Oral history interview with Anna Mitchell

Little Thunder: My name is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is Friday, November 11, 2011. I'm interviewing Anna Mitchell for the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. We're in Vinita at Anna's apartment. Anna, it's rare for an artist to actually be able to be pointed out as the very first person to do this or that, but you really were the first Oklahoma artist to revive the Southeastern tribes' pottery traditions. Since then, you have won multiple awards and honors that have secured your place in the art world. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Mitchell: I was born east of Jay, Oklahoma, in a community called Sycamore. The name is still there, but there's not much there anymore. I think it's just almost close to the Arkansas line. I don't remember a whole lot about that 1:00because I was born there. I barely remember my grandfather lived close by. The thing that I remember about that is (of course, I was very small) my brother and I walked knee deep in snow up to my grandpa's. Knee deep wasn't very much for two little kids. We went up there to visit him, or he would come down and visit us. I barely remember that. I just remember how high the snow was. Things fade 2:00out from there and pick up later.

When I was older, we moved from the community area, not Sycamore, but the Piney area. Piney is still there. There was a community building and a church there. They also had a school for Indian kids. As a matter of fact, my sister went there. My oldest sister went to school when they had a country school there. There'd be a government car to pick some of them up to go to school. I remember I didn't go because I would go down to the gate every day and wait for my sister 3:00to come home from school. I thought it was wonderful that she'd get in this nice, fine car, go off to school, and she'd come out of this nice, fine car. We were still traveling around in wagons. (Laughter) So, anyway, that's what I remember about that. We moved from that community to Jay, briefly. Then we moved south on Brush Creek, and that's where I grew up.

Little Thunder: I see. Did your dad farm?

Mitchell: Well, my mom and dad didn't have a long marriage because I was a very 4:00small child, I understand, and she said I cried every night when my dad was gone, so they were divorced. He later remarried three times after that. I have half-sisters and -brothers from his second, third--I guess just two times. I still have brothers and sisters, half-brothers and -sisters. Since I was sent off to Indian school when I was old enough, back in the ʼ30s, I was not as fluent in my language as I was when I went there. I couldn't speak English at 5:00all when I went there.

Little Thunder: What school did you go to?

Mitchell: All the Indian schools were set up to take our language and our heritage away from us, but I didn't know that. They wouldn't allow us to speak. That was Seneca Indian School, Wyandotte, Oklahoma. My mom used to come up and visit us there. She'd take the bus, and it'd let her off at the foot of the hill, and she'd walk on up. For some reason, we'd be playing out somewhere, and I'd look down, and I knew it was my mother because of the way she walked. We'd run down and help her with whatever she had. I grew up at the Indian school and 6:00graduated through the ninth grade. At that time, I was not fluent in Cherokee, again. Then I went to school at Haskell. One summer, I came to Vinita with my sister. She worked here, so I got a job that summer to work in a little hamburger joint--

Little Thunder: Were you in high school?

Mitchell: --yes, as a waitress. It was during wartime, and my husband was part Cherokee. His family, his mother and dad's family, when they allotted land, they were up in this part of the country. His dad was born at Oaks, Oklahoma. His 7:00grandmother was from that area. She was Cherokee, and Mr. Mitchell was not. I met my husband during wartime. He was home on leave. There was a lot of soldiers around. He came over and talked to me because he thought I was Cherokee, and I was. He asked me if I could say this or that, and he tried writing it down in his little handbook.

My sister also came, but she worked out at the state hospital. We looked like 8:00two peas in a pod. We were very close together in age, and our hair was styled alike. It was back during the time they were wearing pageboy, with their hair turned under. We just looked like two peas in a pod. He asked her for a date one day, thinking it was me, (Laughter) but he soon found out it wasn't.

I went to shows with him, and a friend of his had a car. He'd drive it. We'd drag Main, (Laughter) go down south on Main Street and listen to the first, I 9:00guess, drive-in you ever saw. It wasn't really like they are now. It was just a man who had a bunch of places where the girls would carry the food out to the car. That was the first car-hop that we knew of. They'd play real loud music, and we'd go down there and listen to the music. Of course, eventually, after the war, I was in high school at Haskell. When he came home, I married him. We had I think it was fifty-one years of marriage when he passed away. We had five children. I outlived two of those children. My oldest child had cancer, fought 10:00it for ten years. Then my son had the heart problem that his dad and his uncles did on his dad's side. Some of them died young from heart problems.

My son lived close to us, and I saw him just go down. He was a strong, healthy-looking guy. They told us at the time of surgery he might not live through the surgery. He did live through the surgery, but he had a very bad heart. The doctor said, "Your body might be strong and want to do things, but your heart is not going to let you. You might live three years." He lived five, 11:00but they weren't good years. He just kept going down. So I outlived those two. I have [three] daughters left [Victoria, Betty Gail, and Julie]. I have one that lives in Denver. Her name is Betty Gail. She married a doctor, and she's a pediatric practitioner. Julie went to OSU and graduated, and married her husband. As many times as we made trips there to see our girls, I thought, "Well, this is the last trip." It wasn't. She married a guy from there. 12:00(Laughter) She still lives close to Stillwater. She had two boys and a girl and a boy. The youngest boy is in his last year of college there. They all went to OSU except the girl. She wanted to be different. She went to Edmond. My son went to OU. He didn't want to be like the girls. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: When you were at Seneca Boarding School and also at Haskell, did you take any art classes? Were you interested in art at all?

