Reply #18: The GOOD thing about Oklahoma

[yellerpup]

is that the decendants of the tribes are not ashamed of being Indian or Native American. There are not reservations there and never have been. When I read of your mother's parents both "leaving" I think that it may be possible that they may have left the children with friends or family members while they went off together to try to get something new started. People remarried (sometimes quite informally without papers) because of being widowed. Women died in childbirth more often and their husbands would "remarry" to have someone to help them raise the children left behind so it is not unusual from that time to find a whole raft of step-brothers/sisters by different mothers andn/or fathers just because life was so much more precarious. There were waves of influenza epidemics in the early part of the 20th century and native people were very susceptible to it. I have a letter from one family member who was going off to try to find gold in "the Oregon country" and were trying to get a family member to take their children temporarily while they struck out on this long and dangerous adventure with no guarantees. Oklahoma (even after statehood) was where bank robbers & other criminals would go to hide out because law enforcement (US) did not have a strong presence there. Their world was dangerous and we cannot fully know what challenges they faced. I found one branch of my family whose 15 children were split up and parcelled out to different relatives and/or people who wanted or needed nannies, young farm workers, etc. in three different regions of the country (Maryland, Indiana, Georgia). One of my great grandfathers was "picked up at the end of the Appalachian trail in Georgia" and driven to Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears and no one ever knew who he "belonged" to. People died resisting transportation, people were killed by their own relatives because they went to Indian Territory before the last forced migration on the Trail of Tears. (Elias Boudinot whose real name was Buck Waitie, for instance). If your foster family had false documents made up for your mother, they must have done so to protect her for some reason. It is a sad story, a tragedy to be sure. I feel sad that your mother suffered because of being lost to her blood family. But, you are here and you are loved and you are not alone. We are of the same blood.

The Cherokee response to wado (Thank you) is: "galilega" or "gadugi" which roughly means "Everybody paddles".