Walking the Choctaw Road

In Walking the Choctaw Road, Tim Tingle reaches far back into tribal memory to offer a deeply personal collection of stories woven from the supernatural, mythical, historical and oral accounts of Choctaw people living today. “Oklahoma” comes from the Choctaw word “Okla Homma,” meaning “Red People.” In this, his first collection of stories, acclaimed storyteller and folklorist Tim Tingle tells the stories of his people, the Choctaw People, the Okla Homma. For years Tim has collected the stories of the old folks, weaving those tales into his own stories, mixing traditional lore with stories from everyday life. Thus, Walking the Choctaw Road has a mixture of contemporary stories of Choctaw people living their lives right now, historical accounts passed down from generation to generation, and stories arising from beliefs and myths. In one of the eleven stories, Tim tells how audiences are always wanting to hear stories about the Indian Wars, so he tells about his own Indian War, which he calls “Archie’s War,” the 20-year war between his father and him which ended in hard-won respect and love for them both. In another he lets a five-year-old boy tell us a magical, tragic tale about “The Trail of Tears” when the U.S. government forcibly removed the Choctaw people from their homeland to Oklahoma. And in another a Choctaw preacher tells about his grandmother, a healing woman, who has a beyond-death relationship with her protector dog, Shob.