08/09/2025
In the early 1900s, before Oklahoma became a state, the rolling hills of Tahlequah were home to many Cherokee families who had rebuilt their lives after the Trail of Tears. Among them lived a quiet couple whose story passed through generations; Tom Sixkiller, a hunter, and his wife Sula, a weaver and teacher.
Tom was known as a "tracker of shadows"; a skilled deer hunter who moved silently through the dense woods with only a bow and bone-handled knife. But he hunted with deep respect for the animals, following the Cherokee belief that each life taken must be honored.
Sula, educated at a Cherokee mission school, was a weaver of both textiles and oral stories. She taught young girls how to make river-dyed cloth and recorded old Cherokee tales in syllabary script. Together, they lived in a modest log cabin surrounded by medicinal plants and drying hides.
One winter, Tom came home with a white-tailed buck whose pelt was unusually pale; considered a sign of transition. That same week, news arrived: Oklahoma would become a U.S. state in 1907. For Tom and Sula, it marked both loss and legacy; their Nation would now face erasure, but their culture lived on through quiet resistance, craftsmanship, and memory.
Their descendants still live near those hills, and a small buckskin book woven by Sula survives in a Cherokee heritage center.
