("The Brandenberg Concerto" plays in the background)

DR. JACK KILPATRICK & ANNA GRITTS KILPATRICK

-Oukah

BEFORE I ever moved to Dallas, Texas, I had heard of Dr. and Mrs. Jack Frederick Kilpatrick. He was a Professor of Music at SMU, (in fact, Chairman of the Music Department) and his wife, Anna Gritts Kilpatrick, was a teacher in the Dallas School District. They were both natives of Stilwell, Oklahoma.

Dr. Kilpatrick held two doctor's degrees: one in Music, and one in Humanities. He had also been the Music Critic for the Dallas Times Herald for about seven years, and what with that, plus being a world-famous composer himself, he knew just about everyone in the music world.

Dr. Kilpatrick had written the music for the Cherokee Pageant that goes on at Cherokee, North Carolina, each summer. Kermit Hunter wrote the book for the first one, and for the outdoor drama in Oklahoma, and they are only semi-authentic, at best, although based on truth. The pageant in North Carolina is the oldest outdoor drama in the country, I believe, and has been seen by millions of people.

Not long after I moved to Dallas things started to be written about me in the newspapers. I was a rather colorful local celebrity in Dallas, although I was not always well treated. Then, about a year after I moved to Dallas I was asked to make a speech on "How to Write A Play" to a North Dallas theater group. The evening of the speech I was already on the podium when I saw the Kilpatricks come down the aisle (I recognized them, I suppose, from pictures I had seen). I immediately left the stage, and met them with a smile, in the aisle, before they could even be seated.

My speech probably bored them, but they sat through it, and I made a point of walking out with them. When I told them that I was the eldest great-grandsom of William Shorey Coodey, I didn't need to say more. They knew immediately who I was in Cherokee heirarchy. We never lost touch, after that, until Dr. Kilpatrick died.

Dr. Kilpatrick was all wrapped up in music, of course, and Anna and he both in teaching, but after meeting me they became interested in their Cherokee heritage (he was about 3/4 Cherokee, and she was a full-blood, as they say) and together they wrote many books and articles about Cherokees affairs in the next five years.

Southern Methodist University Press published their "Friends of Thunder: Folktales" in 1964. I have a copy, signed by both of them. Southwest Review, the quarterly magazine also published by SMU Press, printed some notable articles which Dr. Kilpatrick wrote alone, and other articles were printed in the SMU Journal of the Graduate Research Center. Oklahoma University printed several books. I helped with most of them, and at least with two of the books I personally typed the finished manuscripts (I typed more than 100 words per minute at that time).

I remember many visits to their two-story home in a nice section of Dallas just west of Highland Park, and several dinners to which Anna invited me. My friends invited us all to several parties at their homes, although the Kilpatricks were not really party people, and I tolerated North Dallas society with some bad grace, at times, I'm afraid.

In those years, about five years in all, people would ask me: "Prince, what are you doing these days?" and I would usually answer "I'm keeping Dr. Kilpatrick busy!"

With their academic credentials, the Kilpatricks' had no trouble in obtaining grants to do research into Cherokee folklore, prayers, incantations, and medicine, and I was trying to let them get that out of their system before I led them into more serious (to me) things, such as Cherokee history, which for the most part is written, as I always say, "By the white man, more from his ignorance than his knowledge!"

ONE AFTERNOON I asked Dr. Kilpatrick, "What do you know about an uprising among our Cherokee people -- the only one I ever heard of -- when the high priests were killed, or something..." He didn't even have to think, but responded immediately with: "The Kutani! I think you're talking about the Kutani! Yes, what about it?" His gaze became very intense. "What do you know about it?"

"Practically nothing." I had to admit.

"Where did you hear about it?" he seriously wanted to know.

"I suppose my great-grandmother told me," I said (I had already learned that I could attribute anything that came up to my great-grandmother -- she had been so old and so wise that no one would question that she had the knowledge).

