dempsey and an easterner and ex-Marine named Gene Tunney—had riveted the nation’s attention in the 1920s. The East versus West rivalry carried over to football with the annual East-West Shrine Game and added interest every January to the Rose Bowl—then the nearest thing to a national collegiate football championship. And it was about to have additional life breathed into it when an oddly put together but spirited, rough-and-tumble racehorse named Seabiscuit would appear on the western horizon to challenge and defeat the racing establishment’s darling, the king of the eastern tracks, War Admiral.

One measure decreed that when ships docked at Charleston, any free black sailors on board must be jailed so they could not carry messages to black people onshore. When a Supreme Court justice found the imprisonments unconstitutional, South Carolina openly defied the ruling, saying that stopping “insubordination” was “paramount” to “all laws” and “all constitutions.” Baffled by this early example of a state nullifying federal law, national officials did nothing.

From the middle of a tomb whose lights burn only for survival…our tired bodies finally understand and obey our beating hearts. Meet me in the country, Meet me in the country, The city's breath is getting way too evil to breathe. Meet us in the country, Leave the pigs and rats in the city— Under the gypsy sun, we all will clearly reach the grace of living—…to give and receive with love and ease. We'll dance to the drums of the open life… love is the rhythm of man and wife… faith in the beat for everyone. God breathes music…through the life of the Gypsy Sun…

Look up at the stars, and we are bombarded by light generated on the day the last victim at Pingfang died, the day the last train arrived at Auschwitz, the day the last Cherokee walked out of Georgia. And we know that the inhabitants of those distant worlds, if they are watching, will see those moments, in time, as they stream from here to there at the speed of light. It is not possible to capture all of those photons, to erase all of those images. They are our permanent record, the testimony of our existence, the story that we tell the future. Every moment, as we walk on this earth, we are watched and judged by the eyes of the universe. For far too long, historians, and all of us, have acted as exploiters of the dead. But the past is not dead. It is with us. Everywhere we walk, we are bombarded by fields of Bohm-Kirino particles that will let us see the past like looking through a window. The agony of the dead is with us, and we hear their screams and walk among their ghosts. We cannot avert our eyes or plug up our ears. We must bear witness and speak for those who cannot speak. We have only one chance to get it right.

When Cherokee and Raphael got back to the canyon house, they set up the tepee on the grass and crept inside it. They lay on their backs, not touching, looking at the leaf shadows flickering on their canvas, and trying to identify the flowers they smelled in the warm air. "Honeysuckle." "Orange blossom." "Rose." "The Sea." "The Sea! That doesn't count!" "I smell it like it's growing in the yard." They giggled the way they used to when they were very young. Then they were quiet. Raphael sat up and took Cherokee's feet in her hands. "Do they still hurt?" he asked, stroking them tenderly. He moved his hands up over her whole body, as if he were painting her, bringing color into her white skin. As if he were playing her-his guitar. And all the hurt seemed to float out of her like music. They woke in the morning curled together. "Remember how when we were really little we used to have the same dreams?" Cherokee whispered. "It was like going on trips together." "It stopped when we started making love." "I know." "But last night..." "Orchards of hawks and apricots," Raphael said, remembering. "Sheer pink-and-gold cliffs." "The sky's wings." "The night beasts run beside us, not afraid. Dream horses carry us..." "To the sea," they said together...

Your father doesn't like me," Charley said to Wesley later when Wesley had gotten them away from the crowd. "Father doesn't seem to like anyone," Wesley said. "Don't let it worry you." "But you brought me to his house. I don't like to be in the home of someone who doesn't like me." "But my brother Skylar claims it is his home, and I believe that Skylar does like you," Wesley said. "He's Indian like you." "Yes. We are both Cherokees. What is Skylar's clan?" "I believe I've heard him say that it's Wolf." "Then we are related. I'm Wolf clan." "That's amazing, Charley. So you and my brother are related. Does that make us related too?" "I don't think so, Wesley, because the relationship is through our mothers." "Well, that's too bad. I would like to be your brother.

She nearly slipped on an icy rock, but he caught her, his shoepacks sure on the frozen ground. He led her up a shaded path to a limestone wall, where they squeezed through an opening like a loophole. On the other side, the earth fell away, and it seemed they stepped into open sky. She gave a little gasp, not of fear, but of awe. He turned to take her in, pressing his back against the cold cliff and drawing her in front of him. She looked down and found the toes of her boots in midair with only her heels on the ledge. But he had one hard arm around her, grounding her. His breath was warm against her cold cheek. “I wanted to show you Cherokee territory, not just tell you about it.” She followed the sweep of his arm south, his finger pointing to distant snow-dusted mountains and a wide opal river. Small puffs of smoke revealed few campfires or cabins. The land lay before them like a disheveled white coverlet, uninhabited and without end, broken by more mountains and wending waterways. The unspoiled beauty of it took her breath. For a moment he relaxed his hold on her. With a cry, she reached for him again, fearing she might fall into nothingness. “Careful,” he murmured, steadying her. “Trust me.” She shut her eyes tight as his arms settled around her, anchoring her to the side of the cliff. Frightened as she was, she felt a tingling from her bare head to her feet. ’Twas altogether bewildering and frightening . . . yet pleasing. Gingerly, as if doing a slow dance, he led her off the ledge onto safe ground, where he released her and turned toward the stallion grazing on a tuft of grass. His smile was tight. “We should return—soon, before your father thinks I took you captive.” Reluctantly she walked behind him, framing every part of him in her mind in those few, unguarded moments before he mounted.

