An Interview with Deborah L. Duvall and Murv Jacob
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – “We did not write this by committee; you mess with us you’ll find out we’re a gang!” Murv Jacob laughed, halfway joking, about three people writing a novel. “I don’t even know which of us is the best armed.”
Author Deborah L. Duvall and author/artist Murv Jacob have written many books together, most notably “The Grandmother Stories” (University of New Mexico Press) a seven-book set of beautifully illustrated stories of preserved Cherokee legends. They have just released “Secret History of the Cherokees” (Indian Territory Press), their first novel, co-authored with James Murray. It is the first part of a planned series of nonfiction novels about the Cherokee people. The book was written in a communal setting, Jacob’s art studio, in downtown Tahlequah, the capital of the Cherokee Nation. When people came by to visit, many of them Cherokee by blood, they read the finished pages and made suggestions as the co-authors were writing the rest of the book. Thus, the “gang.”
The finished product is a 280-page, succinct epic. Figures from history books, including Stand Watie, Sam Houston, John Ross, and even Thomas Jefferson intermingle with fictional characters, starting with the 1808 treaty signing and ending in the middle of the Civil War. At first, Sequoyah’s story seems to be the anchor of the book; it goes through his life and continues after his death through his secret writings, which are rumored to still exist. However the story of Cassius, a fictional slave who goes through many real historic events, is also a major anchor among the dozens of characters.
“We weren’t trying to write great literature, we were just trying to get some ideas across,” Jacob said. “It’s a pop novel, it’s postmodern. The key to it is that it’s a series of 30 or 40 short stories, and readers can start in the middle of it, like a Tarantino movie, and find their way out of it any way they want.”
It is interesting that a novel that gives a voice to the Cherokees’ slaves has come out at the same time that the battle over the citizenship of the Freedmen, the descendants of the Cherokee slaves, is coming to a head in the Cherokee Nation. While the authors had planned on the book making a pro-Freedman statement, they could never have predicted the timing of its publication.
“We worked on it for years,” Jacob said. “Probably 75% of the stuff we started off with just turned out to be ridiculous. But then the powers that be at the Cherokee Nation started giving us the clue as to which direction we should go when they started trying to kick the Freedman out. The fact that it came out at the same time is just spectacular. The controversy is bringing national attention to the Cherokees and here’s our book with parallels to all this stuff going on today.” Jacob noted that the book is selling exceptionally well, especially for a small press release.
Duvall pointed out that fresh Confederate flags are still being stuck in the grave of the Cherokee Confederate Brigadier General Stand Watie, who is a major character in the novel.
“The Turmoil between the two sides from back then are still going on and it has always been going on since contact with the white people, and since they turned the leadership over to the men from the women,” Duvall said. “The whole book pretty much shows you how this beautiful and exotic culture completely turned into this horrific thing it has become. I don’t think anybody really realizes that.”
The novel is unapologetic in not only its descriptions of sexual encounters and its Twain-like use of the “N-word” in the sections dealing with slavery, but also in showing the violence of the “idyllic” world of pre-industrial America and its myth busting of some Cherokee icons.
“We have unbound some absolute myths that people may not be aware of,” Duvall said. “One of those is that Quatie Brown Henley, Chief John Ross’s wife, froze to death along the Trail of Tears because she gave her blanket to a starving child. In actuality she got sick on the way there, probably from drinking water, in a brand-new steam boat. She was in a nice compartment while the slaves were riding in the goddamned cattle barges in the back. It undoes a lot of stuff that people have said.”
“John Ross himself was a monster,” Jacob said. “The more we studied him there really was no way to make him a nice guy. He is the biggest fish we fry, and he is highly touted by the Cherokee Nation, but he was creepy. That last girl he married was like one-third his age, and then he fled with her up to Connecticut and lived with her parents, who were half-a-generation younger than him at least; this old man doddering down the stairs, married to their daughter, is pretty g****** creepy s***. We haven’t really taken him completely apart yet, we are just starting to dismantle that mother******. If we were interested in historical revisionism we would’ve just let the Cherokee Nation write it.
“There is also a lot of nudity in our book,” Jacob continued, “at least the liberal sprinkling of it, and Christianity barely rears its ugly head. And the only Republican we really like is Lincoln.”
It should be noted that both Sam Houston and Sequoyah also smoke marijuana in the narrative. Jacob notes that since there were no laws against it at the time, they probably would have smoked it.
Both Duvall and Jacob believe the success of this novel was due to using a gang to write it, and that the concept of writing history as a novel could catch on for writers in other tribes. “I think we open the door for people to start writing a hundred new novels by doing ours,” Jacob laughed.
They are already at work on the sequel.
Paperbacks are available at Jacob Gallery in Tahlequah, Okla., and on Amazon.com. You may also download an ebook copy for Kindle or Nook. For more information visit http://www.jacobandduvall.com.