GOINGBACK AND MARY

excerpts from THE ARTIST AND THE STORYTELLER, (Goingback and Mary Chiltolskey) by Mary Regina Ulmer Galloway
...a story of possibilities and determination....

Goingback's carvings represent in places all through the United States and Europe the best of Native American sculpture, and Cherokee legends have lived for many thousands in the words of Mary....

She was born in a log cabin in Alabama....He was the tenth child of a Cherokee family...in the Smoky Mountains...

Goingback (G.B.)....master carver and model-maker for the  United States Corps of Engineers...Several of his carvings, including his famous Woman Carrying a Bundle and St. Francis of Assissi, were displayed at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington...

Mary...teacher in Cherokee Boarding School...was told...to gather together the Cherokee artifacts, stories... and put it ouside... to be burned.  She...and Nan Tyner...decided to hide the materials under the boardinghouse beds!

Mary is the author of CHEROKEE COOKLORE; TO MAKE MY BREAD (1951), CHEROKEE WORDS WITH PICTURES (1972), CHEROKEE PLANTS:THEIR USES, A 400 YEAR HISTORY, written with Paul B Hamel (1975, and CHEROKEE FAIR & FESTIVAL: A HISTORY THROUGH 1978 (1979)

In 1989 members of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee invited Mary ...to become an honorary Cherokee.

Chief Robert Youngdeer...asked her to go to Reno, Nevada, to represent the Eastern Band at a meeting about books...a free book program approved by the IRS..In 1990 the Cherokee Center, easily the most active in the country, documented the distribution of the one millionth book...

...In the years after retirement  from teaching and government work, G.B. and Mary agreed to thousands of requests from groups all over the South to come and talk about Cherokee crafts, legends, and all parts of the Cherokee story.