Mitchell: They'd let us draw, but it wasn't called art. Then when we were at 13:00Haskell, I guess you could, but it was your choice. I worked at the school library where we put books together and things like that, so I was always busy over there and knew what kind of books they had, and years later, ordered some for my information.

Little Thunder: So you weren't into sewing or any three-dimensional work?

Mitchell: Yes, we did have sewing at Wyandotte. They called it Home Ec. We had it until we graduated. As a matter of fact, we made our own graduation dress. We 14:00went to Joplin, Missouri, with our teacher and picked out the material. We made our first pajamas and robe and things like that in that place. Then at Haskell, it was your choice if you wanted to sew or do some other things. I went into athletics and played basketball. It wasn't that great because we had a big girls' basketball and a little girls' basketball. We didn't get to go anywhere the big girls did, but sometimes we'd have to play with them and get knocked down. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: You have a quote about how you can't learn the culture without the art or the art without the culture. I don't think many people of the younger generation realize what a sea change there was in terms of this new attitude toward Native arts and Native cultures that began happening in the '60s. Were you and your husband pretty active, then, around this community?

Mitchell: We were always active in our neighborhood. The Shawnees had their stomp dances and their rituals, but they had all of that the week before they 16:00opened it up to the public for Saturday dances, where people could come and join in the dances if they wanted to. We were very good friends to a Shawnee woman who was full-blood. She had a lot of grandkids. She lived next door to us, and she always had to have somebody, some relative, take her out to set her up in her tent. A lot of times it was us because we lived next door. It was very interesting what we learned about their culture because we'd go out the week before and see what they were doing.

Little Thunder: This was for their Green Corn [Ceremony]?

Mitchell: They had what they called a Strawberry Dance, and they had their Bread 17:00Dance. Then they had their Corn Dance in the fall. They also joined the Senecas over by Seneca in their dances. They could go back and forth. Then they had the Quapaw Dances up near Miami. We went to a lot of these Indian things, so our kids grew up knowing these different things about other Indians.

Little Thunder: Did your kids also powwow dance at all?

Mitchell: Yes, we went to powwows, but, you know, it's strange. Cherokees had two kinds of Indians. One was the ones who went to church, and the other was the 18:00ones who followed the dances. We were the ones that went to church, but we went to our church that preached in Cherokee. You learned everything in Cherokee. They even taught them how to read and write in Cherokee in church so that they could read the Bible and understand that and what the preaching was about. About the time that we were old enough to do that, we went to Wyandotte, so only those that stayed home to go to school could go home every day and talk with their family. That's where we missed out. We didn't keep our language at that time.

Little Thunder: When your children were young, were you a stay-at-home mom? Was your husband working, and you were staying with the kids?

Mitchell: Yes, after the second child was on the way, we decided there's no way I could pay a babysitter for one, much less two, so I began to be a stay-at-home mom all the rest of my life until my youngest child, my fifth child, was going into the third grade. Our older kids were getting ready to think about college, so I thought I better go to work. When my little girl came home from school, which was just a block away to where we lived, her brother says he came in right 20:00behind her, and she was going through the house crying because she couldn't find Mama. (Laughter) I guess she forgot I went to work. I worked all the way through. I made all of their, for college, their pantsuits. I sewed for all of them. I also sewed for other people, and I also altered clothes for other people. That's what I did, staying home. Plus, we learned beadwork, and we'd do beadwork.

Little Thunder: Were you doing some sewing of tear dresses or anything like 21:00that, or just whatever people needed?

Mitchell: Just whatever people needed. They'd come to me for the children's Easter clothes or the mother's Easter clothes. I would take those early, and then I'd take that money and buy our material. I was very late getting the last button on, on Easter. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: I bet they were beautiful. I know you've told this story many times, but your journey towards pottery actually started with something quite different.

Mitchell: Yes, I remember I was forty-two years old when we built our house out there in 1965. We had the land two years before we built.

Little Thunder: Remind us where your house was, where you built your house.

Mitchell: We built our house, probably, [three miles east of Vinita] and, I guess, [the property is] five acres across. We were on the other side of five acres behind there, on a ten-acre place. We bought the ten-acre place. All the houses were built facing the highway in those five acres between us and the highway. We were just, I'd say, a mile, maybe a mile and a quarter, from town 23:00and then south across five acres. We built the house, I believe it was probably '66 or '67. We've got it marked. We made a little concrete thing to hold up a water fountain, and under that on the fresh cement we put the year that our place was established. Two years before that, we went out every day we could and worked on it.

Little Thunder: And that in was the Tahlequah area?

Mitchell: No, it was right out here, east of town. I've never lived away from 24:00[Vinita], Craig County since I married.

Little Thunder: Then you got to digging out a pond, I guess?

Mitchell: When I was forty-two and we built our home, we dug a pond on our place, thinking we'd have a couple of cattle, and fatten them and sell one and keep one. That didn't happen. The pond was there, and it was a dry summer in August, and our kids played in this ten-foot hole. I went down there, and I saw 25:00the clay. I told my husband I was going to--he'd always wanted what we called a Sequoyah pipe, a clay pipe with a cane stem. We did have cane north of Vinita on Cabin Creek, so we'd go up there and get the stems. When I first started doing the pipes, I did about a dozen of them, laid them out. Next day went down there, and they were all cracked. I had no idea what I did wrong or what the clay should've been. I just thought I could do it like plain mud pipes.

I shaped them, and every time I saw somebody, didn't matter if they were doing 26:00wheel-thrown art in clay, I would ask them questions about the clay. I asked one man that was throwing pots on a wheel, I told him what was happening, and he said, "Well, what you're doing is drying them too fast in the sun. Also, your clay might not be just right." I didn't know what "right" was, so I had to weed through all of that to find the right information to even start the clay.

