>>Dr. Nelson: I I hear you sometimes talk
about your job or your profession in one way,
but it seems like you talk about your role
here at the fire as being a little bit more
of who it is that you are. Does that seem
about right?
>>Chief Comingdeer: My job, my career, my
profession is is a wildland firefighter. I've
been at it for 23 years. There's an end date
to that, and I'm going to retire.
>>Dr. Nelson: [Laughs] Looking forward to
that one, there too.
>>Chief Comingdeer: --and I'm building up
towards that. But here at at Echota Ground,
at my ground, at my town here--the high chief
here at this ground, and my term limit is
death. So however long I live, that's how
long I will hold my job here, and then hopefully
it will pass on to the next, maybe a grandchild
or something. You know, a lot of elected officials,
they have a four-year, maybe they can run
a couple of terms or something, but there's
an end date, you know, that defined, a finite
date. They can say, okay, I've got at the
very longest this amount of time. For guys
like me with these these ceremonial grounds,
we could live to be 80 or 90 years old or
100 years old. And I've already been working
for my ground for over 20 years. And I have
been chief here since 2002, and so that's
13 years or 11 years or so since that happened,
and I've got a long ways to go. I'm still
a young man, so it's a it's a huge responsibility
to accept a job like that, to accept that
seat at a ground. And there are now today
I know several young chiefs at other grounds
that are in their 20s. I know one chief today,
he's a good friend of mine, he has been a
chief of his ground since he was nine.
>>Dr. Nelson: No kidding. That's a special
kind of office.
>>Chief Comingdeer: That's a special person.
>>Dr. Nelson: Yeah, let me ask you this. You
were talking earlier about some of the connections
that folks have with other grounds. Those
grounds come from other tribes too, and as
I understand it, the Echota Grounds is part
of the Four Mothers Society. Could you tell
for little bit about the Four Mothers Society
of the stomp grounds?
>>Chief Comingdeer: From what I've been taught,
and you you will find very little documentation,
you know, any kind of literature or or or
much mentioned in history books of what we
call the Four Mothers Confederacy, or the
Four Mothers Nation of Indians, or the Four
Mothers Society. You hear these different
words spoken. At one time there was an effort
to unify some of the tribes in the southeast.
If you remember a well-known Indian, he was
a Shawnee, his name was Tecumseh. He made
it an effort on his own to join tribes together
to resist the encroachment of the outside
world that was coming in on our Indian lands
and whatnot back east. And from what I have
been told through oral history, that he traveled
into our country, the Cherokee country, Creek,
Choctaw, and Chickasaw, and he encouraged
and urged us to join together. And some of
us did. Some of our fires did. Some of the
individual chiefs did ally with each other
and form that confederation of tribes. That's
when our our culture was already threatened
at that point. Not long after that was the
great removals of all the southeastern people
into Indian territory, and so the survivors
of the removal, some of those fires were restarted
here in Indian territory. And some of us still
acknowledge that old confederation to where
we said we wouldn't fight against each other
anymore, and we would be on the same side,
and we would preserve our culture in a like
fashion so that we would have a standard way.
And we would all be able to help one another
and understand each other. So we care about
our ground, based on that old agreement that
we not only follow our regulations that was
set by our forefathers, but that we also wish
no harm nor would wage war against any other
tribal town that was part of that confederation.
And that gives us a duty to help one another
in the sense of unifying each other together,
even though we may not have exactly the same
history or the blood lineage. Our people did
want to get along--
>>Dr. Nelson: And you're still meeting--
>>Chief Comingdeer: --and not fight against
each other anymore.
>>Dr. Nelson: Yeah, I think I'd always read
that the Four Mothers Confederacy kind of
started up around the time of allotment, but
it sounds like according to the history that
you're talking about here, it extends way
farther back, back into the early 1800s.
>>Chief Comingdeer: Before then, yeah.
>>Dr. Nelson: Right, that's very interesting.
And and it's still going on now. You're still
having meetings with these other tribal folks,
and these these grounds from other traditions
in other places. Is that right?
>>Chief Comingdeer: There are several of the
fires in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation that
would be remnants of the old Four Mothers
Confederacy. This ground here is the last
of the Cherokee fires that is still acknowledged
as part of that through our history. And so
as far as I know, the Chickasaw and the Choctaw
fires are have have all went out. And so today
we have this Cherokee fire here and then a
handful of the Creek tribal town fires that
would be, you know, those are what's left
of the old Confederation. And official meetings
for Four Mothers people aren't really something
that take place, but meetings of dances where
people come to dance I think that it's it's
still-- at least among some of the older people,
it's still acknowledged that we're Four Mothers
people, and still helping each other, peaceful
with each other. We try to acknowledge those
little things when we can at meetings that
take place when we're together, but maybe
not specifically a Four Mothers meeting, you
see.
>>Dr. Nelson: Right. All right. Very good.
