Foxfire 9

by Foxfire Fund, Inc.

  [When I was a child], the Indians did love to dance. I can tell you that because I seen a lot of dances. Before I was ever eight years old my oldest sister, Verdy, would want to go to these square dances. Way back then [there were no Indians] that could play square dance music, so we had a black man who played a guitar, a banjo or something, and was a friend to the Indians. He’d come down there in his mule and buggy and just sit in the corner and play music, and the Indians would dance all night long. The dances would be at a different house each weekend and they’d have to tear down everything that was in the room and set it somewheres else so they could have a square dance. The houses weren’t all that good but they had big rooms to ’em. Maybe they didn’t have but two or three rooms to a house, so they had to be big. Daddy never did have any [dances] at our house, though. I had to go with my sister [to the dances]. Most every house had children so I’d go and play with the children while the big people was dancin’. I’d sit and watch ’em dance many a time.

  There was one Indian, Davis Harris, who liked to dance. One time when he was sick in bed, my brother asked him, “Oh, Davis, you goin’ to the dance they’re having this weekend?”

  “Where’s it gonna be at?” And [my brother] told him, and he said, “Yeah, I guess I will.” Even though he was sick, he’d get up and go to that dance! He loved to dance, and he’d dance the whole time. Chief Belew had an Indian suit and a headdress that would hang way down in the back. He would go out and demonstrate the Indian dances and he would sing, just put on a show for people.

  One day when I was at work [as a blanket inspector for a corporation], some of the people [I worked with] asked me to do the rain dance. They knew that the Indians believed in rain dances, but I couldn’t help but laugh. Well, I got into some kind of little dance, and behold, it rained that day! I don’t know if what I done had anything to do with it, but those people thought it was really true. Several times after that, they wanted me to do the rain dance. I’d say, “I don’t want it to rain,” but they kept on and kept on after me so I’d do some kind of little dance and it would rain and it would tickle them to death. I didn’t have anything at all to do with it. It was the Lord’s work.

  The Indians were superstitious. I know my daddy wouldn’t let us sweep a floor and sweep [the dirt] out the door after the sun went down. You could sweep the floors, but if you didn’t have something to sweep the trash up in, you had to leave it. I have never, to this day, known what that meant. Daddy just said it would bring you bad luck. If I sweep after dark, I’ll sweep it up in my dustpan. I won’t sweep it out the door. It was just something I was used to doing as a little girl and I’m still following the way I was taught.

  I can remember this—when a little baby was born, they didn’t want you to leave his clothes out on the line at night. If you washed and put the baby’s clothes outside during the daytime, you’d better bring them in before night. They said the wild Indians and evil spirits would bother ’em. I didn’t believe in that one or try to follow it. If something on the line didn’t get dry, I left it out till the next day.

  The Indians didn’t want you to put a baby’s feet on the ground. They said it’d make the baby restless at night and bring the evil spirits about ’em. I just can’t believe that evil spirits really bother little children. They are a child of God and are holy until they get old enough to be accountable for their own sins. I never did care about [this superstition]. I’d put mine down just to see their little ol’ feet. They’d just kick. But the Indians didn’t want you to do that.

  I’ve heard tales about people coming back so many days and nights after they die. They come back after midnight and wander around where they had lived. I’d be so scared to go to bed, I didn’t know what to do. But if [the spirits] ever did come back [nobody I knew] never seen none of’em. It was just something [people] talked about. When the spirits go back to our Father, that gives ’em death here on earth. They’ll be put in the spirit world until the day of Resurrection. Then the spirits will pick up their bodies and we’ll come forth to be judged by what we done in the flesh while we were here.

  A lot of people believe that if a black cat crosses the road, you’ll have a wreck or other bad luck if you cross where that black cat had been. [Some] would make a cross on the windshield or something or other like that.

  Well, I really don’t believe in superstitions, but there’s a lot of these things [if you pay attention to them] does mean something to you. If you hear something and you get to thinking about it, after a while you’ll believe things like this.

