February 14, 2002

On Saturday morning, February 2, the Cherokees assembled at the Hampton Inn for a breakfast. After having waffles and maple syrup with egg and bacon tacos, we mingled around in the huge lobby of the inn, meeting with friends that we had not seen since our last get together.

We discovered there were Cherokees from Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Washington State, California and Georgia. They were all dressed in their Cherokee regalia, and excitement was high as different people were dressed wearing their ribbon shirts, with the women wearing beautiful leather sheep skin dresses with bright colored beads. The men had shawls tied around their waists and either western felt hats with feathers or turbans wrapped around their heads.

I must say this was a most impressive crowd of people talking, laughing and greeting each other with Onega bear hugs.

The Cherokee women were wearing fine silver and stone jewelry and some of the Cherokee from Washington state were wearing a feathered crown and a neatly arranged bunch of attractive feathers. They were wearing bells around and above their knees which were a moccasin high type leather that went above the knee, and as they made a few fast steps, they began to shake the bells to a rhythm.

One man’s name was Onega Feather Man and he was from Washington state – he was about my age as I would guess; he was very active and would jump around greeting people. You could hear him coming down the carpeted halls way before you would see him coming.

He performed very well along the five-mile parade route. As he danced down the street, he would run over to the side line and shake hands with the parade watchers.

After we all started outside from the Inn to get into our cars and buses for the trip to Zaragoza Ranch, the lady Cherokees gathered around the front of the Inn and sang the Cherokee Morning Song. All of the women were singing acappella, and I just wish you could have heard these beautiful voices from the likewise beautiful women. They sang the song four times (as is custom) and were applauded by all of the men.

When we arrived in Mexico, there was a sign on a building that read "God Bless America" in Spanish and displayed the American flag. This was a wonderful welcome to add to an already wonderful trip.

As we journeyed on down the highway and entered the city of Zaragoza, the City Hall is at the entrance of the town.

And as we traveled down into the bottom of a small hill, there was a large stream of clear, clean water. I learned later that this stream was spring fed and many of the streams flowed with a mineral water that comes out of the ground at 98.6 degrees. It is known as healing water, and is at body temperature making it comfortable for bathing (which I didn’t see). I was not able to bathe in the healing water, but was able to get a hand full and wash my hands and face, and the next day I noticed that a shaving scratch on my face had disappeared.

Activities for the following day’s events began to become obvious as we traveled through town and arrived at what looked like an old time fair grounds.

All of the vans, buses, and pickups stopped and it was plain to see that thousands of cowboys were riding around slowly and carefully looking at us as we were dressed in the Cherokee Regalia.

The Mexican Cherokee Chief boarded our bus and picked up the microphone to announce that the thousands of Mexican cowboys which included some Mexican Cherokees wanted to see the Texas Cherokees parade on the grounds by walking around in a cleared area of about three or four acres of land.

As the Texas Cherokees made our way walking around the crowd, some of the Cowboys would jump through the crowd and come out and shake our hands in English and say "Welcome Cheroky," to our one hundred and fifty-year celebration of festivities.

One of the Catholic Padres was there and as I walked by I shook hands with him and in English he said "Welcome to Zaragoza."

The walking took about fifteen minutes and proved to be a sure sign that the Texas Cherokees were welcome to Mexico.

After we boarded the bus the Mexican Chief’s wife came aboard and passed out cold bottles of water and soft beverages (Cherokees don’t allow alcohol).

As everyone commented on how friendly all of the Mexican Cowboys were and how welcome they made us feel, we journeyed on down a narrow dirt street and headed toward a 5,000 acre ranch.

The modern day ranch in Mexico had water trenched out on the level ground which served to irrigate the grain and other things that they raised on the ranch. It was simple to see how the water flowed down the large fields.

We traveled about another forty-five minutes throughout the small trees. The tour bus driver would have to stop and back up to make his way around the corners of the mesquite trees. While we driving through this area, I discovered that my sinus problem was beginning to clear up and that I could not feel the allergy problems and my breathing was better and remained so the entire trip.

On our way to the village where Chief Sequoyah lived some one-hundred-fifty or sixty years earlier, the bus driver had to drive through puddles of muddy water. As we traveled further into the narrow trails, the bus driver had to back up and make a run through the mud, as we heard the limbs scraping on the sides of the bus, my biggest concern was that if the dead mesquite trees got under the tires of the bus and punctured the tires and what would we do to get out. This made me feel at home here in Aubrey (Onega), I remember when I was in third grade that we would have to get out of the bus and push in order to get up a hill so that we could get to school on time.

But as we went along farther, we found ourselves in a wide clearing with several old adobe decayed walls and houses that were going to ruins. These adobe walls were a part of the warehouses the Cherokees used as they made their way into Mexico and settled in this area.

After we arrived at this clearing, we all got off the bus, and noticed some really large grape vines that had trunks with a diameter of six inches. There were trails which were made by human hands as they pulled the vines back in order to continue on down the trail to a flowing well of the 98.6 degree water that I mentioned earlier.

This 8-inch warm sulphur water stream flowed back one-hundred-sixty-four years ago when Sequoyah and his sons lived in this village.

Sequoyah was in very bad health at the time they lived here. When Sequoyah’s sons left after their Dad’s death, the only way they remembered where their father was buried was where ghosts live and make noises.

It was the hot water coming up in the ground during cold weather that caused the steam vapors to rise up in the air, and gave the boys the impression that their father died where the ghosts live.

The Cherokees at Tallaquah couldn’t accept the idea that the Chief was dead, because after all he had brought intelligence just a little while before to the tribe, and in only a few short years through his invention of the Cherokee alphabet and syllables, they came out of illiteracy seemingly overnight.

The photo this week, is of the running stream of hot water as it has been running for at least one-hundred-sixty-four years. The spring of water has been controlled with concrete valleys to guide it further down into the ranch where it joins other streams that combine together and make their way into Zaragoza where the stream becomes the thirty or forty-foot river of clear fresh water as it makes its way onto other ranches on the east of Zaragoza.

The interpreter told how people came to the stream of hot water and washed their faces to remove blemishes and sun spots, and within a few days the spots and blemishes disappeared.

That is when I decided to wash my hands clean and rubbed it on my aging face spots.

Folks this was beginning to become a really adventurous trip.

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