"Undoubtedly,: he said. "They say that the people rose up and killed them all---"

"Cut off their heads, and threw their bodies in the river..."

"Didn't even give them the proper funeral pyre so their souls could go up into heaven!"

"Why would the people have done it? Cherokees have always revered their leaders -- their priests and kings!"

"What must they have done?" Dr. Kilpatrick asked. Thinking of the unfortunate Kutani, his dark eyes became lost in the unfathomable mysteries of Cherokees centuries past, as Cherokees are prone to do.

THAT KIND of interchange happened often when Dr. Kilpatrick and I talked about Cherokee matters. I was constantly amazed at his knowledge of the old ways, and I'm sure that he was about mine. I think it was through those conversations that he truly accepted me as a Cherokee prince, born out of season ... a prince in the old style ... none of this white-man's nonsense! A prince of the people!

One day we discussed my family history, which he readily acknowledged that his family could not match. But he was extremely proud of Anna's heritage: "She is a fullblood!" he said. "A Gritts, born and bred! A descendant of Sequoyah!"

"Very fine," I said. I remembered old Levi Gritts, who lived close to my great-grandmother on the east side of Muskogee when I was growing up. I knew that he was a fullblood, and extremely knowledgeable and respected, and probably a witch-doctor as well! I was very much in awe of him when I would see him walk down the street, very tall, straight and proud!

And I was delighted when, in his book "Sequoyah" published in limited special edition by Encino Press of Austin,Texas, that William Wittliff relates of Dr. Kilpatrick telling Margaret Hartley, editor of SMU Press, about Anna Gritts' ancestry, and when she asked about his own, he simply had said, "Oh, me, I'm just poor red trash!"

"But your great-great-grandfather!" Dr. Kilpatrick went on, talking to me. "Doyunit!" (I took that as a variation of William Shorey Coodey's name). "The little beavers! Ah... there was a man! Firstborn of Jane Ross! Nephew of John Ross! A prince of his people who stood up to the United States government and never backed down! Died much too soon! When will we ever have another like him?"

"I am here," I said. He never answered. He merely looked at me very seriously, and nodded, accepting me, my status, and my mission, as much as I had come to do.

I REMEMBER another evening. It was almost dark, and Dr. Kilpatrick and I had walked out their back door into their back yard, which joined all the other houses on the block, with a sidewalk down the middle. Their area was literally a shared park. We had already spoken of many things about Cherokee history, when Dr. Kilpatrick remarked: "The constitution ... which your great,

great-grandfather wrote! It didn't change the old Cherokee ways..."

"It was never intended to," I said. "The old ways were never done away with -- not by Cherokee law. They disappeared because the customs weren't adhered to anymore... through disuse, and the removal and the tragedies to which Cherokees suffered for several generations."

"It was supposed to be so much window-dressing," Dr. Kilpatrick said. "To show to the outside world that we had a government just like, and equal to, the government of the United States of America, as well."

"It was supposed to hold off the white man, who would never be smart enough to look beneath it -- so that the old ways could go on, and coexist with the new."

"It was supposed to hold the Cherokee ways together." Dr. Kilpatrick said. "But it failed!" he spat out, bitterly.

"William Shorey Coodey died too soon!" I said. "I'm sure he would have restored some of the old ways, and reclaimed his own, true status, had he lived a little longer."

"And if John Ross had gotten out of his way!" Dr. Kilpatrick said.

It was my turn to be astonished. "How do you know such things?" I asked.

"Its right there in the history books," he answered. "It's perfectly plain, if you know what you're reading, and read it with a Cherokee mind." Then his eyes narrowed down and grew shrewd. "How do you know it?" he asked me, with intense curiosity.

"Great-grandmother told me," I said. He accepted that, and so did I. But had she really? I was so young when she first began to educate me that I no longer knew what I remembered and what had been born into me, or what I had absorbed by osmosis, or what I had read, or what I had dreamed. And did it really matter? I was a royal prince, born ... born to a heritage ... born to a purpose. I had known that since I was about twelve years old, and had realized not only that I was also a throwback to the old, old Cherokees who lived in time immemorial.

