>>Dr. Nelson: Osiyo again. We're back here in Cherokee country. We're on the banks of
the Illinois at No Head Hollow, and a couple hundred yards away is Highway 10, so you'll
get to at least visually enjoy the background and audibly enjoy the the road noise. But
I'm here now with Sequoyah Guess, who is a member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee
Indians, and he's a renowned storyteller and a kind of a local hero in a lot of ways. He's
a a novelist too, and if you're lucky enough to find a copy of his work, you ought to grab
it and hang onto it. So Sequoyah, welcome. Osiyo.
>>Sequoyah Guess: Osiyo. Wado. Wado.
>>Dr. Nelson: One thing that that we do know you are is a storyteller, and so I'm wondering
if maybe you could tell us a little bit about storytelling in general. One of the questions
that I had was about how maybe your model of storytelling differs from the kind of storytelling
that we'd find in James Mooney's anthropology, his his Myths of the Cherokee. And then maybe
if the mood strikes you, you can go ahead and launch into a story for us if you've got
one on your mind.
>>Sequoyah Guess: Yeah, well now I always tell folks, you know, don't believe everything
you read in books, especially Mooney's book. [Dr. Nelson laughs.] There is so much that's
off in that book, it's not even funny. I mean, a lot of the things--
>>Dr. Nelson: Now, wait a minute. I thought he was supposed to be an expert.
>>Sequoyah Guess: [laughing] Well, a lot of the things that he's written about or he wrote
about he had, you know, he would talk to people about, you know, different things. But a lot
of times well, when you know about the thing that he wrote about, you realize that these
these guys that he was talking to were just making stuff up, you know.
>>Dr. Nelson: [laughing] They were just kind of pulling a fast one?
>>Sequoyah Guess: Yeah, yeah because I've heard it said, you know, that they thought
he was a funny man, you know, because he would talk to somebody and when they answered, he'd
be writing. And so a lot of times the people that he was talking to and writing about,
they were just wanting to see him write, you know. So so they were just saying just about
anything. So that was that was their thing, you know, where they just wanted to write.
If you really read the Mooney book and you know the traditions and culture, you'll realize,
you know, that these guys were just leading him on, you know so. And and it's true with
some other books too because a lot of the other books, they're just regurgitating what
Mooney wrote, you know.
>>Dr. Nelson: We see a lot of that it seems like.
>>Sequoyah Guess: Yeah.
>>Dr. Nelson: Yeah, he'd he kind of became established as an authority in some way, and
people turned to him just as that.
>>Sequoyah Guess: And some of the stories that he wrote, the more traditional people,
that's not how we learned 'em, you know. He he he writes them in different ways, and then
there's a lot of stories that we we grew up with that Mooney never even touches on, you
know. There's one story that I tell nowadays that I tell people that it was almost lost.
There was a wolf that wore what he called shoes, but they turned out to be actually
traps. Hastings Shade, tsigesv, and I were traveling around one day when he was running
for Deputy Chief back in '98. I believe we were heading for Tulsa and, you know, we was
talking and everything, but then there comes a time, you know, when things get quiet. And
so that time came, and in that moment I started hearing my grandma telling me this story about
this wolf, and it was funny and everyone, you know I'd I'd start laughing while we was
sitting in the car with Hastings driving. And I'm sitting on the passenger side laughing
every once in a while. And out of the corner of my eye every once in a while I'd see Hastings's
kind of looking at me, you know, wondering what I was laughing about. But when when when
I finished the or when Grandma finished telling me the story in my mind, I told Hastings the
story, and he started laughing too, and he said he hadn't heard that story since he was
little boy.
>>Dr. Nelson: Is that right?
>>Sequoyah Guess: And the same story I told at an Elders conference in Oklahoma City.
And when I was through telling stories, these two little old ladies came walking up to me,
one kind of glassy eyed like she had been crying, and even they told me they hadn't
heard that story since they was little girls. And so if it hadn't been for Grandma coming
back to me and telling me this story in my mind, that story would have been lost. And
so I I keep I tell it every chance I get, and then other storytellers have picked up
on it too, and they tell it too, and so I'm I'm glad they have. The difference between
my storytelling and other people's storytelling is I do everything that Grandma did when she
was telling me stories. Well, if you can imagine, you know, my grandma, skinny, you know, short
lady, bandanna on her head, you know, corncob pipe, you know, sitting in a rocking chair
telling these stories in Cherokee but changing her voice for each character, you know, and
so I do the same thing. I change my voice for each character when I'm telling the story
the funny stories, and people seem to like that, you know. And so I I that's one of the
things that I do that most other storytellers don't. The other thing that I do is I try
to put things in the story that people will relate to, which is the same thing that Grandma
done. The example that I usually give is one time she was telling me a scary story about
this man walking through the woods. He was looking for three sisters who were witches,
and he was wanting to learn how to fly. And so they told him, you know, you can only find
their house at night by the glowing of the, you know, the fire inside the house. And so
he went out there, and he was carrying a torch to see by. Well, a few years went by and then
Grandma told me that story again. Same man, same three witches he's looking for, same
wooded area that he's going through, but the torch had turned into a flashlight, you know.
So she she modernized it a little bit for me and so so I could relate to it better,
and so I do the same thing. I do a lot of modernizing to stories that I tell. One story
that I tell about Rabbit and Possum looking for wives, they leave their village and they
start walking down the highway just like that one up there. And so Rabbit and Possum, they're
walking down the highway, and they're dodging cars and everything. And in the story, just
like in real life, Possum's kind of slow, so he gets hit and gets splattered out, you
know. [Dr. Nelson laughs.] And so but you know he's he's a medicine possum, so he fixes
himself up and they take off again. When Grandma told me the story, it was a dirt road, you
know, and and the Possum and and Rabbit, they were dodging wagons and horses.
>>Dr. Nelson: Right.
>>Sequoyah Guess: And so nowadays I tell people they were dodging cars and stuff, you know,
and so you know in that--
>>Dr. Nelson: They'll be dodging hovercraft before we know what happened. [laughs]
>>Sequoyah Guess: Yeah, I've said that before too. They'll be dodging hovercraft, but you
know, just like that, I I modernize things in my stories so people, especially the younger
kids, will remember them, relate to 'em a little bit better.