Based on Cherokee history, oral storytelling, and personal
experience, these stories, taken as a whole, reflect the depth of
Cherokee historical experience and the range of contemporary
Cherokee life. Several stories, including the one from which the
collection takes its name, deal with the spiritual world. In the
title story a man and his family are devastated by the evil powers
of a tsigli, a witch. In other stories "medicine" is used to more
constructive ends. Some of the stories feature human-animal
transformations, the ability to become invisible, and the power to
manipulate events. In the context of the Cherokee world such
stories are not fantasies. They are stories about reality-the
reality known to Cherokees. The collection also includes tales of
Cherokee "outlaws," one of the most intriguing aspects of Cherokee
history to Cherokees and non-Cherokees alike. Set in the days of
Indian Territory, before Oklahoma statehood, these stories provide
a taste of the wild West, seasoned with Cherokee cultural
experience. Still other stories describe modern-day Cherokees
confronting the past and the present and continually struggling to
find a place in the white people's world while maintaining a
Cherokee belief system and way of life. Some Cherokees confront
ignorant whites, others confront ignorant Cherokees, and still
others simply make their own way, dealing with each other, with
outsiders, with their environment, and with their spirituality in
uniquely personal, albeit Cherokee, ways. Clearly, these stories
differ from stories that grow out of a European tradition, for
behind them lie completely different cultural referents; different
notions about interpreting events, time, and language; and a
different view of the purpose and art of storytelling. Their author
speaks with a clear Cherokee Indian voice to show how these
cultural characteristics have survived centuries of abrupt change
and to give readers an understanding of the fullness and humanity
of the Cherokees as a people. As Wilma P. Mankiller, Principal
Chief of the Cherokee Nation, says in her foreword to the stories:
"Much has been written about the Cherokee people. Not enough has
been written by the Cherokee people. The subtle nuances of
language, the memories of tribal life, and the strong sense of the
past and its integration with the present are lost even to the most
gifted non-Cherokee writer. There is a movement among contemporary
Cherokee writers to produce more indigenous literature. Robert
Conley is a leader of that movement." Robert J. Conley is the
author of ten novels in the Real People series, The Witch of
Goingsnake and Other Stories, and Mountain Windsong, all available
in paperback from the University of Oklahoma Press. A three-time
winner of the Spur Award and Oklahoma Writer of the Year in 1999,
Conley was inducted into the Oklahoma Professional Writers Hall of
Fame in 1996. He was named Writer of the Year by the Wordcraft
Circle of Native Writers & Storytellers in 2000 for Cherokee
Dragon.
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