CLAREMORE, Okla. (AP) - Ollie Starr can’t recall her first taste of wild onions or drink of sassafras tea.
“We grew up gathering, preparing and eating those foods,” said Starr, former president of the Indian Women’s Pocahontas Club. “So I don’t remember the first time I ever had wild onions or grape dumplings.
“That’s just the way it always was. We didn’t know any different.”
The Tulsa World reports the Indian Women’s Pocahontas Club, the oldest chartered club in Oklahoma, will celebrate one of its oldest traditions with its Wild Onion Dinner, open to the public, on March 23.
“One of the most important things we do is preserve the history and culture of the Cherokee people,” said Debra West, another former president of the Indian Women’s Pocahontas Club. “So preparing this meal every spring is one of the ways we preserve and educate people about Cherokee culture.
“It is great for us, too. We prepare this meal as a family. We have generations of our family involved. We are passing along knowledge to a new generation.”
The Indian Women’s Pocahontas Club has been preserving Cherokee Nation culture and history for 120 years.
“When the club was formed, and for many years after, one of the most important things we did was preserve our history through documents,” said Starr. “We have a treasure trove of historical documents of the Cherokee people because we were the only group preserving the documents.
“Recently, through an agreement with Rogers State University, we now have a facility on their campus where we can store documents and preserve them.”
The Pocahontas Club has about 200 members. A monthly meeting is hosted in Claremore, but Pocahontas Club has members across the country.
“We have members from California and Arizona and Florida and Texas - they live in all areas of the country,” said West. “There are major pockets of Cherokees in most of the major cities in the U.S. As a result, we have Pocahontas Club members from most major cities.
“The Indian Women’s Pocahontas Club was formed as an important part of the Cherokee people. Although Pocahontas was not Cherokee, she was the most well-known Native American woman of her time. The stories about her at the time said she was a strong, brave and smart woman. The name will never change. It is the first thing in our charter.”
Cherokee Principal Chief Bill John Baker, writing in the Tulsa World last summer, said club members “serve as valuable caretakers of our culture, our heritage and our communities.”
The club formed on June 29, 1899, in Oowala, in the Cooweescoowee District of the Cherokee Nation. That’s present-day Rogers County.
The club is undergoing somewhat of a renaissance. The average age of Pocahontas Club members is increasing, prompting a push to recruit younger members. Of the 200 members, 40 are at least 80 years old; 14 members in their 90s, and one member is 103 years old.
“Obviously, we want to work on getting a new, younger generation interested in what we do,” said Clarice Doyle, another active member of the club. “Our history has to be kept and preserved. That will take a new generation of Cherokee women.”
A grandmother-granddaughter event is among recruitment activities.
“We have to pass on this history and culture by teaching it to younger women,” Starr said. “They live in a far different world than the one we grew up in.”
Although it is now a women’s club, it counts famed actor and storyteller Will Rogers as a former member. The Indian Women’s Pocahontas Club hosts an annual picnic at the Dog Iron Ranch - birthplace and home of Rogers - and members lay a memorial wreath at the Will Rogers Memorial Museum during the Will Rogers Days annual celebration in November.
“That is an important part of preserving Cherokee history,” said West. “We also are very interested in education. We give out scholarships and are very involved in promoting education. Education was a very important part of Cherokee culture.”
The club is planning a major celebration June 29 for the 120th anniversary of the founding of the club.
In 1899, members came from all over and attended Indian boarding schools across the state.
“So we were a very diverse group of women and we still are,” said Starr.
Members of the modern Pocahontas Club must be Cherokee women who can trace their ancestry back to the Dawes Roll, a federal census of those living in the Cherokee Nation that was used to allot Cherokee land to citizens in preparation for Oklahoma statehood. The rolls were closed in 1907.
“The best thing we do every year is the Wild Onion Dinner because it is such a family event,” said Starr.
The Wild Onion Dinner was a Cherokee spring tradition.
“When the wild onions would start coming up, and the sassafras trees had the green bark, which is perfect to make the tea, you knew it was spring,” said Starr. “It was always such an exciting time of the year for us as young girls.
“I still get very excited for the Wild Onion Dinner every year. It signals the start of spring. It is about taking from the earth and giving back to the earth.”
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Information from: Tulsa World, http://www.tulsaworld.com
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