ONE EVENING Anna Kilpatrick telephoned and invited me to their home to meet Dr. Kilpatrick's sister who was visiting from Europe. Her name was Melodese, and she had lived many places in the world with her husband who was, I believe, in the military service.Although they were divorced, and she had a son and a daughter living in the USA, she had chosen to remain in Madrid, Spain, where she was an artist (painter) of some note. She maintained both her home and her studio there.

Melodese Kilpatrick Whitaker turned out to be a very charming woman (of course, she was Dr. Kilpatrick's sister). We had a fabulous conversation, and got to know one another. Since she was leaving the next day, they wanted her to come over to my apartment to see some of my historical things, and antiques and artwork. So we got into separate cars and they followed me to my apartment, which was less than two miles away. The Kilpatricks had visited me there many times, of course, when Dr. Kilpatrick picked up an antique mandolin (given to me by Mattie Fair of Muskogee) which had a string missing. The missing string mattered not to him -- he was so accomplished that he just bypassed that and made its music on a good string!

We went over my scrapbook of newspaper clippings, and photographs, and I showed Melodese some of the historical papers which I owned, but before they took Melodese back to their home, Dr. Kilpatrick asked for me to show her something that I had written down -- one of those thoughts which I considered worth saving. I did so, and she was so impressed and touched that she asked me to write it for her in my own handwriting, and to sign it for her. I did so. It said simply, "What a world is that, that even the young gods must suffer as other men!"

The next day she left for Dallas, and I never again saw Melodese Kilpatrick Whitaker, but later I received a photograph of her and a short write-up in the city where she next went to visit her son. She told about meeting me in the newspaper interview.

WITH THE publications of their books came the awards that the Kilpatricks' books earned. There was the "Historical Book of the Year" award from the Texas Institute of Letters, and many others. When the announcements of the awards came out in the Dallas papers, I would gather up extra copies (this was before copy machines became so prevalent) and would show up at their front door with a big grin on my face! One late afternoon I had done just that, when Anna was busy in the kitchen and Dr. Kilpatrick and I were talking in the living room.

I remember the look on his face when I told him: "Dr. Kilpatrick, I am not the slightest bit ambitious for you. I just want the Pulitzer Award and the Nobel Prize for you in the next three years!"

His dark eyes blinked a few times, and his belly shook a little while he absorbed this monumentally ambitious feat; then he leaned forward with a glimmer in his eyes and announced: "I think that's a very sensible time-table!"

How I loved that! He just swallowed it quickly, accepted the fact that it could and should be done, and then merely made a comment about the timing! How like him!

I believe it was at that same session that I commented about his remarkable vocabulary and his use of the English language. I delicately suggested that he quite frequently went over most people's heads (not to mention that his writings frequently sent me running for the dictionary), and suggested that he write something simple -- something simple and classic. He did so, and a few months later the Southwest Review published three short, delightful tales about the adventures and people he and Anna had encountered while doing their research. It was called "Cherokee Suite", and when I first read it I went into ecstasy. That article alone should have won for him the Pulitzer Award.

ONE AFTERNOON I was visiting the Kilpatricks' when Dr. Kilpatrick said, "Oh, we just had a big packet from Oklahoma.They're going to erect a Cherokee village the way it was two hundred years ago. They even sent us the architectural drawings." He pulled them out, put them on the dining room table, and handed them to me to inspect. Almost immediately, I said, "This isn't right! Where did they get such a crazy idea as that?"

"What is it?" Dr. Kilpatrick asked.

"This roof," I said, pointing to one of the "huts" depicted. "Flat boards on a slanting roof, held down by big rocks! No way!"

He took one look and then called for Anna. She came, we all looked, and Anna said: "No. This isn't right!"