I'm traveling a speed unknown to man and I carry love for all in the mirror of my hand. I say love for all…don't try to run away... look at the mirrors of your heart. Face the truth today— I am what I am, thank God. Some people don't understand, Help them, God— I say find yourself first, and then your tool. I say find yourself first, don't you be no fool. Here comes a woman, sweat all down her back. For birth or for pleasure, she's on the right track… But for being free, she ain't supposed to plea. And don't rely on no man to try and understand. I say find yourself first and then your talent. Work hard in your mind for it to come alive. And then prove to the man that you're as strong as him. 'Cause in the eyes of God… you're both children to him… You are what you are, thank God. You gonna shine like a star with the help of God— But we find ourselves first and then our tool… Find yourself, don't be no fool.

SHIELD ~uwe 24 At times an idea hits us with the terrific force of a high-flying jet re-entering our atmosphere. It takes hold of us and shakes us with the same sound force and itisveryoften just asstarding.Asoftpedaling thought comes to mind and we acknowledge it only briefly, but it comes back again and again, until we stop to think about it. It pays to listen. All good things do not come with mind-smashing sound effects. Some of the best of life comes on soft shoes and barely brushes us. If we are alert, we may savor it for a lifetime. If we are crusty and hard to deal with, a splendid idea may go right by us and light on someone more sensitive. I have heard your words-they have entered one ear and shall not escape the other... SHARITARISH D`i`e 25 ust when we think nothing is working there is a glimmer of light. If we could believe in our hearts that what looks impossible can work out, we could bear more easily with hardships. Living is like theweather.

Paint in several colors was squeezed out of tubes and mixed and applied to woven fabric stretched on a wooden frame so artfully we say we see a woman hanging out a sheet rather than oil on canvas. Ana Teresa Fernandez’s image on that canvas is six feet tall, five feet wide, the figure almost life-size. Though it is untitled, the series it’s in has a title: Telaraña. Spiderweb. The spiderweb of gender and history in which the painted woman is caught; the spiderweb of her own power that she is weaving in this painting dominated by a sheet that was woven. Woven now by a machine, but before the industrial revolution by women whose spinning and weaving linked them to spiders and made spiders feminine in the old stories. In this part of the world, in the creation stories of the Hopi, Pueblo, Navajo, Choctaw, and Cherokee peoples, Spider Grandmother is the principal creator of the universe. Ancient Greek stories included an unfortunate spinning woman who was famously turned into a spider as well as the more powerful Greek fates, who spun, wove, and cut each person’s lifeline, who ensured that those lives would be linear narratives that end. Spiderwebs are images of the nonlinear, of the many directions in which something might go, the many sources for it; of the grandmothers as well as the strings of begats. There’s a German painting from the nineteenth century of women processing the flax from which linen is made. They wear wooden shoes, dark dresses, demure white caps, and stand at various distances from a wall, where the hanks of raw material are being wound up as thread. From each of them, a single thread extends across the room, as though they were spiders, as though it came right out of their bellies. Or as though they were tethered to the wall by the fine, slim threads that are invisible in other kinds of light. They are spinning, they are caught in the web. To spin the web and not be caught in it, to create the world, to create your own life, to rule your fate, to name the grandmothers as well as the fathers, to draw nets and not just straight lines, to be a maker as well as a cleaner, to be able to sing and not be silenced, to take down the veil and appear: all these are the banners on the laundry line I hang out.

