Reading post: The Cherokee Night

This week I finished my seventh item for the Classics Challenge: The Cherokee Night by [Rollie] Lynn Riggs (Cherokee). Since it's a play, it fulfills category #12, "A classic play." It premiered in 1932 and was published in 1936. I originally got this (in a different collection) from the library, but eventually decided to buy a copy: the version I got was published in 2003 by the University of Oklahoma Press with two other plays by Riggs (including "Green Grow the Lilacs," which the musical "Oklahoma!" was based on) which I also read, for a little context. I don't feel as though I know much about Riggs -- there is a biography, but of course our library doesn't have it. Wikipedia and random internet articles will have to do.

I knew when I started reading through my list for the Challenge that I would get to a point where the books would talk to each other, and I think I have reached that point. The key is that so many of them are by writers with Cherokee heritage. This is my third and there will be at least one more. It's particularly striking because Lynn Riggs grew up outside Claremore, Oklahoma -- the hometown of the last author I read, Will Rogers. In fact, the character Laurey, in "Green Grow the Lilacs," is referred to as "the belle of Claremore," something that wouldn't have meant anything to me if I hadn't just read that biography of Rogers. Lynn Riggs was born in 1899, 20 years after Rogers (and 72 years after John Rollin Ridge, my first Cherokee author), so this is the next generation. Rogers got the chance to be a cowboy, but Riggs couldn't have even if he'd wanted to -- the open range was gone. That's part of what he writes about.

I've always liked "Oklahoma!" I had the record of it when I was a kid (could have sworn I still had it, but I can't find it). My kids know that if anyone even mentions the name of the state I'm liable to break into a spirited rendition of the title song. It's so interesting to find out that the original play, "Green Grow the Lilacs," was also a musical, but the songs were traditional folk songs, including the title lyric. Riggs wasn't pleased to have them replaced by show tunes in "Oklahoma!" It's also so very interesting to realize that some/all? of the characters in the play were intended to be part Cherokee, like Riggs. It's only mentioned at the very end of the play, when Aunt Eller accuses the neighbors who have come to take Curley back to jail of being "furriners" -- in other words, Americans, because the story is taking place in Indian Territory. (Remember the song from the musical, "The farmer and the cowman"? "Territory folks should stick together; territory folks should all be pals..." My little sister and her husband at one point learned all the words to that song and danced to it.) Oklahoma isn't a state yet. And the neighbors reply that they aren't "furriners," they're just "plumb full of Indian blood." Wow, if that's anywhere in the musical I must have missed it.

"The Cherokee Night" doesn't hide its characters' origins. The play is about what it means to be an Indian in the modern world. Specifically what it means to be Cherokee, but Scene 6 is about their Osage neighbors (their historical enemies), too. The Osage tribe is famous for having oil on their reservation, and for having retained the mineral rights, so in the early part of the 20th century many of the tribe's members became very wealthy very quickly. Scene 6 presents a very stereotypical view of them, somewhat out of synch with the rest of the play.

I can see why this play is considered an important work, especially within Native American literature, and I can also see why it hasn't been produced much since the 1930s. The play consists of seven scenes, with an intermission after the fourth. Each scene takes place in a different year: 1915, 1927, 1931, 1906, 1913, 1919, and 1895, in that order. I'm sure in 1932 people had a sense of the differences between those times, but that knowledge would have faded quickly. For example, in Scene 2, Bee is described as wearing "the clothes of 1927." Anyone have any idea what those were?

At the start of the play we're introduced to six young people, five of whom figure in later scenes as well. I got some sense of the characters here, but during the rest of the play I had to keep flipping back to the People list to remind myself of who was who and why they were important. I can imagine that I might be very confused were I to watch the play being performed, especially since the characters appear at different ages and in some cases their relatives appear and we're supposed to understand who they are, remember their last names and so on. There are 30 different people in the cast, plus extras. It's a lot to keep track of.

Some of the scenes are much stronger than others. Some probably require more background than I have to understand them. Scene 5 is about the members of a renegade "church" near Tahlequah, Oklahoma. I'm guessing this is making reference to an actual church or religious movement, but I know nothing about it. Scene 4 would have to be somewhat rewritten were the play to be performed today, because of its constant use of the n-word to refer to Black characters.

All that said, the play is a moving exploration of what it means to be Cherokee in the modern world (at least the world of the 1930s), or half Cherokee, or even one-eighth Cherokee (like Jon Gray, current pitcher for the Colorado Rockies -- I learned that today while following links). There aren't any real answers given, but lots of questions. At the end, an older full-blood Indian called John Gray-Wolf expresses the opinion that everyone around him needs to be more Indian, not less, not try to deny themselves. But what that would mean for some of the characters -- for Riggs himself -- isn't really clear.