Although only two generations removed from her granddaughter, Sarah Elizabeth Parks came from a different world. She signed the Dawes Rolls at the turn of the 20th century, when she was just 17, documenting her membership in one of the five Civilized Tribes of Indian Territory.
She also spoke a little of her native language, Cherokee.
Growing up in Bartlesville, Okla., that granddaughter, Becky Hobbs, was largely uninterested in her heritage.
She started playing the piano when she was 9 and soon was writing her own music because it was “a heck of a lot easier to make up my own songs than to read the little notes on a sheet of paper.”
By the time she was 15, Hobbs - clad in a miniskirt and go-go boots - was playing in Oklahoma’s firstall-girl rock band. From that point, there was never any looking back. She went on to Los Angeles, where her Midwest accent turned her into a country singer, she said.
“That was during the ‘Urban Cowboy’ craze, and I had more work than I could do,” she remembered.
Always a songwriter first, she landed a deal with Mercury Records in 1979 and moved to Nashville, Tenn., where she has written songs for Alabama - including “Angels Among Us” - Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Glen Campbell and Helen Reddy.
Through those years, her Cherokee heritage was left by the wayside. But in the early 1990s, an organization of the descendants of Nancy Ward - to whom Hobbs is directly related - sought out one of her songs as a theme.
“Pale Moon” and later “Let There Be Peace” marked a turning point, as Hobbs began a journey back to her homeland.
The result is “Nanyehi: Beloved Woman of the Cherokee,” a musical drama with a score by Hobbs and a script co-written with Nick Sweet, a freelance director and an Artist-in-Residence for the Oklahoma Arts Council. The show debuted a year ago in Georgia and will run for three performances this August in Tahlequah, Okla., as part of the Cherokee National Holiday.
Hobbs has become passionate about Nancy Ward, born Nanyehi in 1738 in what is now Tennessee. She married a Cherokee warrior named “Tsu-la” or Kingfisher about 1751 and rose to tribal prominence about 1755 during a battle with theMuskogee (Creek) Indians, according to a biography by David Hampton. As her descendant Dr. Emmet Starr, a Cherokee physician, told the story, she saw her husband killed in battle, picked up his rifle and continued the fight.
She was awarded the honorific “War Woman” and sometime later “Beloved Woman” or “Most Honored Woman,” able to speak and vote at Cherokee councils and given “supreme bargaining power.”
As Americans turned away from Great Britain in the Revolutionary War, so did the Cherokee turn away from their new white neighbors in Tennessee. Nancy Ward spoke over and over for peace.
“The white men are our brothers,” she reportedly said. “The same house shelters us, and the same sky covers us all.”
While Ward is inspirational, Hobbs said embracing her Cherokee heritage hasn’t always been pleasant. She went through her own anger and sorrow over the Cherokees’ eviction from Tennessee and Georgia and their journey on the Trail of Tears to what is now Oklahoma.
“But we can’t change history, and everything that has happened happened for some reason, whether we understand it or not,” she said.
“The Creator is in charge of all this. The best thing we can do now is move forward and teach our children well and inspire them - especially our young Cherokees, who seem to be apathetic.
“If this play doesn’t do anything else,” she said, “I want it to inspire people to go out and make a difference in the world.”
Although Michelle Honaker, a New York-based actress, will reprise the role of Nancy Ward, Hobbs will hold auditions Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Tahlequah for Dragging Canoe (the male lead); Kingfisher (Nanyehi’s first husband);
Tenia (Nanyehi’s mother);
Sequina (Nanyehi’s best friend); and Young Nanyehi (age 8).
White singing roles include Bryant Ward (Nancy’s second husband) and Lydia Bean (Nancy’s friend), and there are many other adult roles for Native Americans and whites, Hobbs says, along with four Native American children. Principal actors will be paid for their work.
Hobbs hopes to cast actors of Native American descent for the Cherokee roles, but “talent will win over.
We’ve got to have a great production that moves and inspires people.”GO & DO Auditions
‘Nanyehi: Beloved Woman of the Cherokee’
When: 2-5 p.m. and 7-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday with call-backs Sunday afternoon
Where: Council Chambers at the Cherokee Nation Complex, 17675 S. Muskogee Ave., Tahlequah, Okla.
Schedule: Rehearsals start July 21 and will be held Sunday through Thursday evenings; performances are Aug. 27 and Aug. 30-31
Information: Becky Hobbs at 615-383-0041
Reservations for the performances: 918-458-2075
Style, Pages 34 on 06/13/2013