Eventually, when I first got my little clay pipes and I got about five of them 27:00through the firing--I'll have to tell you the story about the first time I put ten of them in. (Laughs) My husband built a pit fire because they said that's how they fired them. So I did dry them in the garage in a box, but I didn't realize that during the night, the garage door was open, and when the dew falls and the atmosphere turns, the clay just absorbs water like stone. I had studied that clay is an erosion of stone over thousands of years. It depends on what 28:00kind of clay you have. Ours is a lot of earthenware clay. The clay we eventually used did have some kaolin. I could fire it higher. All those things I found out after a lot of work. I began to grind my clay, after it dried, on a big grinding stone I made. I'd sit on the edge of this big stone. There was a man out in western Oklahoma that had found real grinding stones that had been used in his field, so he gave me two of them, and that's what I used all those years, grinding the clay.

My husband would help me when he could. He'd always build my fires, and then he'd have to go off to work. A lot of times I'd be crying, practically, when all of my things burst in the firing. I was going back to the first time I fired about a dozen pieces. I'd had them drying in the garage. Well, evidently, they absorbed a little moisture. I put them all around the fire. He had dug out a hole, and around it was a ridge, so I put my things all around it so they would absorb some heat. I thought they'd had enough heat, so I gradually scooted the 30:00coals back, and I put all of them in the fire. Then I pulled the coals back over it. I put some little sticks and things in it to start a slow fire. As soon as those pots (I had a couple of little pieces) and those pipes got too hot, they started exploding like fire crackers. They were popping out of there, so I ran away from the fire. (Laughter) I was just sick because they exploded. I had to weed all of that out.

Little Thunder: So let me get clear. You and your husband are going to arts and 31:00crafts shows from time to time, or whenever you have the chance, and you see a potter, Indian or non-Indian, and you're telling them about this situation that you have at home. (Laughs)

Mitchell: Yes, anybody that has anything to do with clay, I would ask them questions, and then I'd go back and try if I was doing this right because I had no idea what "right" was. What made me stay in it, (it took so long) I just had to prove to myself, "If my people did it, why can't I do it?" I just kept on with the clay pipes. As a matter of fact, I think I have one of those pipes in 32:00this, in here.

Little Thunder: I tell you what. We'll get it out at the end of the interview, and we'll take a picture. I know you went to North Carolina at some point. Did you successfully make a clay pipe prior to that?

Mitchell: We had gone to North Carolina when the kids were very small. Then when I started this, I thought, "Well, they make pottery, so I'm going to go see them about this." But I was ahead of them. I had already fired some pieces and had some pieces that were ahead of what they were doing.

Little Thunder: So they were also trying to revive that?

Mitchell: Well, what they did, they had Catawbas that lived among them at one 33:00time. They started doing pottery like they did, and this is what they made. They knew about old stuff, but they started doing this pottery that's small pieces for tourists because they were having a very hard time after the Removal. They sold baskets, and they sold pottery. They would just pack it up and travel across the mountain to go sell it. They stayed with the tourist stuff. Theirs 34:00was dark, and they wondered how I could get color, so I was a little ahead of them, but I still learned about the things when I'd go talk to a potter. I'd learn something that would help me.

Little Thunder: Were you paying for this out of your own pocket, Anna? It was just you going on your own, or did the tribe sometimes help you?

Mitchell: We just went on our own.

Little Thunder: And your husband went, and your family?

Mitchell: Husband and family. A lot of times it was a vacation trip, and we'd be gone a week or two or ten days, whatever, to make the trip there and back. What 35:00we did was we took enough money that we could stay there and come home. (Laughter) We didn't spend very much.

Little Thunder: Are we talking like the '60s?

Mitchell: It was before then because the first time we went, my youngest daughter, I was breastfeeding her. That's my youngest daughter. The next time we went, one of the girls, the middle girl, I think she was about five, so that might've been when this little one was a baby. We had been more than once on our own because my husband always said he knew about them. "Someday we're going to 36:00go see the Cherokees in North Carolina because that's where our ancestors came from." He knew the whole story about his ancestor because his white great-great grandfather was a Presbyterian missionary and had a boarding school in Tennessee. Came out of Connecticut and came down there to enlighten the Cherokees. They had a boarding school for kids there, and that's how he got hooked up with a Cherokee. He married one. They came over the Trail of Tears and 37:00came here. Of course, right after the Trail of Tears (I say right after because it was soon) we had just established our area, our ancestors had, when the Civil War came, so that was a whole new thing.

Little Thunder: So you were using this clay with the nice red colors in it. You had successfully fired some pipes, and you went to the Heye Foundation in New York?

Mitchell: That happened later. After I was successful, I entered the Five Tribes shows the first time. Knokovtee Scott and some of them, they were doing art and 38:00stuff, but when I entered my things, they wanted to know what some of the stuff on my pots was.

Little Thunder: Because you had added some designs already.

Mitchell: Yes. "What is this design?" or, "Why did you put those knots on there?" Things like that. I entered the first pot that had a spider on it. That was the story of how the spider brought us fire. That had quite an eye-opening thing to the Cherokees. They still use it in their art. They wanted to know 39:00about the spider. "What did he do?" and, "What's this about?" I said, "Well, it's just the stories that--" I can't think of his name now, that was with the Cherokees a long time ago, and he wrote a book.

Little Thunder: Was it [James] Mooney?

