Ep 138 | The Muskogee people: bringing oral history to the classroom

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I had had this image in my mind and when we had done some of the grant presentations, I had spoke about this image in my mind of watching big yellow school buses rolling onto our grounds. And so the first day of the field trips, there were three big yellow school buses that rolled onto our grounds. So when it hit me, I ran like crazy out by the road so I could take a photo of them. And then I had to walk slowly back to the building so I could compose myself. But that was a confirmation of a dream starting to come true.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Welcome to the Voices United in Education podcast. Each week we showcase the teachers, administrators, and community members who go the extra mile to contribute to the success of every student in Iskambie County. You'll meet the real people behind the titles and learn about the amazing resources to support every student's success. As Florida's oldest settlement, Pensacola has a rich history full of names most of us have heard often, like Deluna, Jackson, and Ferdinand. But what about McGillivray or Weatherford? The latter were influential leaders from the Muscogee tribe of Native Americans, but ones less visible and less known to those in Escambia County. My next guest is working to change that by bringing local native history into the mainstream through cultural center field trips and specialized school curriculum. He is the chief of the Santa Rosa Band of the Lower Muscogee. And today he's going to share the modern ways he's bringing our area's unique history to young people, building connections and sharing heritage, Chief Dan Skyhorse Helms. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

He's J Stone Gold. Hello, how are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:57

He's Jay. I'm so happy you're here. So before we get into the school curriculum, you're helping shape, I think it's important to talk about how you personally recovered lesser-known history about yourself. Because you didn't begin to discover your heritage until your early 50s, because it was hidden right by your grandparents and your great-grandparents.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Yes. There were signs that now as I look back that I would know. But the things that I would have had no way of knowing at that time that I was seeing them. In 1853, the state of Florida passed an Indian Removal Act on the heels of Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830. The one in Florida was a little kinder, not much, but it did allow you to stay as an Indian in the state of Florida if you gave up your language, you gave up your culture, you gave up your traditions, you gave up your tribal identity, and you blended into either the black or white society, depending on your skin tone. And the penalty for violation of one of these tenets of the law was arrest and removal to Indian country west of the Mississippi River. So my grandparents, great-grandparents lived under the oppression of that law. So they never spoke of anything about the Indian heritage or culture or taught any of the language or anything, although they knew it. And so my little grandmother, who pretty much raised me because my mom was a working mom, and I would ask her occasionally, I'd say, Mama, are are we Indians? And she would laugh and say, Yeah, we're black cheek. There's no such thing as a black cheek Indian. But she knew all the stuff, but she never told me anything about it. And it wasn't because she wanted me to be ignorant of the fact. It's because she wanted to protect me to keep me from being arrested and sent to west of the Mississippi River.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Because you never know what kids are going to repeat. And like to their little friends at school, the little friends repeat to their parents. So I could see from a parent point of view and a grandparent point of view why she chose to do that.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Yeah, it was out of out of love, but uh then uh I had an opportunity to recover a lot of the the lost knowledge from some of the elders who still remember things, but all of that was kept under wraps, and it was cultural survival on the run, actually, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which nullified that law. And then the Indians at that time started coming out and coalescing back into their groups in a public setting. And uh as far as we know, that Florida law has never been repealed.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

So it's active but not acted on.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Correct. And that's because the Civil Rights Act nullified it.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

What were the signs?

SPEAKER_01 5:05

The signs were some of the places that I remember the grown-ups talking about where they had been, and they were talking about a brush arbor meeting. Well, now I know that a brush armor meeting was a traditional ceremony. And I would hear things like some of the medicines that they would use or some of the herbs that they would use, and little things down to that they would sweep the yards with a brush broom to keep the grass away and have it was almost like a white sand around the house, but they would always sweep it in certain directions only. And I later learned out that that is a part of how the ceremonial ground is prepared.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Wow. Oh, how did it feel to learn all of those things retrospectively? Like how did that change your life as a 50-year-old man?