  I should have learned more about the Indians when I was small and when some of the older Indians could tell me [our history], but I didn’t think about that. I didn’t think that it would someday be valuable to me to know all these things. I didn’t care about it. When I was in school, I didn’t like history. I said, “Well, now, I ain’t gonna study about something I ain’t never seen and I never will see, and I don’t want to learn about people I don’t know nothin’ about.”

  They say that at one time [the Catawbas] were branched from the Sioux tribe. Then my forefathers came to settle down here and it came about that they were called Catawba Indians and I think the Catawba River was named after the Indians.

  [To choose a chief], the tribe would have a meeting and they would talk to the ones that they wanted to put in [as chief]. They voted, and the one with the most votes got chief. The person elected chief don’t have to be full-blooded Indian. Every two years, a chief is either reelected or a new chief voted on.

  [There is an old Indian burial ground] on the other side of the river. Some of the [modern Indians] heard that they buried their valuable things in the grave with [the dead] so they got to thinkin’, “We’re gonna go over there and dig in them graves.” So they went over there and went to diggin’. It was told that they found different little things in the graves and brought them back to the boat that they had crossed the river in. When they got into the boat, something jumped in with them. It wasn’t something they could see, but it was with ’em. They could hear things. Several of ’em [got so upset they] just throwed the things they had got into the river and didn’t bring ’em home.

  There ain’t many tombstones down there [at the old cemetery]. [The families] just didn’t have the money to buy tombstones for their dead, so they’d just bury ’em and put a rock at the head and one at the foot. That’s where my first husband is buried, but he does have a tombstone. [Just Indians are buried there], and people who married Indians.

  This [land] where we’re a-livin’ now is part of what was the old reservation at one time. It’s no longer owned by the reservation. I happen to own it myself. There ain’t but 632 acres on the reservation now. There’s less than five hundred [Indians living on the reservation] that’s on the tribal roll, but there’s children born since [that list was made up], so they’ll be adding them. [The reservation] has been there from the 1840s when the Indians leased their land to the state of South Carolina for ninety-nine years. When that time was up, the Indians never got their land back. South Carolina had leased it for these years. They just took it away from the Indians. [The Indians] are tryin’ to get a lawsuit started, and I don’t know whether they’ll ever get anything out of it or not, because by the time they [get it into court], I guess just about all the Indians will be dead. Their children coming along have not got much Indian in them at all. They just keep marrying out. They can’t hardly marry back into the tribe because they are too close kin. The people that’s livin’ today ain’t the ones that was living back when all this [land leasing] was done in the 1840s. These people now, it’s new to them and they’re fightin’ it, and I don’t blame ’em.

  I personally don’t hold nothin’ against the white people ’cause my mother was white. I love the white people, and I love the Indians. I’ll fight for the Indians quicker than I’ll fight for the white people, though. If somebody stands up there and cusses the ol’ black Indians, then they’re gonna have me to whip if I c
an fight ’em, and I’ll try! I’ve got in more fusses about [the mistreatment of the Indians] than anything in the world. I might get whipped, but somebody will know I was there.

  I don’t think that I’m any better than any white people, but I’m as good as they are. My mother was white and I loved her, but my daddy was Indian and I thought more of him than I did my mother. I guess maybe the Indian part was what kept me hanging in here because I really loved my daddy. I really did.

  The Indians ain’t never had nothing. They have had a hard time. It ain’t been too long ago that [Indian students] have been accepted in the high school up here in town. Then people says, “Indians are dumb.” Why are they dumb? I can see why they’re dumb—’cause the white people wouldn’t let them go to school. That’s why they’re dumb. But they’ve got more sense than [white] people give them credit for.

  There are some people living down on the old reservation now that don’t even have running water in their houses. The state don’t give ’em nothin’. When I was a little girl, we did have a doctor for the Indians. And back then they did appropriate a little bit of money, about thirty-five dollars to a head. That wasn’t much money at all. They couldn’t get jobs. I guess that’s why the Indian women made pottery. That’s how they made a living.

