April Meeting | JD Colbert on The Muscogee Dialect Writings

“Wooley Fixico he say:
Will Roger he was died the other day,
Killed in airplane fallin’ down,
‘Bout a thousand miles from town,
Now we miss it whole lot too,
‘Cause aint got funny joke like use’ to do,
Will Roger he was best kind,
‘Nother man like him in whole world can’t find,
Good man he’s young fella died,
Bad one like me can’t die if he tried,
Wooley he was said these thing.”

At the turn of the 19th century a new and popular genre of literature emerged in Indian Territory. This style of writing came to be known as the Muscogee Dialectic Writings. The most well-known of these authors were the Creeks; Alexander Posey, Charles Gibson, Acee Blue Eagle, and Thomas E. Moore.

This style of literature is also called “speaking Creek in English”. The dialogue in these writings was based upon a Muscogee-Creek sentence structure but spoken in English. The genre typically includes a wise-fool persona, a character who comes across as foolish but who observes insightful truths. Think of Yogi Berra’s quote, “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” The genre encompassed both poetry and prose that frequently articulated biting political satire.

Join J.D. Colbert (Muscogee-Creek/Chickasaw) for his talk on Oklahoma’s early and unique literature, the Muscogee Dialect Writings. J.D. is a career banker and long-time author. He writes the column Sour Sofkee for Native Oklahoma Magazine and has written two books, Between Two Fires: The Creek Murders and the Birth of the Oil Capital of the World and The Fus Yvhikv Columns, a Creek Humorist in Modern Oklahoma.