Mitchell: Yes. Mooney had told those stories about all this stuff because he'd heard about it and lived among them and knew about it. That's the stories that we were told. I have a necklace that's got a shell carving with a serpentine on it, and the serpentine has wings. They told us about this when I was a child. 40:00The elders would sit around and talk. I remember hearing them tell the story about this huge snake that lived at one time. My idea was, "What if I'd run into that big snake? What would I do?" I thought it was living today because we'd go berry picking. Of course, that was a far-fetched idea that I had because I was a child. I'd hear these stories that Mooney had in his book, and perhaps the Cherokees knew them before him and passed them down.

Little Thunder: Reading some of that triggered remembrances for you?

Mitchell: Yes, and I also started researching in the archives. I was asked to come to Gilcrease [Museum] and then later to University of Arkansas. They had a lot of Southeastern things.

Little Thunder: Who invited you to [University of Arkansas]?

Mitchell: I can't think of his last name. He lived at Springdale. He and his wife came one Sunday. He called me. There was a little spread in the paper about our shows over here. He read about me, and he called and asked if he and his wife could come out after lunch and stay a little while, visit a little bit. Little bit was all afternoon once they got started, and he'd start telling us 42:00about things. He said, "We have an enormous amount of information that you could get on the Southeastern stuff at Fayetteville. You're welcome to come on my invitation, and if somebody tells you you can't, you let me know who it is." That was the kind of invitation we got, and we did go. The only thing they told us when we got ready to come over, please tell them so they could save a parking spot where we wouldn't get hauled away. (Laughter) So we'd always call them.

We went over there many times because we could hold those old pots. I could draw 43:00some of those designs, and you could actually see what it felt like to touch them and how they finished them. I thought, "How could they get these so straight?" I started just etching my stuff in my things. Later on, I did different, but at that time, Dr. Hoffman, (I can't think of his first name) he and his wife, she was the person that taught how to restore pots, and he was an anthropologist. He would say, "I'm going to open the archives. You can go up." 44:00Well, of course, they let us go up the first time. There was three or four of them sitting there watching us as we came down and brought stuff down and sat it on the table to look at it. We'd ask them things about it. After a while when they realized we were serious, they were thrilled to death there was an Indian that was serious about doing this. I couldn't understand why. (Laughter) I learned a lot from them.

Little Thunder: Yes, just actually holding those pots and seeing them.

Mitchell: Yes, yes. He'd say, "Well, I'm going to open the archives. You just go up and stay as long as you want to. I'm going to go teach, and I'll be back at 45:00such-and-such time." That's the way they treated us over there. Then, Gilcrease, I was going out Southwest. I wanted to see how they fired their pottery.

Little Thunder: In New Mexico area?

Mitchell: Yes. We were going out there. Years ago when they homesteaded land, way back when, some of Robert's family had gone and homesteaded some in New Mexico. There were a lot of states that would let you do that. The land was free as long as you established a place and so forth. He already had relatives out 46:00there. He was always very curious about them, too, because he hadn't met some of them, so during these trips, we did. We visited them and learned about their trip out there and what they had to do.

His uncle got out of the military and settled in Albuquerque, so the first time we thought about moving out there, he went out and stayed with his uncle. Then he found out that places that you rented didn't want children. There were things like that, so he said, "I don't think it'd be good." We didn't move. We stayed 47:00here, but during the times I went out to research, a Gilcrease anthropologist (I can't think of his name right now) gave me a letter to go to the college where they tested pottery of the peoples out there, pressure point and all that kind of stuff. Sent me with a letter, and he told me of a family that would be firing if we wanted to go visit them. We found that, whereas our family used wood 48:00because we were woodland Indians, they were desert Indians, and they used dung, dried dung, for their fuel to do pottery.

Later, we went to all of the pueblos, visited all of them. Where we went, we went to the museum, see what we could find. We found books sometimes. Sometimes it was information we didn't know about. All of them were very good about wanting to further your work. Eventually, I spoke with the archeological and 49:00anthropologists' group from Texas and different places. The person who asked me to do that, he was so proud that I had stuff in the Five Tribes [Museum] that he asked me to do that. I was scared to death. He said, "All you have to do is tell them what you know. They don't know it. They'll be glad to hear about it."

On that, I realized I did know a lot. I could tell them a lot. A lot of times in 50:00the research books, I would read where they would find pots that had holes in the bottom. They assumed that they were made because they were ritually broken, to be put in that grave. I said, "Well, I think what happened in those cases where the pots were broken, it's because the potter had a lot of bad luck." (Laughter) They would just roar because to me, it makes sense that they'd have broken pots. What's the matter with you, that you'd think it was ritually 51:00broken? (Laughs)

Little Thunder: I guess we never really quite discussed the first pot you entered at Five Tribes must've created this huge stir. Did it?

Mitchell: The first pot was a very small pot. As a matter of fact, I think I still have it among my things. It was a couple of little crooked pots. I think it was in the early, early '70s, I went to the first Indian market in the malls, in Southroads Mall at Tulsa. Then later, we went to the one in Oklahoma City. It was in the mall. Anyway, I went to my first one, and I didn't have a booth, but 52:00the tribe had a booth. They knew my work by then. They said I could put things on the edge of the corner of theirs, so I had two little ugly pots and some pipes. I lined them up there on their corner.

What I did enter for seriousness was, my daughter was first runner up for Miss Cherokee, the first year of her sophomore year. They said they wanted her in a Cherokee dress and moccasins about a month before it was due. (Laughter) I knew 53:00what a Cherokee dress looked like. I didn't like it because it was cloth. I always knew of--my husband's mother described one, and it went to Smithsonian back then. Said they were buckskin, and the Cherokees have a top that came down to the waist. Then they had a skirt that came up here, and they had leggings that came up to here. Then they had their moccasins. That's the vision I had of a Cherokee outfit.