  They was a lot of people living on the reservation, and they was a lot of people having to live with each other because there weren’t enough houses or money along there. There was maybe two families in a two-or three-room house. That just wasn’t enough room for all the families to live in. In the thirties, there was several people around that had cars. The Indians wasn’t able to buy nothing like that. They just barely did have beds and chairs to sit in and a stove to cook on. That was [all the furnishings], just about, in the houses.

  I was proud to be poor and it didn’t bother me. I worked hard for everything that I’ve got. I try to be honest with everybody and I don’t try to tell lies about what I do. I just try to be honest. It doesn’t take a whole lot of money for me to live on. If I can have groceries and stuff in the house and have the little things that I need and I can provide for myself, I’m happy. I really am.

  Back when I was young, there were a good many people that made pots, just about every little place you went. But they don’t do it now because they have jobs that they can get outside [of the reservation]. You know, pottery making is hard work and many people don’t like it.

  I thought [as a child that the Catawba language] was silly. I thought, “Well, now, that just don’t sound right.” Looked like every word sounded the same to me. I said, “No, I don’t want to learn that ’cause it don’t sound good.” I didn’t care about it and I don’t think any of the rest of them cared anything about it either, ’cause they ain’t none of ’em that can talk it.

  Same way it’s gonna be about this pottery-making stuff. If some of our younger people don’t want to [make it], they ain’t gonna fool with it. But someday they’re gonna say, “Well, I wish I’d a’ learned it while I could.” It’s gonna be gone, done away with after a while. They ain’t gonna be nothing the [modern] Indians ever learned to do [to preserve their heritage].

  Georgia Harris and Doris Belew are two other older Indians who still make these pots. They have samples of our work at the museum in Columbia [South Carolina]. I sent one up there [to the Smithsonian] and it got broke. It was valued at seventy-five dollars, and the insurance didn’t want to pay it. They just don’t know the value of anything and how much trouble it takes to get these pots fixed up and what you’re going through to do it. They think, “Well, now, it’s not worth that much.” But anything handmade nowadays, you really pay for it, pots or anything [when you’re buying].

  Georgia Harris is the best pottery maker of all of us. Lot of’em say that I am and I say, “No, not me. I learnt from her, so she’s gotta be first.” I give her credit for that. She still makes a few, but she’s not making like she used to. She’s in her eighties, anyhow. She’s still going good, but she’s not as active as she used to be.

  Georgia’s married to my brother, and her son, Floyd, asked me one time, he said, “Make me some little pots. Mama is makin’ pots. You make me some.”

  I said, “I can’t.”

  And Georgia said, “Yes, you can. If you want to learn, you can learn.”

  I was about twelve or thirteen. I never did think I’d be interested in making pottery but I started off [and she encouraged me] but she wouldn’t help me. She’d tell me, “Now, you watch me and do what I do, and the way I do it, you do it.” So that’s the way I learned. Nobody took my pot down and shaped it for me. I had to shape it up and work with it for myself, y’know. Sometimes Georgia made the pots and I got to rub ’em. While she would be building and scraping, I would be rubbing.

  What I made then was just little tiny things. Now I can make anything I want and I make all kinds. I make loving cups, pitchers, vases, ducks—just anything I put my mind to, I can make it.

  My sisters, Viola and Reola, make it too, but none of our children make it. They don’t want to get the clay on their hands. Lot of people will say, “What do you do when you get that mud up under your fingernails?”

  I say, “Work right on. It don’t bother me.” Lot of people don’t want that mud on their hands, and I think that’s why my children never did like to make it, and they just don’t like sittin’ down makin’ pots. Leon’s little girl says that she wants to learn to make ’em. She’s about eight. Whether she ever will or not, I don’t know. You have to want to do something before you can and you have to pay close attention if you are going to learn anything. Stay right with it. It’ll take several years to learn to do this. You just don’t learn overnight.

