NoJts]^' ^^^' CHRONICLES OF WOLFTOWN — KILPATRICK 9 



bolster their failings with self-conscious mannerisms, The Inoli Letters 

 abound in clumsy pomposities that conceal what they attempt to 

 reveal. 



The Inoli Letters are rich in evidence that those Cherokees who 

 escaped the dragnet of the military did not all speak the same dialect, 

 just as those who came West did not, nor do their descendants today. 

 One of the pressing needs on Cherokee research is a study designed to 

 lay at rest the fallacy that there is an "Eastern" dialect and a "West- 

 ern" one. 



The system of notation employed in the literal translations in this 

 study is one that was devised by Floyd G. Lounsbury and Jack 

 Frederick Kilpatrick in March 1963. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



We acknowledge with deep gratitude the grant from the National 

 Science Foundation that made this study possible. 



We are much indebted to archivists and library officials who made 

 materials available and provided necessary services: Margaret C 

 Blaker, Bureau of American Ethnology; A. M. Gibson, University of 

 Oklahoma; Mattie Russell, Duke University; Richard H. Shryock, 

 American Philosophical Society; and Max Trent, Southern Methodist 

 University. 



Valuable suggestions and information were contributed by Wallace 

 L. Chafe and William C. Stm-tevant, Bureau of American Ethnology; 

 Raymond D. Fogelson, University of Washington; Floyd G. Louns- 

 bury, Yale University; Albert C. Outler and Claude Albritton, 

 Southern Methodist University. 



John D. Gillespie provided an index to the material, and several 

 Cherokee relatives and friends contributed to the solution of problems 

 in translation: Lois Ishcomer, William Jumper, Jack and Mary 

 Nofire, George Owl, and Jack Wolfe. 



THE WOLFTOWN CHRONICLES 



The nugget in the sands of The Inoli Letters and the other afore- 

 mentioned collections is to be found in those documents falling 

 within the first of the categories subsumed above (documents pertain- 

 ing to the civic affairs and cultural climate of Wolf town), for these 

 contain the data that do much toward enriching our knowledge of 

 Eastern Cherokee society in that ethnographically impoverished era, 

 1848-61, referred to by Fogelson and Kutsche (1961, p. 103). 



