Robert J. Conley Tells Cherokee Stories

Robert J. Conley, a Cherokee from Oklahoma, is an acclaimed short story writer, novelist, historian and essayist who has won three Spur Awards from Western Writers of America (WWA). He now serves as WWA's vice president. Conley is the Sequoyah Distinguished Professor in Cherokee Studies at Western Carolina University and founding director of the school's Tsalagi Institute. An inductee in the Oklahoma Professional Writers Hall of Fame and a recipient of the Cherokee Honor Society's Medal of Honor, he helped start the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers & Storytellers [www.wordcraficircle.org].

His Spur Awards came in 1988 for Yellow Bird: An Imaginary Autobiography, in 1992 for Nickajack and in 1995 for The Dark Island. His latest books are Cherokee Thoughts Honest & Uncensored (University of Oklahoma Press), A Cherokee Encyclopedia (University of New Mexico Press) and Cherokee Medicine Man: The Life and Work of a Modern-Day Healer (University of Oklahoma Press). Under an agreement with the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Conley also wrote The Cherokee Nation: A History, which the University of New Mexico Press has released in paperback. Conley discussed his work in a recent interview with Wild West Magazine.

What type of writing do you like most?

I would have said fiction, but now I like writing essays too, because you can come up with any topic and just sit down and start, well, not mouthing off...but whatever the writing equivalent of mouthing off is. It's more like writing a novel than it is like writing history, the kind of nonfiction that requires research or getting interviews with other people, or having to wait for other people.

Tell us about A Cherokee Encyclopedia?

I had an idea to write a book about all of the Cherokee chiefs for the three federally recognized tribes--the Cherokee Nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the United Keetoowah (Kituwa) Band. I fancied I would write a biography for each chief. I got into that a ways and realized I wasn't going to be able to fill up a book, because there were a number of early chiefs about whom I could find no information. I had a contract with the University of New Mexico and told [UNMP Director] Luther Wilson the problem, and he agreed I could expand it into an encyclopedia. This allowed me to put in topics like clans, as well as celebrities other than chiefs.

What's a favorite entry in the book?

[Cherokee actor] Clu Gulager. He's a good friend of mine now. I've been a big fan of Clu's since the 1950s when The Tall Man was on television. I was watching an episode of the show, and my daddy said, "You know he is a Cherokee"--so I liked him better then.

How about Cherokee Thoughts?

Those essays were fun to write. I would like to do more of them. I just did a reading from that book today at the little library in the town of Brevard, N.C. I read most of the essay on Indian gambling casinos and a short one called "Ricochet." And I read "Grafters, Sooners and other Crooks." When I wrote that one, my wife, Evelyn, tried to get me to leave it out of the book. She said, "We are going to have to leave the state before that book comes out." Miraculously a job offer came about.

What about Cherokee Medicine Man?

I was just up there visiting with [Cherokee medicine man] John Little Bear one day, and he said, "I want you to write a book about me." It was not anything that I would have ever come up with. When he told me that, I knew I had to do it. I didn't want him to turn me into a field mouse or something. In a way it was terribly frustrating....I had to interview other people. There was a period of time when Little Bear told me, "Somebody doesn't want us to write this book." The implication was that somebody was using medicine to stop it. And it did almost stop it. We would sit and talk for four hours about topics that had nothing to do with the book. And nobody else would talk to me about traditional Cherokee medicine. Finally I called the press, and told them that I would give the advance back. [That didn't happen.]

Was there actually medicine against writing that book?

I suspect that there was. Because that thought came from him, and I think he would not have said so if it wasn't true.

It often seems that anyone who claims Indian blood claims to have descended from Cherokees. Why so?

Because we're the smartest.

Any other reason?

There may be truth in what they say. I wrote an essay about that in Cherokee Thoughts. When the Cherokees took off on the Trail of Tears, every night people ran away; they just faded out to who knows where. They did not all go back to be the Eastern Band. There were 13 contingents on the Trail of Tears. So if someone ran away every night, and that trip took three months, those people had to have gone somewhere, so there probably are a lot of people out there in the general population who may have Cherokee blood and do not know it.

Tell us about the cultural programs.

The Cherokee studies program with which I am working is connected to both the Eastern Band and the Cherokee Nation. The Eastern Band (Western Carolina University) and the Cherokee Nation (Northeastern State University in Tahlequah) have signed a memorandum of understanding to help and promote Cherokee culture and especially the Cherokee language. Both tribes have programs for that at the universities.

How important is a tribal history?

I think it's important. I think every tribe ought to have it done. And ideally they should have someone from within the tribe that can do the job. I don't know if all of them have someone that can do that. The history would really have to begin with the arrival of the Europeans, because nothing was written down before that. Most tribes could begin with some oral traditions and put that down and then move into the actual history.

Some people say oral tradition can't be history. How do you answer that?

It's probably not printable. If you're talking about literature, I'm probably more at home. I would say to people in that area, all literature started that way [orally], otherwise we would not start the study of world literature with Homer or English literature with Beowulf. People are stubborn when it comes to talking about Indians.

To read the full interview with Conley, visit www.historynetcom/magazines/wild_west.

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The Hutchinson Dictionary of the Arts  2004; Lexile Score: 810; 0K, SIRS Renaissance