I thought, even if you had to make it out of cloth, it should be that, not the 54:00way they have them now with all those ruffles and things. I had to follow what what's his name was doing down at Tahlequah, so I made my daughter's first runner up for Miss Cherokee dress out of some material. I went shopping for it and everything. I have it here because she left it for me to keep. I'm going to give it back to her one of these days and tell her to keep it awhile because I don't have the room. But I do have it. A lot of people copied it after that, too, because I did mine just a little bit different than the rest of them.

Little Thunder: When was the first time you made a serious pot?

Mitchell: Actually, when I first went to the Southroads Mall in Tulsa, I didn't have anything to enter, so they let me place my things on the corner of the Cherokee crafts. I did have that dress that I entered. I got not first. I can't think of that man's name that did those Cherokee dresses down there. One of his students got first, and I got a little prize on mine. There was a lady that came to that show. It was before they invited the Oklahoma--what is it they have in 56:00the Smithsonian every year? Folk art. I think it was the seventy-fifth year or something. They invited the Oklahoma folk art people, but it was long before that. She came up, and she said, "Who made this?" I was sitting there. I embarrassedly said, "I did." I wanted her to look at the dress. It was hanging up there. She said, "Who made this?" It was the pipes. I said, "I did," sheepishly. (Laughter) She said, "Now, I want to watch you and see what you do 57:00from here. I'm going to keep an eye on you." I didn't have any idea who she was. She went on to the next booth, and never had met her.

So I went to--they had a luncheon, and she was going to be speaker, and so was that guy that won the Olympics. [Billy Mills]. He was also the speaker, and I wanted to hear him. I went to this dinner, and when she got up and started 58:00talking, I was real interested in the Olympic guy's talk and wanted to get his autograph and everything. Then when she got up and started talking, she said, "I'm with the Smithsonian Folk Art Organization, and my title is--" Her title was Indian Awareness, and she traveled through the country and picked out things that would go into this. It just baffled me, who she was, that she was interested in my ugly things. (Laughter) It was a couple of years or so later, I 59:00saw her at a show in Oklahoma City. I had some pieces that were much nicer and had designs. She bought one of them. She said, "I want to keep watching you." What was her name? I knew her name so well. She was Cherokee.

Little Thunder: Clydia Nahwooksy, isn't it?

Mitchell: Yes. She married a Cheyenne. She was telling me when she married him, they called her a white person because the Cherokees live so much like the white people, and they didn't. I knew both of them. Eventually, I had had several 60:00shows. Of course, she'd seen the dress and all that, but she was still interested in the pottery because there weren't any Cherokee potters. That's why she was interested. I kept going. Every time we'd go to Cherokee, we had this good friend, Betty Dupree, that was with the--where they had their arts and crafts there. She bought for them.

First time I walked in the door with a pot, she said, "What are you going to do with that?" I said, "I'd like to sell it." She said, "Well, I want to buy it." 61:00(Laughter) So she bought my first pot. I had more than one, so she bought pipes and things, and sometimes she'd trade for other crafts. All those years, I did that. I have a double woven basket right in there that's from that time.

Little Thunder: So she was putting your pots in the gift shop back there at 62:00Cherokee, North Carolina.

Mitchell: Yes. And then I have a picture somewhere of their best potter that I met. I was supposed to jury their show. Of course, she was good, so I gave her first prize. I have a picture of her and myself. I think she's still living.

Little Thunder: So in the '70s, you went to the Cherokee Tribal Council, and you proposed that they help you put together a workshop on pottery?

Mitchell: No, I didn't ask anybody. They asked me. I was doing the JOM [Johnson O'Malley] Indian Workshops in the schools up here at Vinita. Then, Claremore would ask me, Commerce, Miami, so I would make up a calendar. When I ran out of time, I'd say, "I can't do anymore because I'm full." I'd go to all these places up here. Eventually, I got down into the Cherokee country. I wasn't working for 63:00the tribe. I was working for the school.

What happened in Vinita, the person who came out to our house to get the Indians together so they could get the program in the first place was part Cherokee, and he was the principal. He came out to our house. So we got the Indians, and we got the program. For some reason, they got the idea that they could buy buses and school stuff with that money. It definitely said you could not do that. I was the only person that was standing up saying, "You can't do that." I was 64:00fighting the system. I didn't realize I was by myself in it. (Laughter) When he visited other places, especially Miami, they were very strong together as a tribe. He didn't say a whole lot about that, but he'd go down to Tahlequah. I'd see him down there. He was trying to learn all he could about it.

At the end of school in the first of May, I realized we had not even had the kids to have all the stuff they should have. I was just going around with my pottery and doing that. They enjoyed it, and the teachers enjoyed it, but they 65:00got so they would tell the kids, "If you even waved at an Indian, you're Indian," and things like that. I was fighting all that. So at the end of school, I went to the superintendent and told him that this wasn't supposed to be that way. They had a public school get-together, and they called Washington, and Washington told them the same thing I did.

Little Thunder: They were misusing those JOM monies.

Mitchell: Yes, and they had summer school for Indian kids to use that money so 66:00they wouldn't lose it. We still have the program, but it's run the way it's supposed to be run. It was not very popular in public schools. That is something I know.

Little Thunder: You made a real difference there, by standing up.