"And why are they so small?" I asked. "Do they think that Cherokees had a dearth of building materials? I won't have this. If they build it this way I'll see that it's destroyed from the earth!"

Needless to say, that mistake was corrected (we hope) but it does point out how little that people with Cherokee blood know about their heritage, customs, and ways.

SEVERAL people warned me about my association with Dr. Kilpatrick. They asked me if I didn't know that they had a close association with W. W. Keeler, who was then (by his own assumption) the Principal Chief of the Cherokees (Oklahoma) and Chairman of the Board of Phillips Petroleum Co. I told them that yes, I was aware of it, and I knew that Chief Keeler had helped them get the grants each summer to do the Cherokee research, and that the Kilpatricks were the main pipeline of information about my activities. I also believed that Dr. and Mrs. Kilpatrick would never betray me (if, indeed, they had the chance) or wish to cause me harm in any way. So far as I know, they never did.

IN THE SUMMER of 1964, I was put upon by everybody. There were several Federal government agencies causing me trouble, and I was blackballed everywhere I went to get a job. Finally I had enough of it, and I was very disturbed about the Civil Rights Act which had just been passed. Oh, the Act itself was fine, but all you could hear from the newsmedia was "blacks and whites", "negroes and whites". So I decided to picket the main United States building in downtown Dallas, 1114 Commerce st. I was coming out fighting, as usual.

I prepared my signs to read: "Black and white? No! Black, white, yellow, red and brown!" In other words, I was making the point that the law said ALL races, not just two!

I appeared in front of the building one day with my sign, wearing navy trousers, a white coat and navy-blue tie, wearing four rings and a large stickpin of baroque sapphires and rubies, and wearing my red-and-yellow feather crown. About an hour later it was ten o'clock break time, and I have never seen such an influx of people who poured from the building! Finally appeared Madeleine Henry, with whom I had once worked at a government agency, and she told me that the whole building knew that I was there within 30 minutes. They had simply had to come out during their break to see me.

The same thing happened at noon -- and a kind friend who was a secretary at the Adolphus Hotel, a block away, sent me some lunch. Another old friend showed up with a cold soda-pop in the afternoon, and some funny things happened.

At that time, of course, I knew practically no black people at all. No one did, because we never had a chance to encounter them, as they could not eat (before this) in regular restaurants or use the white restrooms. We had been almost totally segregated, so had had no contact. My friends did not know how the blacks would take to my picket-sign, but it didn't take me long to find out. A group of black men, I'd say 17 to 19 years of age, stood and watched me for some time. I became a little apprehensive, but didn't dare show it, of course. Finally one stopped me, and said, "Good for you! You're exactly right! Someone need to say it, and we know what they did to your people."

"You do?" I asked. "How do you know that?"

"We've studied it in our schools," he said.

I felt somewhat relieved.

Later, a television crew showed up and I did a short interview, watched by a lot of people! I became aware that the auto traffic had picked up considerably, and everyone was driving by, gawking, and even the city busses were slowing down to watch and hear.

Later in the afternoon, while I was talking into a microphone for KRLD (a very powerful radio station sometimes heard all over the country), a Dallas police officer showed up, listened a few minutes, then went inside.

A few minutes later I was stopped by an elderly black man. "Can I speak with you?" he asked.

"Of course," I replied.

He said, "You,ve seen me come and go, today." I nodded. "I delivers here." I nodded again that I had noticed him.

"When I came by a while ago I seen the bulls watching you." He leaned forward eagerly. "Don't let them run you off," he urged. "You got your rights!"

I'm afraid my eyes misted over slightly as I touched his arm in appreciation, and resumed my march. My soul was almost exultant, and I was very much aware of how ironic it was that I, a native prince, was being assured by an imported black man that I had my own rights in my own country!

A WHILE LATER the Dallas police officer reappeared. He came up to me and said, "The phone lines have been busy to Washington. They say you're too hot to handle. Just don't block any exits!" I assured him that I would not.

