Eastern Cherokee Stories: A Living Oral Tradition and Its Cultural Continuance by Sandra Muse Isaacs (review)

This debut work by Sandra Muse Isaacs is a profound exploration of the rich storytelling tradition that thrives today among the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Though the author grew up in Detroit, she reconnected with her Cherokee heritage throughout her childhood and by living in Cherokee, North Carolina as she conducted research for her PhD in English and Cultural Studies. Her work features the Qualla Boundary's esteemed and everyday storytellers alike. Within five thematic chapters, Muse Isaacs uses terms in Tsalagi (as chapter titles and throughout the text) to center the stories in their original language and correct misinterpretations. She achieves balance by using English for accessibility, as many Cherokee storytellers do, to further "the political purpose" of asserting sovereignty and strengthening the tradition by sharing the stories with outsiders (12).

To ground her analysis within Cherokee cultural values, the author illuminates two essential terms. Gadugi ("coming together"; the communal harmony ethic) and Duyvkta (the "right path," or individual moral responsibility) are these fundamental principles that continue to motivate and inspire Cherokees today (26). As the Eastern Band's former Principal Chief Joyce Dugan states in her foreword, no other scholars have so astutely connected these central concepts to Cherokee worldviews (x). Furthermore, the author's work is in dialogue with an array of perspectives and scholarship from other Indigenous cultures to broaden the discussion (see 9, 40–41, 180). Gadugi and Duyvkta are at the core of various Cherokee narratives, ranging from creation stories (the subject of chapter 1) to the more seemingly obscure Dusgaseti stories, covered in chapter 2. Here, Muse Isaacs asserts that "Dusgaseti" should not be mistranslated to "monsters"; stories of these beings are not intended to frighten so much as they are to reinforce ideals of working together in the face of danger (111). Furthermore, the author insists, the stories of these mysterious outsiders are indispensable, as they will continue to warn and protect modern Cherokees "against the daily onslaught of the intruding colonizer society's ways of life and values" (86, 93).

Muse Isaacs details the "conflicted feelings" she and many Cherokees share about the "questionable ethics" and flaws of ethnographer James Mooney's foundational work with Eastern Cherokee storytellers in the late nineteenth century (24). The author, ultimately grateful for Mooney, has provided a restorative spirit to his work, in part by eschewing such terms as "myth" and "legend" to better reflect the ongoing resonance of the stories (10, 62–63). Unfortunately, Mooney's Myths of the Cherokee remains more reliable and comprehensive about some matters, such as Tsuwatelda, the mountain site of a major Cherokee creation story ("Kana'ti and Selu"). Muse Isaacs states that Mooney did not credit the Cherokees who told him stories about the site; moreover, she accuses the "colonizer government," North Carolina, of "overwriting" Tsuwatelda and erasing the Indigenous by designating the site Pilot Mountain State Park (49, 56–57, 139). In fact, however, Mooney did identify the Cherokees who told him about Tsuwatelda, and they stated the site was Pilot Knob, near Brevard, NC—not Pilot Mountain, which is far to the east, in the ancient Sauratown Mountain range that is named for the Indigenous piedmont people (see Mooney, Myths, 431, 242, 480–81).

The author's commentary, generally insightful elsewhere, is sometimes lost between recurring and lengthy quotes from other works (especially Mooney, Myths, and Barbara Duncan, Living Stories of the Cherokee). Scholars of Cherokee culture will already have familiarity with these sources, and the quoted stories are sometimes five or more pages in length (see pages 50–56; 72–76; 212–17). Including some of these as appendices may have been more effective in making the author's original observations more salient while still offering an accessible reference work (with stories intact in their original forms). Those readers expecting a large new collection of unpublished stories will be disappointed; Muse Isaacs twice...