Indian Stories by Great Grandma

Wampum

As a young child I was blessed to have four living grandmothers, two grandmothers and two great grandmothers. My great grandma Chelnessee Rutledge Owen passed away in 1937 while I was three years old, but grandmas Williamson, Pruitt and Kelly filled my life with stories about what they did as kids in Iowa, Tennessee, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

It is an unfortunate circumstance of youth that a child doesn't know what questions to ask grams, answers so precious to us today.

So they told stories that kids like to hear, about Indians, Civil War, fathers lost in battle, babies who died; storms, tornados, hail, floods, crops burned by drought, the kinds of games they played as children and stories they learned from playmates.

I yearn to have just one more day with each of them, but alas, it can never be. But those beautiful memories from carefree times now remind me most painfully how little time we spent talking to our grandmothers.
In contrast, consider the time we spend today looking for information that they knew about all along.

These stories about Iowa, Illinois, Michigan and the great lakes and the Ohio Valley came from great grandmother, Martha Elizabeth Williamson, who in her own words told me, "I was borned 1864 in Demoin, Ioway." We would set on our front porch while these stories were told. Her daughter, Floy Mabel Beebe Pruitt later repeated the stories with little or no change.

Through the ears of a child I listened with fascination to stories about Indians, some of these stories 5,000 to 10,000 years old, even the tribal elders did not know how old they were.

It was a native tradition to pass down stories to their children, and in that manner keep their culture alive. The old wise men kept records as symbols painted on animal hides, preserved and kept for centuries. Their tribal history was kept alive in that manner.

These legends passed down from earliest times, despite the lack of a traditional written language, other than symbolic characterizations, and the tribes knew what their history was. Some of these stories were traditional stories about history; others were told in prose or rhyme. I was 14 years old when gram Beebe passed away, and I had already written down the stories that she told me.
As an adult I have spent some time gleaning a written historical basis for some of the stories. Some facts tend to support parts of some stories, but the rest all remain unconnected.

Indian stories tend to fall into two categories, legend and history. We assume that ancient stories, those thousands of years old, are legend. But the contemporary, stories of tribal history we must assign basis in fact, a grain of truth to them.

Legend is legend, read or listen to legend and take it as you will, and interpret it as you will. That is part of the fun of reading legends. They assume the status of folklore and part of the ancient social structure of the native societies whense they descended.

GOTO Index of Indian Stories