  Doris Belew and I went to Washington, D.C., back in ’76 to demonstrate pottery making up there. I think the Smithsonian had something to do with it. We made [pots] in the Hilton Hotel in Washington, and I laid ’em up on the heater in the room and they dried out that night. I rolled ’em up [in towels] and brought ’em back home with me.

  I’ve also been to Greenville, South Carolina, and a place near Union, South Carolina, to demonstrate [making] pots. Each time I [made a trip to demonstrate], I had to be gone five hours but I made a hundred dollars. I went to Ebenezer School [in Rock Hill] when they were studying about Indians. They wanted me to come demonstrate the pottery. I also demonstrated to the Girl Scouts over here in Mount Holly. When the girls were getting ready to go home, I went and broke all my clay up into fourteen little pieces and give it to ’em. They really had a time out of it after that; they got real messy with it.

  They also had a pottery school down here on the reservation and were giving lessons. I had the privilege of teaching one day a week to Indians that wanted to learn to make pots.

  The Catawbas never did make nothing like baskets. The Cherokees does. Somebody was gonna teach the Indians down here to make ’em, but I never did see anything made. We did beadwork in school, though. They got beads and learned to make rings; they took a wire and [looped it], put the beads on them wires and just kept a-going through. Then they’d weave them on the end some way or another. I didn’t care about making beadwork.

  I don’t know how far back this pottery [making] goes, but I’ve heard the story that pots were the utensils [the Indians] cooked in. I’ve never seen that myself, but I’ve heard it from way back.

  I get good prices for my pots now—anywhere from five dollars to a hundred and fifty. At one time I was making quite a few, right after my first husband died. My brother and his wife would carry ’em to the mountains to Cherokee [North Carolina]. After a while, we got to where we couldn’t make nothing off of ’em, so I quit making for ten or fifteen years.

  Then I started back makin’ ’em again. My [second] husband took a load up to Cherokee and they wanted to give him ten cents apiece for them. They thought that we were desperate to sell them. So my husband said, “No, I’m not gonna sell her pots for that because they’re worth more. I’ll take ’em back home
first.” If I’m gonna give ’em away, there ain’t no point in me makin’ ’em.

  People come here. They’ll drop by and want pots. If I’ve got ’em, I’ll sell ’em to them. If I ain’t got ’em, they’ll come back later for ’em. This is usually people that’s out enjoying their vacations and come by in passin’. Sometimes I’ll set up a booth and sell. Georgia has sent people up here several times because she didn’t have any to sell. And Jack Punk, up here at Neely’s Store, he’s got pots in there but he said that when they want the good pots, he’ll send ’em down here to me. And he has sent a good many people down here to buy ’em. He’s a nice man.

  Different things sell better than other things. The ducks that I make sell good. Peace pipes and little vases and pitchers sell good, too. I don’t ever keep any [pots that I make]. I don’t think they’re pretty. I just don’t like ’em after I make ’em. I imagine there’s a lot of people that would, but I don’t. I don’t think Georgia keeps any of hers either! Course, if she’s like me she’ll give her children and grandchildren her cracked ones. I don’t like to sell ’em cracked, but there’s a lot of people who like to buy ’em ’cause they’re cheaper than if they’re good.

  I get tired of making pots sometimes, if I work for a couple of weeks in a row. Just sitting still is what is the trouble. You have to just sit down and work. There’s no jumping up and down. You just sit there. [Since I don’t make one from start to finish all at one time,] it’s hard to say how long it takes, but [it’s] about eight hours apiece.

  I’m telling you, this ain’t no easy job. There’s a lot of people who think that it’s easy made. But they’re not easy made. They’ll say, “Oh, I could do that.” And when they start doing it, they can’t do it like they thought they could. I heard one man say one time, “Oh, that looks easy. I’m gonna go get me some clay. I’m gonna make me one.” I don’t know what kind of clay he got, ’cause he didn’t go over to the river and get it. He sure didn’t know nothing about where we get [our clay] at. He went and got some of what he called clay. He sat down to make [a pot] and said, “Shucks, I can’t make that stuff. It looked easy, but I can’t do it.” He throwed the clay away!