“First I must tell you this story,” he says. “It is not a tale from ancient times. It was seven years ago, a dangerous time for all of our Indian nations here in the South. It was not just Tecumseh and his Shawnees who had visions of driving away the white men. Among our own people, a medicine dance took place at Utsanali. A Cherokee man—whose name is best forgotten—said he was a prophet and that he had been given a great vision by the Creator. All of the bad things that had come to us were caused by the white man. To change our fortune there was only one way to go. We had to stop using all of the things that came from the white man. Our Tsalagi people had to take off their white man’s clothing, burn their own houses and their own mills. They were told to burn their beds and chairs and tables—because we had no such things in the old days. They were told to abandon their beehives and their orchards, and kill their cats. Then they had to put on red paint and deerskin clothing and climb to the top of the highest mountain peaks to wait. A great flood would come with the full moon and wash into the sea all of the white people and the Indians who followed them.

“Many of our people believed that false prophet. They did as he told them to do. They burned or just abandoned their homes. They made the long hard climb to those high places. But when the full moon came, there was no flood. Nor did one come the day after that. Finally, hungry and discouraged, the people returned sadly to what was left of their homes. Giving up those material things that came from the white people, things that had made their lives easier and better, had not helped them at all.”

My father looks over at me, one eyebrow raised. He raises his eyes up as if to look at the turban wrapped around his head, looks down at the shirt he is wearing made of trade cloth, then looks over at me as if studying my own clothing.

“Who made this clothing that we wear?”

“The Aniyonega,” I reply.

“Does wearing these clothes make us white men? Do we need to give them up to be who we are?”

I see what he means. It is not what we wear or the things we use that make us Tsalagi. We can accept many things from the white people, make those things our own and still stay true to ourselves.

“No,” I say.

My father smiles. Then he continues his story.