Cherokee Stories: Hidden Literacies of Collective Action

Abstract: Between February 11, 1964, and February 12, 1964, Willie Jumper handwrote in the Cherokee syllabary 140 pages of stories, observations, and remembrances. Willie Jumper, known by his Cherokee name, ᏏᏈᏂᏓ Siquinida, was a Baptist preacher of Cherokee and Creek ancestry. What cultural, linguistic, and historical legacies of thought remain hidden in the Willie Jumper stories? Each story penned presents an artifact of everyday life: a remembrance of a person, a community, or an event. Each story details the common practices of Cherokees coming together as communities to create and endure change. When taken together, the Willie Jumper stories take literary form in their richly detailed use of Cherokee to convey broad historical and cultural significance for those who read them. In doing so, each story carries forward the epistemic practice of archiving knowledge that sustains Cherokee lifeways and expands what literary and cultural studies mean by the term story.