Mildred Bachrach

It’s Not So Simple

Artist Statement

My work tells the story of how traumatic  events almost two centuries old, can  affect both Individual lives and national issues. Most of us have trauma in our past. Today with more people uprooted than WWII, by climate change and political conflicts, many will remain in refugee camps their entire lives. My story is not more important than yours. I share with you in the hope that we will all remember what greed, injustice and prejudice does to humanity.

Images from the Archives

Cherokee Tear Dress

This is the story of how the Cherokee Nation in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s struggled to come to grips with its traumatic heritage. The tribe sponsored and promoted a factitious tribal dress.

For over two hundred years the Cherokee adapted their dress from European styles worn by the white settlers and never had a distinctive tribal dress for women. The dress used in this triplex is from Pattern 4799-500-026 made by the Missouri River Company and comes from a design made in the late 1960’s. This design is part from costume makers from New York, part from a tall tale about a mysterious dress that few ever saw that was said to have been brought over from Georgia in the late 1800’s and the fact that the “Tear Dress” really looks like a modified pioneer dress with ribbons and tucks.

The pictures in the National Archives and the Oklahoma Historical Society show Cherokee women dressed in the fashion of the time depending on their economic circumstance. However the official dress to me is a symbol of the traumatic history of a people. After reading accounts of the “official dress’s birth”, seeing the official dresses in the show that is put on by the tribe for the tourist at the reservation in Tahlequah, Oklahoma where Mildred, my grandmother, was raised before she married off the reservation. This was the seed that started this series of works to help me explain that heritage;“It's Not So Simple“.

In 1970 Virginia Stroud, who is one of the foremost American Indian painters needed money to pay for college and decided to enter beauty pageants open to American Indian Women. Virginia was raised in California where her parents had decided not to tell her of her heritage due to their mistreatment while attending US run boarding schools in Oklahoma. However, due to family issues she was sent to a children's home In Oklahoma. She was adopted by a Kiowa aunt and enrolled in college to study art. She entered and won several beauty contests to make money for college. Since there was no official Cherokee dress, Virginia was loaned a native costume from the Kiowa tribe to wear in the pageant . When she won, the Cherokee Tribal Chief insisted that an official dress be made. The origin of the “dress” is murky, but it is known that costume makers from NewYork were hired, trunks searched, and the “official dress” looks a great deal like a calico dress with ribbons that would be worn in the US from the 1800’s.

Virginia does not depict scenes of Cherokee life, but rather paints scenes of the history and life of the Plains Indians and adopted Kiowa Culture.

The Trail of Tears

Between the years 1830 and 1850 approximately 60,000 Native Americans of the Five Civilized Tribes were forcibly displaced to Indian Territory which later became the state of Oklahoma

My mother, Catherine Huisman, owned the portrait you see of her grandmother, Nana Porter’s great grandparents, Caleb and Elizabeth Turtle Covel, who walked the trail in 1839 from Georgia to Oklahoma. Elizabeth’s father, Little Turtle, died on the trail and Caleb’s first wife died shortly after reaching Oklahoma. Caleb was born in Portland, Maine and we believe was educated in Boston.

To be a member of the Cherokee Nation, you must have a direct descendant on the “Dawes Roles". This was a government census taken between 1899 - 1907 of Indians living on Indian Territory. To be a member of the Cherokee Nation, your paperwork is in the National Archives.

Cherokee tribal membership rules were changed this year with a court decision that the descendants of black slaves owned by wealthy Cherokees in the Indian Territory could become members of the Cherokee Tribe whether they have Cherokee parentage or not. At the time of the forced March , slaves comprised fifteen percent of the Cherokee population. The Cherokee’s were Southerners who fought with the Confederacy during the Civil War. 

The documents of proof held in the National Archives do not deal with the degree of blood. It is having a direct descendant who was part of the forced relocation, having a direct line descendant on Indian Territory during the Dawes Census or proof of having a direct line ancestor who was brought to Indian Territory as a slave. 

My grandmother Mildred was listed on the Dawes Role as an infant. But my grandmother’s sisters, my Aunt Maureen and Aunt Top who were born after the Dawes Census were “Too Laters” and they and their descendants could not be tribal members.

The Exorcism of Culture

For over a hundred years, different religious groups and schools run by the government, tried to take the “Indian” out of the indigenous children in Indian Territory. They lasted until the 1970’s. The trauma was multigenerational.