Mitchell: You can leave that out. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: I think that's important. Did you like teaching? Did you get restless because you felt like it was taking some time away from your pottery? How did that work out?

Mitchell: I liked teaching because the kids were learning a lot. When they asked 67:00questions, I would tell them Indian things I knew about our tribe and that each tribe was different. I'd say, "What nationality are you?" "I'm American." I said, "That's not a nationality. America is a place where you're from, but where did your family come from? That's your nationality. Go back and ask your parents." "I don't know. We're Americans." (Laughter) So I did teach them they had another nationality and how that worked, that each nationality had its own language, just like each Indian has its own language. They don't all speak the 68:00same. They don't understand each other. I did tell them a lot of things that I knew for sure, that I wouldn't say it if it wasn't true. I think it was good because sometimes the school didn't teach it.

Little Thunder: When Bill Glass co-taught with you, those workshops were for students in the public schools? They weren't for community people?

Mitchell: Well, what we did, those boys came up here to ask me if I would be on that committee. Of course, I had to speak to my husband because it was an 69:00evening thing, so he would go with me. Of course, he had his Indian card, too. Anyhow, they all got acquainted with my husband and knew he was part Cherokee. We had to go through the Council and see if we could have a place. They wanted us to do something, but we had to have a place, so we rented for one dollar, I think, this school. It used to be an old school. Later they turned it into a community building. That's where we had our meetings. They told us if we wanted it, we could have it for a dollar a year and fix it up, so that's what we did.

We shined up the floors and did everything we could. Used it, and then we rented it to community people for their singing conventions or whatever, but it was ours. There was a man that lived close to it that was sort of a caretaker. I think even coon hunters would rent it sometimes. (Laughter) They'd rent it for singing conventions and things like that, so we made a little money and kept going. What we did, we worked with the community people that did the arts, all the arts that Cherokees did. We pulled them in and got them on the list. They 71:00would come, and we would have kind of a school for them, to have them to present a program to us so they would know how to sell when they got out in public. We'd always tell them, "You're the one that makes it. You know how to make it. That's what you tell them." Some of them, was easy. Some of them, they'd back out, and they wouldn't come back. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: So it was really focused on helping them market and present themselves.

Mitchell: Yes. Then we worked with Oaks Boarding School, the kids there. We taught them.

Little Thunder: You did do Santa Fe Indian Market. You entered pottery in the Santa Fe Indian Market.

Mitchell: Well, there's Bill, Knokovtee, and there's one other guy. They went 72:00out there, and they kept telling me, "You ought to sign up, but you'll have to wait because there's a lot of people signing up. Sometimes you can't get in. You have to wait your turn." They kept saying, "You ought to sign up and go out there." I decided that I would go out there. It was in the early '70s, I think. I signed up, and I didn't get in that first year. The next year I got in because 73:00I was the only traditional Eastern potter.

Little Thunder: Wow, that was fast.

Mitchell: I put my stuff out there. Even some of the Pueblo people would ask me, "Are you Indian?" I said, "Yes, don't I look like I am?" (Laughter) Then I'd tell them, "Yes, I am. I'm Cherokee." "What kind of pots are those?" I said, "They're Cherokee pots." They'd never seen the designs. Sometimes they'd say, "How did you do this?" Just to have fun out of them, after I'd been there about the third year, this lady come up and asked me how I did my corncob design. I told her, "With my teeth." (Laughter) She looked at me, and I was grinning. She 74:00walked away. She came back later and talked to me. I said, "That's a Cherokee design."

Little Thunder: You got into making stamps to use on your work. Did your collection grow over the years, of stamps that you used on your pots?

Mitchell: Well, I have them, but when I first started doing them, I told you I just etched them in. When I saw that piece at the Heye Foundation, our group, the Cherokee Art Association, was invited as a tribe to send our arts up there. 75:00Even Willard Stone, we asked him, and he sent one of his art pieces up there. People that made the spear that you spear fish with--there's a name for them in Cherokee. Anyway, there was a man that made those, and we sent some of those up there that he had made. The public had never seen things like that before. They made a big hit because they were Cherokee. People came there and saw that stuff, and they didn't realize Cherokees still did things like that. Gigs [the fishing 76:00spear] was what they used to do. My family, the men used to go out in the night and have a light, and the fish would come up, and they would spear those fish and get the big fish.

We had the shell carvings and anything in baskets. I had some baskets that I had bought from Ella Mae Blackbear, who is gone now. I had bought some from her. I sent those up there as her representative of her work. Whatever the boys could 77:00get out here, we told them that they would be back, that they would take care of them and send them back. So they went around collecting everything they could and sent it. Up here where there was people that had collected things, I collected those and shipped it. Nobody paid me for the shipping, but we did those things.

Little Thunder: Was this in the '80s?

Mitchell: No, I think it was more in the '70s, but they showed there. Eventually, I don't know what happened, whether the Cherokees said we couldn't 78:00have the building anymore or what, but we had to quit doing that. We had a big list of people on those sheets. Some of them are gone now and the things that they did, whether it was jewelry or what, basketry. I do have a collection of baskets. That was a good thing for the tribe. Then they built up their Cherokee holiday show with people that could do things like that. In the '80s, Wilma 79:00Mankiller started the Living Treasures of the Older People.

Little Thunder: What has that meant to you to have that title?

Mitchell: I was surprised because I was the first woman. When we were inducted, there was me and another man, and then two that had died, that did things. From then on, they had people that would do different things, and they might be related to the older people.

Little Thunder: There's a bronze sculpture bust of you at Northeastern State University.