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Made me smile a lot and just uh a lot of aha moments. And and it's it's almost been like a treasure hunt to be able to go back and and think about those things and and discover what was underlying. And even some of the the phrases that they used, like a little stinkard, and I never knew what that actually meant, but now I've learned that that was a a kind of a pet name, almost a derogatory name for Indian children.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Oh wow. Yeah, that is like a treasure hunt, like in your mind piecing together the knowledge with those past random memories. You said some elders kind of helped you put together the genealogy part of that. What did that look like?

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Well, we're fortunate to have a our tribal genealogist has been doing genealogy for 30-something years, and she was trained by Daughters of the American Revolution, which is one of the most stringent processes to become a member member of that group. And so she has that training and has been able to go back and dig into the archives and newspapers and such, because in the past it was not something cool to be an Indian, especially before 1964. And so there was a little bit of information, but there were little clues that were back in the archives and the public records where it might say, for instance, that John Smith and his Indian wife Sarah, and that would be something to show that she was a Native American, an Indian. And the reason they did that is because a white man who married an Indian, if he passed away before she did, she got nothing and the inheritance skipped over her to go to the children. So identifying her as an Indian on the deed would guarantee that the children would get the property and not the Indian wife.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Knowing all of the ways that you could have never known this inflict is the fact that you uncover it that much more of a miracle, it feels like.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it's it's becoming a little bit easier because of the internet and the availability of information, but it's also there's a lot of misinformation that's on there. And one of the things that we laugh about is everybody's got a grandmother that was a Cherokee princess. And so we get quite a chuckle out of that because first of all, the Cherokee didn't really have any princesses, and so we don't know where that exactly came from, but when we hear that, that's quite quite amusing. But people who say, Well, I've heard that my great-great whoever was an Indian or whatever tribe or group, and we have learned that if that's a family lore that has been passed down, that it's a good, good chance that that is true. Because there was no benefit to letting anybody know that you were an Indian back in in past times. Another little sign that I picked up on to regress a minute, but my grandmother only went to the fifth grade. And that that was because that was as far in school as they would allow an Indian to go because they wanted you to be functional, but they didn't want you to be educated.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Interesting. Wow, that is so amazing. Now, how did you become the the chief? Because that seems like a big jump from uncovering these hidden aspects of your family to now you're the chief.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Well, jokingly, I say I missed a meeting, but uh in reality, I actually came into the tribe and just had a fire burning to work and do the things to elevate the status of the tribe and to get projects done and such as that. And so I moved up from a member up onto the tribal council, and then after a few years, I moved up through the different offices, and you're actually voted on as a chief or a council member. But I always say that in reality that leaders are not appointed or elected. True leaders emerge from their actions.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

And obviously your peers agreed that that was what was happening with you, because here you are.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

And here I am.

SPEAKER_00 10:40

I love how the tribal grounds and the cultural center on the tribal grounds is helping to facilitate the process that you had to really claw for, but for other people. And that was so evident when I visited for Creek Fest and spoke with different people and talked to them about their heritage. And they all just had this glimmer in their eye when they talked about what that whole place means to them. And we'll talk about the school curriculum that you're helping to build in just a second. But I want to ask about the educational aspects of the travel grounds that are meant for the community first. Was that in process before you became chief, or was that something that you tried to initiate once you were established in that position?

SPEAKER_01 11:26

The tribe has always been into trying to educate the schools. For many years, they would go to the school and put on a little presentation for a class. Up until about 12 years ago, we did not have any sort of building or anything to work with. So we had to load all our stuff up in a little cargo trailer and take it wherever we needed to go. It pretty much started about 12 years ago that we came to the realization that we could do a lot better at educating the school kids if we could bring them to us instead of using that little cargo trailer. So we went from a little cargo trailer to a 4,000 square foot educational cultural center. And now we're able to handle large groups. In fact, this past week, over a four-day period of time, we had 800 middle school students come through the cultural center in the grounds. And that has been a dream that has lived in my mind, particularly for a a number of years, and that was the impetus for us trying to get the cultural center was to be able to do the educational part. And so I have to tell on myself a little bit. When the first I had had this image in my mind, and when we had done some of the grant presentations, I had spoke about this image in my mind of watching big yellow school buses rolling onto our grounds. And so the first day of the field trips, there were three big yellow school buses that rolled onto our grounds. So when it hit me, I ran like crazy out by the road so I could take a photo of them. And then I had to walk slowly back to the building so I could compose myself. But that was a confirmation of a dream starting to come true.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

I think anyone w could see why it's important for you personally to find that more complete version of history for your personal lineage. Why is it important to you that the public at large learn a more complete history of first people in our area?

