This piece is currently a part of the Native Reflections exhibit, highlighting Kentucky's Native American artists. The show may run through 2021, depending on effects of COVID-19. In order to speak about the concept of this painting and what it means to me, I have to give a mini history lesson. Last year I visited White Top Mountain, North Carolina, the home of my maternal grandmother's ancestors, a branch off of the mainstream Catawba Nation. When settlers came from Europe they brought diseases with them for which the tribes in the Virginia, Carolinas, Tennessee and Kentucky area had no immunity. Whole tribes were wiped out, others almost became extinct. One of these tribes was the Saponi and another was the Tutelo. When their numbers became so low that they could not protect their people from encroaching hoards of settlers and other long-standing enemy tribes, they went to their neighbors, the Catawba, for help and the Catawba absorbed the Saponi and Tutelo into their tribe. The tribes each had their own languages so many became bi-lingual. People are often unaware that Native Americans are often multi-lingual as each tribe is just as much a distinct nation as France and Portugal are distinct nations.
In time, disease, war and encroaching settlers dwindled Catawba (now including Tutelo and Saponi) numbers to a mere 400 people. Skipping forward and leaving out a ton of details, let me get to the part about my ancestors. There were several bands of Catawba at this time. Some went to the Monacan People, some to the Pamunkey, some to the Cherokee, but it was hard to adjust to life among the Cherokee, so in time, this group returned to their homeland and lived among and married European settlers. It would be many years before the government would recognize the Catawba as a sovereign nation.
One particular band of Catawba people who had broken off from the main tribe settled along the New River and on White Top Mountain, becoming neighbors to a tribe who called themselves the Tla Wilano People. The Tla Wilano people befriended the wandering Catawbas (sometimes called Christian Catawba) and these Catawba people, cut off from their own tribe, found a home and became a nation of their own. Sometimes, they were called the Stick People, sometimes they were called the New River People, sometimes the Sizemore Tribe and sometimes the White Top Cherokee (but they were actually Catawba who had lived among the Cherokee. The government recognized the Cherokee but had declared that the Catawba were no longer "a people," this was an effort of genocide to be rid of one more Indian Nation.) Tla Wilano became their second language. The Tla Wilano People lived along a trade route. Their land had covered thousands of acres once upon a time, and they may have spoken four or more languages. There are/were words in the Tla Wilano language for creatures that lived during the ice age, which at that time, they hadn't read about in history books! So, we don't know the origin of the Tla Wilano People, nor of their language. Charles Howard Thomas, a Choctaw, lived among the last of the Tla Wilano elders and became a member of a Tla Wilano family; it's his work that has led to the survival of their language and culture. I am so thankful for this man and his love of the Tla Wilano People, his dedication to keeping their culture alive and I'm thankful for the band of unrecognized band of Catawba who now call themselves, The New River Band, for refusing to slide into historical obscurity, for refusing to go away just because they haven't been given a pedigree or a license to be who they have always been, for holding onto cultural traditions.
The Tla Wilano People were called by over forty different names. The last of their elders died in the 1990s. The tribe was gone...well, sort of. Their descendants live on, as does their language and their culture. That band of Tutelo-Saponi-Catawba (also called Christian Catawba) scattered across Kentucky, Virginia, the Carolinas and Tennessee and eventually, the whole U.S. And ironically, their descendants never forgot their identity. Now, efforts are being made by this band to keep the Tla Wilano language and culture alive and to reclaim their status as a sovereign nation.
The mainstream Catawba nation finally, after much struggle, got federal recognition. However, the New River People have not yet received federal recognition. This region of the United States is the area surrounding New River in Virginia and North Carolina. It extends all the way into the Cumberland Gap Region of Kentucky and Tennessee.
My aunt and I drove to White Top and crossed it for the first time just as the sun was setting. It took my breath away. We traveled the same trail our ancestors had once taken, which is now a major highway. So, this White Top Woman, is a portrait of determination, honor, ancestry and modern identity.