Mitchell: Well, that happened in the '80s. Jane Osti and I became acquainted because she was a pottery student at NSU. I was hired by the Cherokees to come to the village, out at that place where they would go and have programs [the Cherokee Heritage Center]. I had a stand where I was demonstrating my work. I remember that Jane and one of her friends that was in school came over and asked if they could watch me. I said, "Yes, that's what I'm here for." Even tourists 81:00that came through could watch me and learn.

It wasn't very long after that that Jane came back and said, "I want to do that. I want to do what you're doing." Meaning that she wanted--she was doing wheel throwing, but I also knew she was a painting artist. She came up to my house one day, and she was writing her paper, her thesis for the college. She did an interview, and she asked me if I had a shawl. I said, "Yes, I do." She said, "Would you put it on and go out here? I want to take a picture of you." I put it on and went out there. Lo and behold, a few months later I was called to come 82:00down there to do a workshop. I was called to the college Art Department, and a teacher came up out of there. He said, "I know you." I had no idea what he was talking about. I went down to the basement where the Art Department was. There was Jane with this wax sculpture of me, a bust of me. She had the Cherokee Indian designs all over the shawl. She told me, she said, "This is 150 years since the Removal, and you represent the women on the Trail of Tears."

Little Thunder: You had no idea--

Mitchell: No, it just blew my mind. Later on, the college wanted to have it bronzed, and the tribe wanted to have it bronzed. Neither one of them could afford it, so they went together and had it bronzed. It sits in the Bacone Indian Studies building, just off campus [at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah]. Things that's happened to me, I just couldn't fathom anything.

Little Thunder: That journey, from those little pipes.

Mitchell: Yes, from the pipe. That's what started it because I wasn't a potter. I have a painting that a local artist did of me, a full one, in the bedroom. She 84:00did that before. Not that, but she did one before that was put out in Tulsa. She had prints made, and she gave me prints for each one of my kids. There's one that hangs in a restaurant down there. After we had the unveiling of the bronze, she and some of the Vinita people came to that. That is what came out of it. She told me afterwards, she said, "I want to paint you just like you are tonight." For some reason, Jane and I both picked a black dress to wear that night. She 85:00had on a black dress, and I had on a black dress. Mine has quite a story.

My daughter and her husband were in Thailand, working with the Thai people over there. Of course, she had access to getting silk. She asked me if I needed any because I sewed a lot. I said, "Yes, I'd like to have some black and some blue." That outfit in there is what I made out of that. Their yardage was only thirty-six inches wide. She sent me enough to have some made. I got that out, 86:00and I cut it up and made a dress and wore it.

Little Thunder: That's what you wore.

Mitchell: Yes. They were wearing cummerbunds at that time. They were stylish. I made a cummerbunds out of a finger-woven belt. Then I put it on black so it would show up. She said, "I want to paint you just like you are tonight." That's what she did.

Little Thunder: Well, we're going to look at a few of your pots in a minute. Looking back over your career, what do you think was one of the most decisive forks in your life, when you decided to go a certain way?

Mitchell: With my pottery? You know, I never did change the idea. My idea for my pots was to create them in the shape that I found those that I saw, the old ones, and not veer away from those shapes. I could do anything I wanted to with those designs. When I found a design, I could just repeat it around the pot. It could be up here, or it could be in the middle, or whatever. An anthropologist and an archaeologist came together to my booth at Santa Fe. They said, "What 88:00tribe are you?" I said, "I'm a Cherokee." He said, "Is this Cherokee pottery?" They, being who they were, they looked at them and said, "I never did see a Cherokee pot with designs around it like that." I said, "You have now because I'm Cherokee."

I used the designs any way I wanted to because I wanted them to get out. I wanted our people to know what was there. I put them on a pot even if they were off of a shell carving. I found a design. I put it on a pot because a lot of times they were on pots. I won a big prize one year with one that had just a 89:00bunch of snakes swimming. The top ones had wings, and these in the water were just going around the pot. It was a pretty big pot. It got a good prize. I don't even remember who bought it.

I'll just have to tell you this story. My children lived in Hawaii after they came back from Thailand. They had their first child over there. Betty and Bennett, and his last name was Parnes. We went over there four of their eight 90:00years simply because my husband didn't like to fly. (Laughter) He said, "We'll go over there this year, but we won't go the next year." We did that, and I'm glad we did because that's a special time. We learned other things from the Natives over there because they knew some of the Native families. I was going to tell you something about that.

Little Thunder: Related to the pot with the snake designs?

Mitchell: Well, I think what I did, you'll never see in any other pots of the 91:00old, because I decided to do my designs anywhere I wanted to.

Little Thunder: Effigy pots were also a big part of what you did, weren't they?

Mitchell: Yes, I did some of those but not as much, sculpturally, as my daughter does. She does little Nativity scenes and things like that. She's going into something in pottery. She's established some traditional--she does something that my husband didn't ever like for me to do and didn't want me to do. It's those head pots. You've seen those.

Little Thunder: Oh, yes, yes.

Mitchell: What I wanted to see in those head pots was the way they wore their 92:00hairdos. I wanted to copy those, so I copied them on a drawing. I did those. To an early extent, I went to the Five Tribes. At that early time, I entered a piece that was called The Spiro Man. His hair-dress was like that. What he wore, jewelry he wore, that's what I wanted. I decided to do it that way instead of the head pots. I made one mask, and my daughter's still got that. I just did it 93:00because I was looking at a head pot.

