Mary Ruth Barnes \u201973 grew up in Oklahoma City, Okla., hearing family stories about her Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw heritage. Even today in conversation, she uses some of the words she learned in the Chickasaw language. There\u2019s \u201chatalhposhik,\u201d the word for \u201cbutterfly,\u201d and \u201ckap\u2019pasi\u2019,\u201d which means, \u201cIt is cold outside.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Barnes\u2019 favorite word, \u201cFoshi\u2019,\u201d shares its meaning with the title of her 2021 historical novel Little Bird.<\/em> That was the nickname of her Choctaw-Cherokee great-great grandmother, Esther McLish, whom the novel follows through her travails of having a child and four husbands die. The novel also traces her journey as she proves her son\u2019s heritage to the U.S. government before the Dawes Commission. It operated in the 1890s to determine who could be designated as a Native American and, thus, be eligible to receive an allotment of land from the federal government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI wanted people all over the United States to understand about the Dawes Commission,\u201d says Barnes, who lives in Ada, Okla. <\/p>\n\n\n
\nLittle Bird, a novel by Mary Ruth Barnes \u201973<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n
\u201c . . .\u2009we\u2019re trying as a people here, as a Chickasaw nation to uplift that culture.\u201d \u2013 Mary Ruth Barnes \u201973<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Barnes, 75, drew upon the stories she\u2019d heard her whole life to find numerous primary historical sources that serve as the basis for McLish\u2019s story chronicled in Barnes\u2019 first novel. \u201cI found 78 pages on [McLish] and her interviews with the Dawes commissioners,\u201d Barnes says. \u201cAnd bless her heart, she had to retell the story over and over again. She might get in a wagon and take five kids and travel two weeks to have a 30-minute interview. She was determined to get that allotment.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Barnes, the novel (and its sequel about Esther\u2019s daughter Ella, set to be released in 2024) serves as her commitment to story-telling and honoring her Chickasaw heritage. \u201cThis is how they maintained their culture, telling the stories that their grandparents told them and passing it on down,\u201d says Barnes, who was inducted into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame in Sulphur, Okla., this year. \u201cAnd we\u2019re trying as a people here, as a Chickasaw nation to uplift that culture.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false,"raw":"\n\n\n\n\n
Mary Ruth Barnes \u201973 grew up in Oklahoma City, Okla., hearing family stories about her Cherokee, Choctaw and Chickasaw heritage. Even today in conversation, she uses some of the words she learned in the Chickasaw language. There\u2019s \u201chatalhposhik,\u201d the word for \u201cbutterfly,\u201d and \u201ckap\u2019pasi\u2019,\u201d which means, \u201cIt is cold outside.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Barnes\u2019 favorite word, \u201cFoshi\u2019,\u201d shares its meaning with the title of her 2021 historical novel Little Bird.<\/em> That was the nickname of her Choctaw-Cherokee great-great grandmother, Esther McLish, whom the novel follows through her travails of having a child and four husbands die. The novel also traces her journey as she proves her son\u2019s heritage to the U.S. government before the Dawes Commission. It operated in the 1890s to determine who could be designated as a Native American and, thus, be eligible to receive an allotment of land from the federal government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI wanted people all over the United States to understand about the Dawes Commission,\u201d says Barnes, who lives in Ada, Okla. <\/p>\n\n\n\nLittle Bird, a novel by Mary Ruth Barnes \u201973<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\u201c . . .\u2009we\u2019re trying as a people here, as a Chickasaw nation to uplift that culture.\u201d \u2013 Mary Ruth Barnes \u201973<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Barnes, 75, drew upon the stories she\u2019d heard her whole life to find numerous primary historical sources that serve as the basis for McLish\u2019s story chronicled in Barnes\u2019 first novel. \u201cI found 78 pages on [McLish] and her interviews with the Dawes commissioners,\u201d Barnes says. \u201cAnd bless her heart, she had to retell the story over and over again. She might get in a wagon and take five kids and travel two weeks to have a 30-minute interview. She was determined to get that allotment.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Barnes, the novel (and its sequel about Esther\u2019s daughter Ella, set to be released in 2024) serves as her commitment to story-telling and honoring her Chickasaw heritage. \u201cThis is how they maintained their culture, telling the stories that their grandparents told them and passing it on down,\u201d says Barnes, who was inducted into the Chickasaw Hall of Fame in Sulphur, Okla., this year. \u201cAnd we\u2019re trying as a people here, as a Chickasaw nation to uplift that culture.\u201d <\/p>\n"},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mary Ruth Barnes \u201973 shares the story of her Native American great-great grandmother.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":2512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"source":"","ncst_custom_author":"","ncst_show_custom_author":false,"ncst_dynamicHeaderBlockName":"ncst\/default-post-header","ncst_dynamicHeaderData":"{\"showAuthor\":true,\"showDate\":true,\"showFeaturedVideo\":false,\"subtitle\":\"Mary Ruth Barnes \u201973 shares the story of her Native American great-great grandmother.\",\"displayCategoryID\":5,\"caption\":\"\"}","ncst_content_audit_freq":"","ncst_content_audit_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[237,238,322,712,770,861],"_ncst_magazine_issue":[],"displayCategory":{"term_id":5,"name":"Best Bets","slug":"best-bets","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":39,"filter":"raw"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2510"},{"taxonomy":"_ncst_magazine_issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.ncsu.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_ncst_magazine_issue?post=2510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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