Nol^TSr' ^^^' EASTERN CHEROKEE GROUPS — KUPFERER 307 



church, asked if I had heard the whippoorwills. "I don't like them," 

 she said. "Lula says that they are just httle birds, but I think they 

 are scary sounding." Owls also had a significance in the old order. 

 The children of one Generalized Indian family lolled one. Their 

 father said, in response to my query, "Oh, they've heard stories about 

 owls from the other kids." 



Certainly, fragments of the once large body of lore do hang on 

 among Generalized Indians and Rural Whites who live in closer 

 proximity to Conservatives than do people of the Middle Class. 

 Given man's tendencies to persist through long periods of time, we 

 should anticipate that some of these people will not have sloughed 

 off all the constituents of the old tradition. 



CONCEPT OF SELF 



Middle Class. — It became apparent to me very early in my associa- 

 tion with Middle Class Cherokees that self-rejection or ambivalence 

 over Indian ancestry was a fairly common phenomenon. Seven of 

 the ten informants used for the most intensive case analysis admitted 

 to conflicting emotions. Others by their remarks or by their be- 

 havior, also suggest some ambivalence. I shaU let a few of them 

 speak for themselves in the following examples. 



A young woman, a graduate of a small college, suspects that she 

 really has no Indian ancestry, or if she does, it is only 1/64 even 

 though she is listed as 1/16. She said, "Our family has always been 

 encouraged to marry White. My mother was White, and my grand- 

 father said to marry White." This young woman recognizes this 

 ambivalence in others and calls it "Indianitis." One evening she 

 asked me, "Do you think I'm in conflict over which group to identify 

 with; do you think I don't know whether I'm an Indian or a White?" 



I asked a White Indian, of about 50, whether he felt like an Indian. 

 He replied, "WeU, it depends; I'm proud of my Indian blood. You 

 know there's a saying, 'white skin but red heart.' " He continued, 

 "My kids are proud of their blood, too, but they don't think of them- 

 selves as Indians." This informant has had a problem with alcohol. 

 A relative said that his psychiatrist helped him to see that he had an 

 "inferiority complex over being an Indian." 



Another Middle Class woman exhibits what seems to be a high 

 degree of anxiety about herself. It comes out most frequently m 

 joking behavior. She often refers to Whites as her betters. She was 

 refused as a donor by the annual blood bank coUection. She talked 

 about this often in the days that followed, calling herself no good. 

 "All those 'pale faces' were giving blood and mine was no good; 

 that really hurt me." One evening some White visitors were dis- 

 cussing blood degrees. She said, "I'm 1/2 and that's enough." 