The exciting thing that happened out of this was the fact that we went back to my Smithsonian lady. I had just had surgery in Tulsa and was convalescing, and she called me, and she interviewed me for a trip to the Smithsonian. I said, "Do you think I'll be ready to go?" It was the first of June through--we were up there two weeks. She said, "Oh, yes. I think you'll be able to do this. All you 94:00have to do is talk to people that come up to you, and you're demonstrating and so forth." I didn't realize it was going to be thousands and thousands of people. But that was very exciting to me. It came out of the little pots.

Little Thunder: Well, is there anything else you'd like to add? If not, we'll start to take a look at those pots.

Mitchell: There is one more thing. Back in the '80s, we had a minister at Guthrie, a Presbyterian minister. They were both ministers, the woman and the 95:00man. My daughter was acquainted with them, and I just loved them both and got acquainted with them. She wanted me to come over and give programs and so forth. Out of that, one year she asked me and some other Indian artists, "Could she ask those people, 'Anna Mitchell would like for you to do so and so,' or, 'Bill Glass would like for you to do so and so.'" You know, like that. "Invite your friends to send some pieces to the Peace Museum in East Berlin," because it was 96:00a little bit before the wall came down over there.

One of her relatives had come to West Berlin because of the war because Hitler didn't like Christianity or anything good. He wanted to kill everything. They had come out of there, and she had, too. Her cousin was a minister. He took his young ministerial students over where they had bombed and shattered the 97:00cathedral over there. Near the cathedral was a Jewish man's place, a store. They decided to make the little museum, the Peace Museum, in his little building. They fixed it up, and they asked us to send our pieces over there. She asked me if I would make a pot for that. They had a little dedication at Christmastime in Oklahoma City. I asked some people if they would. Some of them did, and some of them didn't.

There was a man that sent peace pipes that he had made, and we wrote a little 98:00thing about our work, "That was from the Native Americans of America and their share of peacemaking." They hand delivered them over there. About two months later, they started tearing the wall down, not because of that, but, of course, we said it was. (Laughs) Her cousin has been to my place, came to our place and helped us fire. They love Indian art, the Germans do. He took pictures of that 99:00museum and took pictures of my pot in there, and he wrote all the story about that museum, typewritten. Then she added the letter she'd sent out. I have all those in some of my packing. I hope a rat didn't get into them.

Little Thunder: Well, let's take a look at some of your work now. That's beautiful. Is it eagle motif, or warrior motif?

Mitchell: That's a falcon. This is what I was saying about putting the patterns where I wanted them. That way, you can have a shot of what that falcon looked like. A lot of times, I would draw him with his wings all out. I would look at 100:00an eagle's picture, picture of an eagle, and I'd spread its wings out like it was. Then it had these little cross-hatch markings on people's faces and on birds and sometimes on other animals, so that seemed like it was very important. I know that the Cherokees have a ritual about the eagle. There has to be a certain person that can get the eagle, and certain people handle it, and all that kind of thing for its ceremonial.

This is the largest pot I have, here. The only reason I have it is because it 101:00had a small crack over here in the neck. It's one of my early ones. I didn't realize you were [not] supposed to grab the necks when you were polishing. When I would fire them, it would have those little cracks, so I had to learn not to do that. You have to hold them like you're holding a baby.

This is a dark one. It's got a kind of swirly design that I took after a melon. Later on, then I did this little other design around it. I did this early in 2004. It's been in Washington until this year. She had this letter in it, and it 102:00tells what price she had on it and so forth. Every year, she bought pottery from me at Santa Fe for the Department of Interior. The one thing that I found when you do a show, you sell directly to the buyer. You get your money instantly. You don't have to wait two weeks or a month or whatever, according to somebody else's plan. They come around, and they buy. Now, with her, I never sold to a 103:00museum or a gallery because I learned long ago that they want half. I could kind of bicker with the others and tell them, "If you'll buy several, you can have a certain percent off." So that's the way with her. She had a certain percent off, and she would buy more than one every year.

This is a little canoe that my daughter made. She made it for my cardholder. 104:00It's out of our clay, too.

I'll have to tell you about this. I was in Santa Fe, and we went up to a place where they had people from Mexico in Oaxaca. This woman had black clay, and she gave me enough to make a pot, which was this pot. I told Robert coming home, I said, "This is not going to fire out black." He said, "Why do you think it's not? It's black clay." I said, "It'll fire out light color. When you fire it and smother your firing is when you get black pots." So that's why I made this in 105:001994. It did turn light.

I made this design many times. I found this idea in the Southeast coast pottery. These represent, to me, the ocean waves, how they come. It makes two of them: one going this way, one going that way. I would always put it on a pot like this 106:00in four directions because it was a very important thing that our tribe did.

This is slipped darker. I was working on this pot when I had my stroke. My daughter went out there, and she fired this pot for me so that I could have it. I told her I wasn't through with it. (Laughter) I said I wanted to paint this again so it would be smooth and show those-- She said, "Yes, but you weren't able to, so I did it." (Laughter)

I'm glad that one of my children [Victoria continues the pottery]--I think that 107:00my youngest daughter would have been a potter had she had the time. Her boys came and stayed with us when they were little. They each made a pot, a pretty good-sized pot. One of them copied my designs exactly. The other one went his own way, and it looked like he was drawing petroglyphic designs because these little stick people were in certain angles and stuff. I said, "Oh, you drew petroglyphs." He said, "I don't know what that is, but these are people in chaos 108:00because the world is in chaos." He said, "That's why they're acting like that." He had a bigger idea than I did. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Well, Anna, thank you so much for your time today.

Mitchell: You're welcome.

------- End of interview -------