A striking example from the history of writing is the origin of the syllabary devised in Arkansas around 1820 by a Cherokee Indian named Sequoyah, for writing the Cherokee language. Sequoyah observed that white people made marks on paper, and that they derived great advantage by using those marks to record and repeat lengthy speeches. However, the detailed operations of those marks remained a mystery to him, since (like most Cherokees before 1820) Sequoyah was illiterate and could neither speak nor read English. Because he was a blacksmith, Sequoyah began by devising an accounting system to help him keep track of his customers’ debts. He drew a picture of each customer; then he drew circles and lines of various sizes to represent the amount of money owed. Around 1810, Sequoyah decided to go on to design a system for writing the Cherokee language. He again began by drawing pictures, but gave them up as too complicated and too artistically demanding. He next started to invent separate signs for each word, and again became dissatisfied when he had coined thousands of signs and still needed more. Finally, Sequoyah realized that words were made up of modest numbers of different sound bites that recurred in many different words—what we would call syllables. He initially devised 200 syllabic signs and gradually reduced them to 85, most of them for combinations of one consonant and one vowel. As one source of the signs themselves, Sequoyah practiced copying the letters from an English spelling book given to him by a schoolteacher. About two dozen of his Cherokee syllabic signs were taken directly from those letters, though of course with completely changed meanings, since Sequoyah did not know the English meanings. For example, he chose the shapes D, R, b, h to represent the Cherokee syllables a, e, si, and ni, respectively, while the shape of the numeral 4 was borrowed for the syllable se. He coined other signs by modifying English letters, such as designing the signs , , and to represent the syllables yu, sa, and na, respectively. Still other signs were entirely of his creation, such as , , and for ho, li, and nu, respectively. Sequoyah’s syllabary is widely admired by professional linguists for its good fit to Cherokee sounds, and for the ease with which it can be learned. Within a short time, the Cherokees achieved almost 100 percent literacy in the syllabary, bought a printing press, had Sequoyah’s signs cast as type, and began printing books and newspapers. Cherokee writing remains one of the best-attested examples of a script that arose through idea diffusion. We know that Sequoyah received paper and other writing materials, the idea of a writing system, the idea of using separate marks, and the forms of several dozen marks. Since, however, he could neither read nor write English, he acquired no details or even principles from the existing scripts around him. Surrounded by alphabets he could not understand, he instead independently reinvented a syllabary, unaware that the Minoans of Crete had already invented another syllabary 3,500 years previously.

So what did you and Landon do this afternoon?” Minka asked, her soft voice dragging him back to the present. Angelo looked up to see that Minka had already polished off two fajitas. Damn, the girl could eat. “Landon gave me a tour of the DCO complex. I did some target shooting and blew up a few things. He even let me play with the expensive surveillance toys. I swear, it felt more like a recruiting pitch to get me to work there than anything.” Minka’s eyes flashed green, her full lips curving slightly. Damn, why the hell had he said it like that? Now she probably thought he was going to come work for the DCO. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t, not after just reenlisting for another five years. The army wasn’t the kind of job where you could walk into the boss’s office and say, “I quit.” Thinking it would be a good idea to steer the conversation back to safer ground, he reached for another fajita and asked Minka a question instead. “What do you think you’ll work on next with Ivy and Tanner? You going to practice with the claws for a while or move on to something else?” Angelo felt a little crappy about changing the subject, but if Minka noticed, she didn’t seem to mind. And it wasn’t like he had to fake interest in what she was saying. Anything that involved Minka was important to him. Besides, he didn’t know much about shifters or hybrids, so the whole thing was pretty damn fascinating. “What do you visualize when you see the beast in your mind?” he asked. “Before today, I thought of it as a giant, blurry monster. But after learning that the beast is a cat, that’s how I picture it now.” She smiled. “Not a little house cat, of course. They aren’t scary enough. More like a big cat that roams the mountains.” “Makes sense,” he said. Minka set the other half of her fourth fajita on her plate and gave him a curious look. “Would you mind if I ask you a personal question?” His mouth twitched as he prepared another fajita. He wasn’t used to Minka being so reserved. She usually said whatever was on her mind, regardless of whether it was personal or not. “Go ahead,” he said. “The first time we met, I had claws, fangs, glowing red eyes, and I tried to kill you. Since then, I’ve spent most of the time telling you about an imaginary creature that lives inside my head and makes me act like a monster. How are you so calm about that? Most people would have run away already.” Angelo chuckled. Not exactly the personal question he’d expected, but then again Minka rarely did the expected. “Well, my mom was full-blooded Cherokee, and I grew up around all kinds of Indian folktales and legends. My dad was in the army, and whenever he was deployed, Mom would take my sisters and me back to the reservation where she grew up in Oklahoma. I’d stay up half the night listening to the old men tell stories about shape-shifters, animal spirits, skin-walkers, and trickster spirits.” He grinned. “I’m not saying I necessarily believed in all that stuff back then, but after meeting Ivy, Tanner, and the other shifters at the DCO, it just didn’t faze me that much.” Minka looked at him with wide eyes. “You’re a real American Indian? Like in the movies? With horses and everything?” He laughed again. The expression of wonder on her face was adorable. “First, I’m only half-Indian. My dad is Mexican, so there’s that. And second, Native Americans are almost nothing like you see in the movies. We don’t all live in tepees and ride horses. In fact, I don’t even own a horse.” Minka was a little disappointed about the no-horse thing, but she was fascinated with what it was like growing up on an Indian reservation and being surrounded by all those legends. She immediately asked him to tell her some Indian stories. It had been a long time since he’d thought about them, but to make her happy, he dug through his head and tried to remember every tale he’d heard as a kid.