Channel 4 television carried their interview with me on the 6PM news, the 10PM, and again on the 6:30AM news the next morning. Another TV station did almost as good. But strangely enough, Dallas's two daily newspapers, who had printed a great deal about me before, including feature articles with pictures, did not print one word! It was many years later that I learned that some government official in Washington, DC, had asked them not to do so. They complied. As I write this, so many years later, I realize that would not be possible today, and that the newsmedia even print things adverse to the government (as it is run) and government officials (as they behave). They didn't, in 1964, and for some years thereafter, and one, in those days, could not even find a lawyer who would help give you protection or redress against a government office. How times have changed.

I picketed for 2 days to make my point, which was a valid one. Then I had a call from Dr. Kilpatrick. "Let's sit this one out!" he warned. "Let THEM fight it out!" I assured him that I had made my point, and that was all I planned to do. I was aware that someone may have asked him to get me to back off -- but was also aware that he was probably genuinely worried for me. A few weeks later he informed me that the woman who was head of the Dallas office (in that very government building that I had picketed) of the Bureau of Ind. Affairs, had been given a temporary assignment elsewhere. She had been temporarily replaced, Dr. Kilpatrick informed me, by a man with Cherokee blood. I got the point. In other words, if I did any more, I was to be "shot down", so to speak, by one of my own people! How clever the dirty devils are!

ON ONE VISIT something had been written about me in the newspapers, in connection with the world famous astrologer, Elbert Wade, who had done my horoscope some time before. Dr. Kilpatrick said, "I don't understand your interest in astrology. It isn't Cherokee."

I said, "I believe this is a total universe, and that everything in it is affecting everything else, and being affected by it."

He considered this a full moment, then said: "When you put it that way, it's very Cherokee!"

I REMEMBER one Friday morning in the fall when I was publicity chairman of the Dallas Gem & Mineral Club's annual show. It was at Market Hall, about a mile from where I lived. I got there early, and saw the show off to a good start, when I went back home for some reason. It was a good thing I did, for Dr. Kilpatrick phoned almost immediately. It seemed that the University of Oklahoma Press had called him, wanting an Index for the book they were about to print. Dr. Kilpatrick explained that they wanted the Index by Monday mail, if it would be possible. He wanted me to type it, offered me a good price to do it (I hadn't earned a dime in so long that my savings had become exhausted), and I readily agreed, as I had done all I could do at the gem show, anyway.

He brought the material to me a few minutes later -- and I groaned when I saw it, because most of the words in the Index were Cherokee names and words, and there are no characters on the typewriter for some of the special markings. Quickly I realized that I would have to break the words up, with a space between the syllables for the special pronunciation markings, which he would have to insert by hand. It seemed an almost impossible job, and there were more than a dozen pages, so I got to work on it, and got it to him by early Saturday afternoon. He spent the rest of the day and into Sunday finishing it up, then had to mail it special to Norman, Oklahoma.

On Tuesday he phoned again. OU Press had called him to comment on the Index. When they saw how it was done they were just overwhelmed. They said it was the most unbelievable typing job they had ever seen, and to please congratulate the typist. That pleased me, of course, but when I thought of what some poor typesetter was going to go through, I realized that I had had the easy part.

I HAD KNOWN known the Kilpatricks very well for several years, when they received a phone call about me while I was visiting one afternoon. "An inquiry about me?" I asked.

"Oh, yes," they said. "We get several calls a day. Have for years."

"What did they want to know?"

"Just the usual," I was told.

"What's that?" I asked.

"They always ask the same things. Is he real?"

I laughed. This was in the mid-sixties when there were a lot of reports of "flying saucers" and strange sightings which the authorities were trying to attribute to natural phenomena. "Why don't you tell them that I'm swamp gas?" I asked, laughing (like the government was trying to pass off those strange moving lights in the sky). "I'm a mirage!" It came to be a big joke between us.