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Well, we can only do what we can do for our area, but as an example of the Native American history, last year I saw an article where a textbook in Dallas, Texas, for fourth graders that the sum total of the Native American history in the history book was a paragraph. And it said the Europeans came to America and they didn't have any place to live. So the Indians gave them their land and moved away. I think we can do a little bit more than that. So just the lack of the educational systems dealing with the the Native Americans. And uh there's a lot of different reasons that it has gotten that way. And some of the reasons are that some of the atrocities that that happened in the past, people really don't want to address those. And one of the big culprits for stereotyping the Native American has been Hollywood. And so in the early days, the people that played the Indians weren't even Indians, they were Italians. And so that's why they had the monosyllabic guttural grunts for a language, because the Italians had no shot at learning a Native American language. And so if they had to have a real speaking part, they would say whatever it was in English on a tape recorder and then play it backwards so it sounded like a Native American language. But uh, we try to get away from that stereotyping with the using the real history. And one of the things that we strive to do is to humanize the the Native American because right from the get-go in the Declaration of Independence, the Native Americans were described as a merciless savage. And it didn't get much better after that. But in any kind of colonization situation, the first thing that someone does when they're coming in to colonize is they dehumanize the population so that that gives them carte blanche to treat them however. So we've had a lot of things to overcome. We don't beat the drum, so to speak, about the cultural genocide and literal genocide of the past because we can't do anything to change it. It was a terrible thing and it happened, but we've got to move forward and look at where we are today, the contributions, the positive contributions that the Native Americans have made.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

What are some of the contributions of Native people in our area specifically that others might be surprised to learn about?

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Well, during the time of the height of the deer hide trade, Patton Leslie trading post in Pensacola, one year had over 250,000 deer hides came through their trading posts in that particular year. The Indians also brought things into Pensacola to trade, tar and pitch, honey, sassafras, all kinds of vegetables. And so Pensacola would have not been the major mercantile center for the southeastern United States had it not had the Native Americans supplying a lot of the goods.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

So they were central to that commerce.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Yes. Yes, very much so.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Can you paint a picture of what the tribal grounds look like and what the cultural center looks like? Because you know, a lot of people have never been there, and it's hard to imagine what it looks like. So take us like we're driving in, and then what that looks like on the outside, and then take us through the cultural center.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Well, as you pull into the drive, you're pulling onto a 95-acre piece of land. We have a creek, a fair-size creek, Pond Creek, that makes a crescent through the property. And we have about a half a mile on each side of the creek that is part of our tribal grounds. And so we're doing a lot of things to try to protect that creek and keep it from being polluted. And so we have some challenges that we're working on right now in that aspect. But as you look over to the west, you'll see some structures, and that's actually our ceremonial grounds. As you pull in further, you'll see a replica creek village of the four different houses that would compose or comprise a family living unit. And starting probably in about 30 days, the construction will begin on a Native American style roundhouse. Now, that roundhouse is 80 feet in diameter and it's four stories tall. It's a conical-shaped structure, and it has a synthetic thatched roof on it. So it will be as you roll on past where the roundhouse is going to be, you'll come to our 4,000 square foot Native American Cultural Education Center. And in that center, we have on the north wall we have banners of the ancestors. And those are the leaders of the Creek Confederacy around the time of the Treaty of Fort Jackson with Andrew Jackson. And they're painted by Charles Byrd King, who the guys actually sat for those paintings. So it's the most authentic look at what they were actually wearing, what they looked like, their feet, very facial features, their skin tones.

