them. As readers, we get a sense of what life was like for these people living at this particular time, as well as gaining a deeper appreciation of the social, political and cultural context of this place. Although storytelling is an important and rich tradition in many
Native communities and stories bring to life our connections to nature, the land and communities, as a novelist, Margaret had to dig deep to collect the stories that would inform the narrative of her novel. No matter whether it’s hearing about the shared, collective experience of family gatherings or opinions about politics and the most ordinary events, Margaret’s writing is richly informed by these stories of our lives. Margaret is the kind of writer who asks our family members a lot of questions and who wants to know not only what happened, but why. She has researched the family and tribal histories and archives,
through extensive reading and a lot of conversations with family mem- bers over a lifetime. She also gives careful consideration to place, having spent a lot of time on these lands, rivers and streams, and through di- rect encounters with all the inhabitants of this place – both people and animals, their natures and behaviors. This is all rich source material that informs her writing. Maud’s Line is fi lled with the deeper truths that stem from these stories. Margaret based the character Blue, who is Maud’s uncle, on the
personality of our great uncle Bill Anderson. Bill taught Margaret so much, including how to fi sh the treacherous Arkansas River, how to identify birds from their particular nests and how to stand still and not panic when bees are swarming. Remarkable people like Bill provided Margaret with rich material that informed the novel. In crafting Maud’s imaginative story, Margaret has created fi ction both about a particular individual as well as one that at its core is about a family and their community. Before Oklahoma became a state in 1907, when Oklahoma Territory
and Indian Territory were joined, and before the allotments were estab- lished, these lands were communal property for Indian nations. Through a complicated process run by the Dawes Commission, the communal lands were divided and allotted to individual members of Indian nations. The shift from communal to individual ownership as Indian communi- ties were stripped of their lands was unsettling and had consequences at the community, family and individual levels. How poignant that the stated purpose of the General Allotment Act (or Dawes Act) was to as- similate Native people into the American mainstream. In 1898, the Cur- tis Act amended the Dawes Act to bring about the allotment of lands of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee and Seminole. At the heart of this matter, the Tribes were forced to break from the land base in preparation for Oklahoma becoming a state. The enormous social, economic and political changes and upheav- als of these early decades of the 20th
century – both in this brand new
state and globally – set the stage for this story. Margaret articulates the nuances of these profound changes in her writing, coupled with her observations of the particulars of place and personalities. Maud’s story is situated between the two World Wars and before the Depres- sion, and just prior to some of the most signifi cant changes in national Indian policy in the country. While Margaret’s novel is a good read and a terrifi c story, it also informs us about the daily effects of rural poverty specifi c to this historical period. The novel’s 18-year-old heroine Maud Nail is a spirited character navigating her way in the world.
“At eighteen, she was fi t, dark and tall like the rest of her mother’s family and most of her tribe. She was more of a willow than an oak,
KEY EVENTS SURROUNDING THE 1928 SETTING OF MAUD’S LINE:
1838–39: Forced removal of the Cherokee Indians from their life-long homes.
1841: Tahlequah in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) becomes the capital of Cherokee Nation.
1887: Dawes Act (also known as General Allotment Act) authorizes the U.S. President to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians. Those who accepted allot- ments would be granted United States citizenship.
1898: The Curtis Act amends the Dawes Act to include the Chero- kee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee and Seminole tribes, and calls for tribal governments to be abolished by 1906.
1898–1907: The Dawes Commission enrolls approximately 100,000 Indians in the “Five Civilized Tribes.”
1907: The tribal rolls are closed. Oklahoma is formed from Indian Territory and the Oklahoma Territory and becomes the 46th
State. 1914–18: World War I. (U.S. enters in 1917.)
1927: Great Mississippi Flood, the greatest national disaster in U.S. history to that time.
1928: Setting for Maud’s Line in Eastern Oklahoma As a result of the Curtis Act, at the time the novel is set, the Cherokees didn’t have a chief or a government and Cherokee children born after the completion of the Dawes Enrollment are not even offi cially recognized as Indians.
1929: The Great Depression begins.
and her fi gure and personality had grown pleasing to every male within a twenty-mile radius, to some of the women, too, and to most of the animals.”
Early in the novel, Maud meets a white man named Booker, some-
one from outside her world and a peddler, who gives her a copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and some Woodbury soap. Maud is a serious reader – she has read many books, including Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities – and aspires to know about the world beyond her own. Throughout the novel, this character faces the dilemmas of what
kind of life she wants to lead, what life might be possible for her, and how to balance her love of her family and traditions with this outside world she has now encountered. How Indian people have agency and voice in the world is an important question to ponder, and through the medium of storytelling, Margaret explores this question with keen observation and feeling. X
John Haworth(Cherokee) is the senior executive at National Museum of the American Indian-New York.
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 43
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