“Learn to Talk Yaqui”: Mexico and the Cherokee Literary Politics of John Milton Oskison and Will Rogers

This essay discusses the correlations between the political views of the Cherokee Nation and Mexico in the writing of Rogers and Oskison. Rogers is nostalgic for the Cherokee Nation that Oklahoma statehood spoiled and a vigorous anti-interventionist in his commentary on a Mexican nation constantly facing US interference. Oskison more readily embraced the changes that came to the Cherokee Nation following allotment and statehood. In his writing on Mexico, his politics align with the United States rather than with a primitive Mexico and, in the case of his biography of Sam Houston, against the Texas Cherokees as well. The essay includes a final comment on a third Cherokee writer, Lynn Riggs, whose plays about Mexico celebrated indigenous revolution. Together, the work of all three writers illuminates a literary politics shaped by pre-statehood Cherokee contexts but diverse and international in scope.