Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Still Walking The Trail
Cherokee culture storyteller set to appear in Bentonville.
Gayle Ross grew up in Lewisville, Texas, a northwestern suburb of Dallas. Only a few of its 100,000 people had anything to do with her heritage.
“North Texas isn’t a place surrounded by Cherokee culture by any stretch,” Ross says. “But we knew who we were, who our ancestors were, from a very young age.”
Ross’ grandmother was the youngest daughter of Robert Bruce Ross, the grandson of John Ross, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 to 1866. In 1835, John Ross refused to sign the Treaty of New Echota, which required the Cherokee to leave their homes east of the Mississippi and relocate west. John Ridge, whose widow Sarah Bird Northrup Ridge later lived in Fayetteville, did sign the treaty, which the U.S. government considered binding. And in an exodus that came to be called the Trail of Tears, more than 16,000 Cherokees were forced to migrate to what is now Oklahoma. An estimated 4,000 died along the trail, including Ross’ wife, Quatie.
Armed with the knowledge of her ancestry, Gayle Ross found her calling before she found her Cherokee community.
“When I began telling stories, I knew I wanted to focus on Cherokee stories and native stories — which was an overwhelming part of the reason I started telling stories to begin with,” she remembers. “You can’t do that very long and not come up against the fact you need to be a member of a community, familiar with what Cherokee culture looks like on a dayto-day basis in a Cherokee community.
“I began reconnecting with relatives and family in Tahlequah [Okla.] where my grandmother was born and raised,” Ross goes on. “Because of her, because of who my family is, I found lots of people who shared the same passion for history and culture as I did. It was very important for all of the aspects of Cherokee culture to inform my stories, to root them in Cherokee tradition. You can’t practice a traditional Cherokee art in a vacuum.”
Ross says it’s difficult to describe being Cherokee to someone who isn’t.
“There are lots of things that Cherokees feel unites them in community,” she says, but many of those things would be the same in other cultures. She cites knowing the language — which many Cherokees learn in church — helping those less fortunate through an auction, benefit, gospel sing or “hog fry,” playing stickball and wading in the creek catching crawdads.
“It’s a sense of yourself, a sense of history,” she says. “Every place is connected to a story — and everybody knows those stories.”
As a professional storyteller, Ross says her goal is to convey her people’s history and customs while also illustrating that they live — and how they live — in the contemporary culture alongside nonindigenous people.
Those answers are often sought at the Museum of Native American History in Bentonville, where Ross will appear June 3.
“So many of the people I see come through these doors are searching for their heritage,” says Charlotte Buchanan-Yale, the museum’s director. The first Native American Cultural Symposium and Outdoor Film Series, set for June 2-4, will address that heritage and answer the question most important to Buchanan-Yale: How does a nonindigenous person walk respectfully and honorably in both his culture and that of the indigenous people?
“The people coming are such an honor to host,” she says. “When you have three direct descendants of 19th century legends — Gayle Ross, Joseph Marshall III and Bobby Bridger — it’s overwhelming. As a life-long event producer, this is the most important event I have ever produced.”
“Northwest Arkansas has a long and important history with indigenous America with the relocation of so many Indian nations with roots in southeastern America to ‘Indian Territory’ in Oklahoma in the 19th century,” adds Bobby Bridger, one of the event’s co-creators. “I hope this conference serves as a cultural ‘outreach’ to the indigenous people as well as the non-Indian population of the region to begin to explore common ground together — especially concerning issues such as environmental awareness.”