And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: link sent by Martha..thanks..:) Cherokee Nancy Lawhead http://search.tulsaworld.com/archivesearch/default.asp?WCI=DisplayStory&ID=9 90902_Ne_a1chero TAHLEQUAH -- Medicine, people, snuff and fishing marked the life of full-blood Cherokee Nancy Lawhead, the oldest known Oklahoman until her death this week at the age of 115. ``She is the oldest known in the Centurian Club of Oklahoma, and we would know if there is an older person in Oklahoma,'' said Richard Ziglar of Tulsa, a club board member and the coordinator for northeastern Oklahoma. Lawhead, a medicine woman whose life centered around hunting and fishing, died Wednesday, according to her family. Funeral services are scheduled at 2 p.m. Tuesday at Reed Culver Funeral Home. They will be conducted in the Cherokee and English languages. Burial will be at Greenleaf Cemetery. ``The medicine woman or medicine man is a dying breed,'' said Hastings Shade, deputy chief of the Cherokee Nation and a student and teacher of Cherokee culture. ``There are some left,'' Shade said, ``but every time we lose an elder, that part of what they know is gone. Sometimes they have mentored someone and, hopefully, that person will carry on.'' Lawhead's daughter, Rosie Lee Armstrong of Tulsa, said her mother was born March 12, 1884, at Braggs. Armstrong, who generally spoke with her mother in Cherokee, said the full-blood Cherokee was fluent in English but didn't necessarily like the language. Armstrong said the family got by hunting and fishing in the Illinois River in the hill country outside Tahlequah. Lawhead, whose first husband died shortly after they were wed, was married twice. ``They did what little work they could find. They were country people and we were born and raised on a river, hunting and fishing. There were no jobs,'' Armstrong said. ``She loved to fish. She could knock the eyeballs out of a perch'' with her fishing rod, her daughter said. Lawhead also raised her grandson, John Lawhead of Tahlequah, and got him through school. He refers to her as his mother. Armstrong, who said she is ``scratching for age 70 in January,'' said her mother primarily was an Indian herb doctor or medicine woman. As a medicine woman, Armstrong said, her mother would use herbs from roots and tobacco to cure patients of everything from broken toes to broken marriages. Lawhead treated persons of all races and didn't ask for compensation. ``She didn't say this will cost you $10 or $15. If they didn't give her money, it was perfectly all right,'' Armstrong said. During her latter years, Lawhead lived in quaint housing constructed by the Cherokee Nation on Stick Ross Mountain Road southwest of Tahlequah. She was bedfast for the last 10 years of her life, Armstrong said. Lawhead, the daughter recalled, gave credit for her long life to ``dipping old Garrett snuff and eating salt meat.'' She was a member of the Greenleaf Baptist Church, never drove a car and at one time weighed 353 pounds. ``She never turned her back to anybody. She never closed the door,'' said John Lawhead, 54, who recalled that his grandmother ``doctored a lot of kids and people who had been given up on at the hospital. Some are still living.'' Rob Martindale, World senior writer, can be reached at 581-8367 or via e- mail at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "My heart is moved by all I cannot save, so much has been lost.... so much has been destroyed. I must cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power... reconstitute the world."