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Versus a caricature.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Versus the stereotype. And there's none of them look like they'd fit into Hollywood, I can tell you that.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

That is interesting to point out that they don't look like the stereotype at all, because that's what I noticed when I went to Creekfest and was the regalia and how it was such a representation of the trade of the time. And I remember someone I was with was like, oh, that's interesting. The fabrics and like the ribbon skirts and some of the even the top hats. And it really shows that the native people in our area, they were like the center of the goings in and the comings out. And it wasn't like a part of that movie or separateness. I guess what I'm trying to say is it just pointed out to me how incorrect my thinking was and how I'd put the picture of Native people in a box in my head. And being there at the physical ground, seeing people wearing the traditional regalia of their own ancestors, it was like a reality check for me.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

Your description of putting in a box, that is what the stereotyping has done to Native Americans in general, is put them in a box 200 years old. And some of the questions that we had from the school kids that came out was they were under the impression that we lived out on the grounds. So they were like, Do you have horses? Or and no, we have trucks and cars, though. It was interesting to be able to counter some of those stereotypes of the kids. But to go back to the cultural center, we have four large walls, and on those walls we have different presentations that are not specific to anything, but they're more like a springboard that can go in multiple directions about the life, the day-to-day life of what they lived in, what they ate, how they traveled, what games they played. And we have a huge map, which is the probably the most popular thing in the the whole cultural center. And it's in that map from 1806. It still shows the uh Spanish having East and West Florida. And it shows all the Indian towns and villages up along the rivers, and it goes all the way from. From Florida, of course, all the way up to what is now Tennessee. And that is where we talk about the migration patterns and the treaties and all those sorts of things. And then on another wall, we have a painting by a gentleman named Newsler. It's of the Green Corn Ceremony. And that gives us an opportunity to talk about the ceremonial aspect. And the original of that painting hang hangs in the Smithsonian in Washington. And then our fourth wall is a language wall. And it has all the numbers, it has the phonetics of how you would pronounce it. It's got phrases, it's got colors, it's got descriptions of people, animals. And if you knew everything on that wall, you would really have the basics of the Muscogee language. And then we have an artifacts display case that we have. Some of the artifacts in there are on loan to us from the Penskola Historic Museum and Rob Overton. So we got this display case, and it's state of the art, so we can get borrow or uh displays from Smithsonian or anybody. But I asked Rob if he had would let us uh put some of the stuff in there, and Rob's comment, well, it was yours anyway. And uh so anyway, I said, Well, we don't want to keep it, we just want to borrow it. And so they brought out in boxes some of the pottery and such, and I put it in the office of the building, and then we didn't know really what was associated with those pieces. So we had our Hilosiah, which is our medicine man, came with his fan and his smudging, and we put all the pots out on a table and a blanket in the front of our building. And he went out and he did a smudging and a cleansing and a prayer, and then we asked the ancestors that if we could have permission to take care of these things and to display them. And so we did that, and we went up back on the porch to sit down for a minute, and I thought, well, I better get these things back inside. So I went out and literally something just stopped me like an invisible wall. And I got a something in my being in my head said no and I stopped and it came to me that that was the first time that these artifacts, these pots, had seen daylight and fresh air in maybe 200 years.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

So I went back, I sat down, and I let them enjoy the day.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Wow. I've never heard that story before. And you and I have talked quite a few times. That's really special. I think that speaks to the specialness and the thoughtfulness of the cultural center. That it's not just a historic plaque that someone said that we should put up, but it has meaning and personal history and so much behind it, and that you're willing to share it. That's the thing that I think is so incredible is that it would be special enough just to have the cultural center, have the tribal grounds as a a special place for people rediscovering their own personal past to connect with, to support them in that journey. But you're going beyond that and opening this up to questions from the public, you know, ignorance from from the public, and for the purpose of all of us being more educated about the specialness of where we all live now. And as you said in one of your speeches, we're still here.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Well, Mogan Headles, we're still here.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

That has stuck with me since the day that you said it. Because I think when people are resistant to learning the past of first peoples, they're like, it's like in the same category of learning Latin. They're like, why would we learn a dead language? Why do we want to learn about these people who aren't here anymore? And about the crimes that our relatives potentially did to those people. But it's not about that because we're still here.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

As I say, our people were standing on the shores when the first sales came over the horizon. And Bomogan Hidos, we're still here.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

