Friends of Thunder: Folktales of the Oklahoma Cherokees

by Jack Frederick Kilpatrick, Anna G. Kilpatrick

The Cherokee husband-and-wife team who recorded and translated these folktales in 1961 helped to preserve the lore of seventeen elder Oklahoma Cherokees. This volume includes a wide variety of folklore; talking-animal stories, tales of a dragon-like creature and other monsters, accounts of little people inhabiting the hills of eastern Oklahoma, variants of European tales, fragments of Cherokee mythology and cosmology, and legends and lore of historical personages and events. The authors present the stories exactly as they were told, adding brief comments to place the stories clearly in the context of Cherokee life and thought. Musical notations are included wherever a song formed part of a story.

224 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1995

Reviews

[Jessie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really cool collection of stories told by Cherokee speakers in Oklahoma in the 1960s and transcribed and translated by the Kilpatricks, who were also Cherokee. The comments by the authors are fairly academic but not extensive and easy to follow. The storytelling varies in its efficacy and detail but I found some of the stories excellent. At times they present multiple renditions of the same tale, which is a cool opportunity to think about how oral tradition works and to get a feel for which details reach story teller thinks is important.