This was a system developed by Sequoyah in the beginning of the 19th century to enable the Cherokee to write their language. The tribe hoped that they would be seen as a more civilized people by the white man. The Cherokee language, both written and spoken, along with any cultural background, was drummed out of Cherokee children in a system of Cherokee schools, which started in the 1820’s and lasted until the 1970’s. In the schools the tribal children were disallowed their own culture and punished if they spoke or wrote their own language.

These boarding schools were in existence until the 1970’s. The children were not allowed to speak or write their language; the girls hair was cut short ( Indian women prided themselves on the length of their hair); they wore only school uniforms; and were indoctrinated to the religion the school represented. No Indian games were allowed; no Indian crafts were allowed to be made; and, in most schools the children were given heavy manual labor to maintain the schools. 

The trauma from this schooling is multigenerational. There are graphic accounts written by people alive today who write about being raised by their parents who were “students” in these school who suffered severe PTSD all their adult lives as they tried to be parents to them.

Cherokee Syllabary

This was a system developed by Sequoyah in the beginning of the 19th century to enable the Cherokee to write their language. The tribe hoped that they would be seen as a more civilized people by the white man. The Cherokee language, both written and spoken, along with any cultural background, was drummed out of Cherokee children in a system of Cherokee schools, which started in the 1820’s and lasted until the 1970’s. In the schools the tribal children were disallowed their own culture and punished if they spoke or wrote their own language.

My Mother’s 80 Acres

In the early 1900’s members of the Cherokee tribe who were on the Dawes Rolls were each given eighty acres. This was not what the Cherokee Tribe wanted, but what the US Congress wanted to do to move the area into statehood. Oil had been discovered, gold in California (which necessitated cross country trains, etc.), and having tribal lands did not fit into Congress’ plans. A Lot of Indian land had already been taken in land rushes where settlers could at a start time stake claims on land that had been part of the land deemed as Indian Territory.

From what I was told by my mother and have read, members of a family were not given land near each other, so farming and ranching was not a possible option. Many Cherokee sold their land cheaply because families owning pieces of land two hundred miles apart was useless to them. Land with valuable oil and mineral rights was gobbled up by those who knew that each family's holdings were not functional.

My mother held on to the land she inherited from her mother. A rancher had wanted to buy it for years because it was right in the middle of his ranch. My mother refused until the heirs of her aunts ( the aunts, her mother’s sisters, had not inherited because they were “too laters” because they were born after the census, thus did not have tribal rights nor did their decedent’s ) constantly asked her to give the land to them. I told my mother I wanted the land but she gave it to the heirs of her aunts who sold it immediately to the rancher about ten years ago.

Lawsuits concerning treatment of the Cherokees ( and other tribes moved from the East), the breaking of treaties by the State of Oklahoma are now back in Federal Court. It will take decades to come to final decisions. But in 2021 it was ruled that most of the state of Oklahoma is still reservation land jurisdictionally due to the broken treaties. Although the land itself will not revert back to the tribes, laws that govern mineral rights, water rights, mining and drilling operations, and other environmental factors will potentially be affected.

My piece” My Mother’s Eighty Acres” is a 30x40 collage of my photos on wood. The play money is from a game “OKLAHOMA RUN” copyrighted in the 1988 by the M.B.O.P.Company ( played like Monopoly) which deals with the outrageous land grab of Indian Territory by non tribal members.

Heritage

This picture is in honor of my daughter, Tara Robinson, Esq., who died fourteen years ago of a malignant brain tumor. She was the President of the American Indian Student Association of the University of Maine School of Law. Please do an act of kindness in her honor as she did not want to be forgotten. The University of Maine system has tuition waivers for Maine residents who are members of any North American Tribe. The University requires a tribal blood card and a U.S. Department of the Interior tribal documentation.

Photo of My Ancestors

On Thanksgiving, my daughter Trinity went through all of the boxes of photos from the family. She found this treasure, which I have never seen. In my mother’s handwriting, “Caleb Covel, (born Portland, Maine) and Elizabeth (Betsy) Turtle Covel, both walked the “Trail of Tears” in 1839 from Georgia to Oklahoma. My mother wrote that these were the great grandparents of Nana Porter who was my mother’s (Catherine Robinson Huisman) grandmother.

Shelter

The Cherokees did not live in teepees. The lived in different sized log cabins or houses, depending on their owners’ individual economic circumstances. Many wealthy Cherokees had skilled slaves who put up large wooden structures within the first year.

Guardians of the Earth

This year the Federal Courts ruled that most of what is now Oklahoma will be under Indian jurisdiction. This does not mean that the land will be given back to the tribes. It does mean that the tribes will have a say in how the land is used and treated.