Chickasaw Country

Happy Indigenous People's Day! By pure chance and serendipity, this post is due to be published on October 11, 2021, on the very first year that a US president has officially recognized the day as a holiday within the federal government.

We stopped at the Chickasaw Cultural Center on our drive back to Texas from Oklahoma City. It ended up being one of the best and most interesting experiences of our trip to Oklahoma! The Chickasaw Nation is the 13th largest federally recognized tribe in the United States, and currently governs a large piece of territory in southern Oklahoma.

When we stepped out of the car at the visitor's center, the first thing we saw was a large statue of a Chickasaw warrior. The bronze sculpture, entitled The Warrior, was designed and cast by former Oklahoma Legislator and Principal Chief of the Seminole Nation Enoch Kelly Haney, the very same artist who made The Guardian, which sits atop the big dome at the Oklahoma capitol building.

"You're just in time for the Stomp Dance", the woman working at the front desk told us as we arrived, "it starts in the Cultural Village in about half an hour."

What luck! We had no idea that we would be lucky enough to witness this special ceremony. We made our way across the beautiful gardens of the cultural center to the Aba' Aanowa' Sky Pavilion, a viewing platform that soars 40 feet above the recreation and living museum of a traditional Chickasaw village.

The view was magnificent, and looked out over the wide green field where the cultural village and fire circle was located. Further back, we could see the mound, an important part of the Chickasaw culture and traditional spiritual practice.

The cultural village is a recreation of a traditional Chickasaw village. Each of the buildings is a part of a museum exhibit, and when you walk inside, a recorded talk about the architecture and culture of the building is played.

First, we visited the meeting lodge, a big pyramidal building which would serve as the meeting place and ceremonial hall for the tribe, and was traditionally the center of tribal government.

A traditional Chickasaw village has two types of houses: winter houses and summer houses. Summer houses are square and breezy. In fact, the buildings are constructed in such a way that the walls, which are not fully attached to the frame of the house, can be removed during sunny days to allow a cool breeze through the house.

When the weather got cold, families would move into a winter house. Winter houses were built of thick material, and were constructed in a spiral sort of pattern to block the cold air from coming into the round house. 

A fire would be built in the center of the house, and would be kept burning throughout the winter, keeping the icy Oklahoma chill out of the cozy homes.

The mound is the center of traditional Chickasaw spiritual life. A structure, or temple, known as the "Sacred Fire" would be built on top of the mound. The fire was made of four logs, each one facing in one of the cardinal directions, and was tended to night and day by lowachi, or fire priests.

During the Green Corn Ceremony, which took place in the middle of the summer, the fire was ritually extinguished and renewed and relit by the public to ensure a year of bounty, spiritual purity, and societal order. As part of this ceremony, each family would take some of the sacred fire to use to light the fires in their own homes.

The Cultural Center was built to try to build understanding and for the Chickasaw Nation to share their culture with visitors, as well as to preserve their heritage through research and cultural activities. We were extremely fortunate to have arrived right on time to watch the stomp dance. A real stomp dance is a very spiritual event that takes place on the tribe's sacred ceremonial ground and can last all night. This one was a smaller dance, and was narrated so that visitors could learn more of the Chickasaw Nation's unique culture.

We and a few other visitors sat on benches surrounding the stomp ground while the narrator introduced the dance. Then, we got to learn a bit about the instruments which are played during the dance. During a stomp dance, the men sing and chant, while the women stomp rhythmically with various types of rattles strapped to their legs to provide the rhythm and beat to the dance. Traditionally, these rattles were made of turtle shells filled with small pebbles.

Others were made of dozens of deer toes strapped to leather bands and worn around the legs, which made a sharp clicking sound.

The "modern" (19th century) version of the rattles ae made out of tin cans filled with pebbles. 

Today, any and all of these shakers are used during the stomp dance ceremony.

A stomp dance is a prayer. How long the prayer lasts "depends on what the subject is", the narrator told us. The stomp dance follows a call-and-response format, where a leader, sometimes carrying a tortoise shell rattle, sings out a line of chant, which is repeated by the other men in the line.

Traditionally, the dancers - alternating men and women - would hold hands and stomp and shuffle in a counter-clockwise circle around the ceremonial, or "mother", fire. Due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, however, the dancers at this stomp dance did not hold hands.

This wasn't a "real" stomp dance - there was no sacred fire, and visitors were allowed (even encouraged) to take photos and record video (generally forbidden). However, the prayers were real, sung in the Chickasaw language, and the dancers were genuine in their devotion to the ceremony. It was not only a beautiful cultural display, but also a surprisingly moving experience. 

The repetitive chanting and rhythmic stomping and shaking of the rattles was almost meditative, and I can understand why some native languages refer to it as the "inspirited dance". On a dark night around a flickering ceremonial fire, I can imagine the stomp dance would have been quite an astounding spiritual experience.

The stomp dance ended with a song played on a hand-carved flute. The song was beautiful - soft, deep, rich, and a bit sad. It was an echoing, haunting sort of melody, and was a beautiful way to end the ceremony.

Today the Chickasaw Nation is famous for producing beautiful art and handicrafts, including flutes like this. They are for sale at the Cultural Center's gift shop, but were far out of the reach of my budget!

Before leaving, we visited the Cultural Center's museum. It was a fantastic and very modern multi-media exhibition of the history of the Chickasaw Nation, which originated in the American southeast before being forced to march the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. There are also exhibits of the artifacts, culture, language, music, and famous people from the Chickasaw Nation.

Outside of the museum, an eternal flame is burning. This is the modern version of the sacred fire from the "fire temple" on top of the ancient mounds. It burns year-round to symbolize the perseverance of the Chickasaw Nation and of other Native American nations.

It was a hot day, but we took one last walk through the center's grounds before driving back to Texas. The last spot we visited before leaving was a fountain and garden dedicated to the most famous and influential members of the Chickasaw Nation.

Although this is the nation's cultural center, it's not the capital, which is about an hour away in Tishomingo. I wish we had had a little more time in Oklahoma! I would have loved to have visited the Chickasaw capitol building and the "Chickasaw White House". Maybe next time!

We also took a few minutes to feed the turtles in the pond before leaving.

Bonus video: Here's a very short video I took of the stomp dance ceremony. It's just a few seconds long, but I hope that it can give you a feel for what the stomp dance was like.