ONE SUNDAY afternoon Dr. Kilpatrick informed me that he had been asked to speak at a luncheon which the officials of SMU gave once a month for prominent Dallas businessmen and supporters of the University. We talked over the things that we thought he should cover in the speech, while he made notes. I knew his ingenious mind would be quite busy until the speech was prepared, but his mind must have been full when he slipped on the wintry ice near the university and injured his leg. He had suffered from gout for years, and didn't need further annoyance, but as usual he went ahead.

The day of the speech I waited patiently until after three o'clock, when I thought he might be home, before I telephoned him.

"How did the speech go?" I asked.

"Magnificently!" he said. "I was introduced by the President of the University, Dr. Willis Tate, as the greatest scholar on the SMU campus! They all knew about our books, of course, but when I told them the truth about Cherokee history they were just overwhelmed!"

"What about the Questions & Answer session afterwards?" I asked, referring to my favorite time when speech-making, when your main speech is over and the audience can get at you.

"Very interesting," he said.

"What kinds of questions did they ask?"

"Well," he said, "first up was a distinguished, silver-haired businessman -- very prominent -- you'd know his name if I told you."

"What did he ask?" I inquired.

"He got to his feet and asked, 'Do you know this Cherokee prince we read so much about in the papers'."

I started to laugh. "What did you tell him?"

"I told him," he snapped, "that indeed I did! So he asked, Is he real?"

I was laughing out loud again. "What did you say?" I prompted. I could almost sense his eyes beading down for the kill.

"I told him that indeed he was! That his ancestors were ruling the Cherokee nation thousands of years ago while your ancestors were painting their bodies blue and swinging in the trees of Central Europe!"

IT WAS NOT long after that that Dr. Kilpatrick died. Suddenly. He had made an emergency trip to St. Louis to get Jack, Jr. who had been in an automobile accident, and in the hospital. They had stopped at my home town, Muskogee, on their way home, and while in a restaurant, immediately after lunch, Dr. Kilpatrick suffered a fatal heart attack.

I missed Dr. Kilpatrick greatly, and then Anna sold the big house in Dallas and moved back to Northeastern Oklahoma, where she was a celebrity, of course, and probably the greatest living authority of our time on the Cherokee language, which she spoke fluently. Her translations of Cherokee text is a lasting monument to her.

Of Dr. Kilpatrick's death I wrote to his old newspaper, the Dallas Times Herald, and they printed it verbatim under the caption, CHEROKEES MOURN:

"The tributes to the late Dr. Jack Frederick Kilpatrick have been greatly appreciated,

particularly that of your music critic, Mr. Eugene Lewis.

The sudden death of a great man is always deeply felt, but when he is a genius of

several talents it is a devastating tragedy. Dr. Kilpatrick was a noted scholar and

educator, a famous composer, brilliant award-winning author, great recanteur and

a compelling speaker.

He was the greatest person of Cherokee blood of this century, and my good

friend, ally, and confidant.

Prince Donald of Tsalagi (the Cherokee Nations)

AFTER Dr. Kilpatrick died there was a great void in my life. I had just begun to recover, about a year later, when I was informed that my own father, Oukah and Emperor, was very ill and not expected to leave the hospital! I was panic stricken, for I knew that the moment he died that I would become Oukah and Emperor, and that I would do so publicly again for the first time in more than a hundred years, and that I would try to make it mean something again. It would have been so much easier with Dr. Kilpatrick alive, for I had begun to depend greatly upon his advise and counsel.

Dr. Kilpatrick died about one year before my father, so that he never got to know me as Oukah and Emperor. But I'm sure that he believed that I would be a good one.

After my father died I waited a respectful seven weeks before assuming his titles and positions. When I finally did so, in writing, I asked a white friend and a Cherokee friend to witness the document. The Cherokee friend was Dr. Kilpatrick's oldest son, Jack, Jr.

- OUKAH

Dallas, Texas

March 25, 1999

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