No™5r' ^^^' CHRONICLES OF WOLFTOWN — KILPATRICK 7 



1874). Several living individuals in Sequoyah County are named 

 Ino:li, We have never encountered an Oklahoma Cherokee, how- 

 ever, to whom this name was meaningful. The black fox is said to 

 be but a mutation of the common red fox. Apparently it is so rarely 

 seen in the Oklahoma Ozarks that it has no special designation. If 

 at one time the black fox was called inodi by aU the Cherokees, 

 those in the West have forgotten the fact. Be that as it may, the 

 Ino:li of "The Inoli Letters" was known to the Whites as "Black 

 Fox." 



Only in one document in the collection do we obtain any clue as to 

 when Ino:li was born, and nowhere do we learn where he was born, 

 although from his dialect it is safe to assume that his parents lived in 

 southern North Carolina. The entries upon it constitute a jumble of 

 demographic data, with dates ranging from 1861 to 1870; from them, 

 however, one can deduce that Ino:li was born in May 1817. This is 

 sadly at variance with the Terrell RoU (MS., 1860, p. 6) upon which 

 one finds the age 31 given for "No. 159 Eno-la or Black Fox." If this 

 be correct, and "Eno-la" be our Ino:li, 1829 was the year of his 

 birth. Since Ino:li's own statement is not clear, and inasmuch as 

 every roll that was ever made of the Cherokees contained inaccuracies, 

 we leave the question an open one. 



That Inoili knew and remembered the horrors of Removal and the 

 heroism of defiance is evidenced in documents not incorporated into 

 this study. And while, as we see, he recorded the petty debts and 

 personal animosities of Wolftown with a plodding pen, he could rise 

 upon wings in recalling the fugitive days of death upon the mountains 

 and the spirit of camaraderie that was "a column of flames." 



The date of Inorli's death, July 5, 1885, is hardly subject to doubt; 

 it is recorded in a ledger book of sacred formulas collected by Mooney 

 (Gadigwanasti, MS., p. 95). It will be seen that no matter which 

 date of birth we accept, Ino:li by no means died "at an advanced 

 age" — not by Cherokee standards. 



That Ino:H occupied various public posts among his people is 

 strongly indicated in The Inoli Letters, and we know for a certainty 

 that for a number of years he was clerk of Wolftown. A much more 

 complete pictm-e of what his duties in this position were no doubt can 

 be obtained if his.;lost record ledger, at one time in the archives of the 

 Bm*eau of American Ethnology and described by Pilling (1888, p. 185) 

 as "Council records of the Cherokee settlement of Painttown [sic for 

 Wolftown]," is ever recovered. 



Among his papers we find documents that record some of Ino:li's 

 activities as a Methodist preacher and as a noncommissioned ojEcer 

 (he appears to have been a sergeant) in the Confederate service. He 

 was also a medicine man, but the documents that pertain to this facet 