So tell me about the work that you're doing to expand the knowledge of the cultural center past its walls and to make curriculum that the state of Florida will be helping to support.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Well, it's not the state of Florida yet, but we're in our That's the goal. And that's we'll get there. But right now we've have been working with the school system in our county, and we've had one meeting where we have had our people giving the oral history to the teachers who know how to fit that into the curriculum. So we started out just that we were trying to do something with the fourth grade. Well, it's turned out to now be K through 12. And uh so we actually have a meeting this coming week where we will come back again and look at what the teachers have done and how they've taken the information that is not in the books. You can't find it on the internet. But this is the the oral tri history and traditions of our people, and there's nothing ceremonial. We do not get into putting out ceremonial information or teachings, but this is more the the cosmology and the and the actual history and how the people lived and and that sort of thing. So no ceremony stuff is being disseminated in the curriculum. And it's amazing the teachers, it just blow me away at their insights and how they're taking to this, and we have got tremendous support from not only the teachers but the staff and the and the superintendent of our school system. So we're going to can I tell you a secret?

SPEAKER_00 28:19

Tell me.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

It's just us, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:21

It's just us.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Okay. We're actually, instead of just doing field trips, going to plan to do an event that is pretty much on par with Creekfest. And it will only be for the students. Right. And they will bust the students in for a day of an immersion experience on our grounds.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Oh my gosh, the kids are gonna love that. That's gonna be amazing. Can I be an honorary kid?

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 28:55

That is so incredible.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

So we'll have artisans that we'll bring in to demonstrate different things. And of course, we'll I think probably we're gonna do a reenactment battle with the the Indians and the militia shooting it out with our muskets. And so the kids always like something blowing up, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

But that reenactment is very cool when you know the history, so because you can narrate in your head, okay, now this is gonna happen next, and to see all of you walk it out, it really sticks in your mind.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

Well, our reenactment was actually a battle, a real battle that happened in Shemukla. And so I don't know if you noticed, but I always get shot first because I learned quickly that if I get shot first, then I get to lay there and rest while everybody else does the battle.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

So we had a little quick funny story, but one of our folks was videoing the reenactment with the battle, and so you could hear all that was going on around it. And so our shot rings out and I hit the ground, and this little voice, somewhere close to the camera, says, Oh no, not the chief.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Oh my gosh, that's precious. Well, we can look forward to more of that with the entire event being just for kids. That's incredible. And the school system, you're talking about Santa Rosa County Schools. But if this becomes a success, as I understand it, it's I'm sorry, you said if. When this becomes a success, a wildly massive, huge success, then this could be something that other counties will have the opportunity to adopt, correct?

SPEAKER_01 30:39

Absolutely. We're going to do our beta test this coming year with our county. And then uh after that, we'll be reaching out to the surrounding counties to invite them to come and join the fun.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

And in the meantime, the public can interact regardless of what county they live in. So tell them how they can visit the center about Creek Fest or participate in any other events that you have going on.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Well, the best way to keep up with us is through our Facebook page, which is Santa Rosa Creek Band, and we have a website, Santa RosaCreekband.org. So we post all of our events and the opportunities to visit the site. Right now we're not open to the public on a regular basis, and part of that's because of the construction that's going to be going on.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

And Creekfest.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

And Creekfest. That will be uh the weekend before Thanksgiving. I think last year we had something over 4,000 people come through in in two days, and uh we uh offer in our county we offer uh free tickets to the to the school children. Oh wow to bring them out, and so we're all about education and the Creek Fest is what we get our operating income from to keep us going for the next year because we're a 501c3 nonprofit, that's how we financially survive, but there's no grants available, there's no funding available for operational expenses, so we have to depend on some kind of income stream, which this year will be our 35th Creek Fest. And uh so that's what we depend on to be able to do everything we do because obviously the school children coming out and all those things, we don't we don't charge for that.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

There's so many good things happening and so many good things going to happen. I really look forward to seeing everything unfold in its time. I'll be sure to link everything in the show notes. Thank you so much for this.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Mado, and as you know, there's no word for goodbye in the Muscogee language. So I'll say Hatam Chihichatlis, which means I'll see you again.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

I'll see you again. Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe and share. Voices United in Education is a production of Muscambe County Public Schools.