{"id":39505,"date":"2015-12-22T04:15:58","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T04:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=39505"},"modified":"2015-12-22T04:17:01","modified_gmt":"2015-12-22T04:17:01","slug":"the-cherokee-kid-will-rogers-tribal-identity-and-the-making-of-an-american-icon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=39505","title":{"rendered":"The Cherokee Kid: Will Rogers, Tribal Identity, and the Making of an American Icon"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Cherokee Kid: Will Rogers, Tribal Identity, and the Making of an American Icon<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

University Press of Kansas<\/a>
\nJune 2015
\n400 pages
\n7 illustrations, 6 x 9
\nCloth ISBN 978-0-7006-2100-2
\nEbook ISBN 978-0-7006-2101-9<\/p>\n

Amy M. Ware<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Early in the twentieth century, the political humorist<\/a> Will Rogers<\/a> was arguably the most famous cowboy in America. And though most in his vast audience didn\u2019t know it, he was also the most famous Indian of his time. Those who know of Rogers\u2019s Cherokee<\/a> heritage and upbringing tend to minimize its importance, or to imagine that Rogers himself did so\u2014notwithstanding his avowal in interviews: \u201cI\u2019m a Cherokee and they\u2019re the finest Indians in the World.\u201d The truth is, throughout his adult life and his work the Oklahoma<\/a> cowboy made much of his American Indian background. And in doing so, as Amy Ware suggests in this book, he made Cherokee artistry a fundamental part of American popular culture.<\/p>\n

Rogers, whose father was a prominent and wealthy Cherokee politician and former Confederate<\/a> slaveholder, was born into the Paint Clan in the town of Oolagah<\/a> in 1879 and raised in the Cooweescoowee District<\/a> of the Cherokee Nation<\/a>. Ware maps out this milieu, illuminating the familial and social networks, as well as the Cherokee ranching practices, educational institutions, popular publications and heated political debates that so firmly grounded Rogers in the culture of the Cherokees. Through his early career, from Wild West<\/a> and vaudeville performer to Ziegfeld Follies<\/a> headliner in the late 1910s, she reveals how Rogers embodied the seemingly conflicting roles of cowboy and Indian, in effect enacting the blending of these identities in his art. Rogers\u2019s work in the film industry also reflected complex notions of American Indian identity and history, as Ware demonstrates in her reading of the clearest examples, including Laughing Billy Hyde, in which Rogers, an Indian, portrayed a white prospector married to an Indian woman\u2014who was played by a white actress.<\/p>\n

In his work as a columnist for the New York Times<\/em>, and in his radio performances, Ware continues to trace the Cherokee influence on Rogers\u2019s material\u2014and in turn its impact on his audiences. It is in these largely uncensored performances that we see another side of Rogers\u2019 Cherokee persona\u2014a tribal elitism that elevated the Cherokee above other Indian nations. Ware\u2019s exploration of this distinction exposes still-common assumptions regarding Native authenticity in the history of American culture, even as her in-depth look at Will Rogers\u2019s heritage and legacy reshapes our perspective on the Native presence in that history, and in the life and work of a true American icon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Cherokee Kid: Will Rogers, Tribal Identity, and the Making of an American Icon University Press of Kansas June 2015 400 pages 7 illustrations, 6 x 9 Cloth ISBN 978-0-7006-2100-2 Ebook ISBN 978-0-7006-2101-9 Amy M. Ware Early in the twentieth century, the political humorist Will Rogers was arguably the most famous cowboy in America. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1245,11,8,17,3015,20],"tags":[19081,19082,17210,15511,19083],"class_list":["post-39505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-books","category-media-archive","category-monographs","category-native-americans","category-usa","tag-amy-m-ware","tag-amy-ware","tag-cherokee-indians","tag-university-press-of-kansas","tag-will-rogers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39505"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44704,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39505\/revisions\/44704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}