Racial hatred was never on of the Spiritual Path of the Creek People
Both the Creek (Kaushete) Migration Legend and the Sokee (Miccosukee) Migration Legend begin with oppressed peoples in southern Mexico, joining together and making the great trek to the Promised Land in Southeastern North America, where they could create communal societies, where there was no slavery, no human sacrifices to evil deities, no cannibalism, plus where men and women would be equal in all ways and children would be treated as precious gifts.
As far as the cultural memory of the Creek and Chickasaw Peoples go back, it was literally a law that people could not marry spouses, who were closely related. Therefore. after literally dating around for 5-10 years, they were encouraged to marry people from other towns, other tribes and other races. This is because the elected leaders knew that hybrid people were stronger, healthier and more adaptive to change.
It was white government officials, who taught Oklahoma Native Americans to be racists. That certainly was not the way of the Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles here in Georgia. In fact, there are old time African American families in South Georgia, who still say prayers for the Creek People . . . and who embrace me, when they meet me. The Georgia Creeks were their only neighbors, who gave sanctuary to runaway slaves.
Now, the national media is having a field day, because the continuing rancor in Oklahoma over the disenrollment of so-called “Black Freedmen.” Of course, the real history is that many of these families were only slaves BEFORE they were welcomed into a tribe and began intermarrying with other members. It was white federal officials, who put their names in 1905 on a list of “Black Freedmen.”
The talking heads in the offices of national network news offices are now inferring that all Native Americans are just as bigoted as anyone else. That is just not true. The Americas Revealed is providing all those involved in this controversy a History Fact Check.
Etymology of the word, Muskogee
Throughout the late 1600s, 1700s and up to the Trail of Tears, the family that furnished all of the High Kings (Principal Chiefs) were the Bemarin . . . called “Brim” by white academicians. Bemarin is a French Sephardic Jewish family name. They were a mixture of Creek, Sephardic Jewish and French Protestant ancestors. Up until the mid-1700s, all Creeks other than the Upper Creeks, called themselves Apalache or Palache.
Upon being elected High King around 1748, Malachi Bemarin (named after the Hebrew prophet) decided to come up with a new ethnic name for his people that was not an English word like Creek. He combined the Ladino (Spanish Sephardic) word for “mixed race” – masko . . . with the Muskogean suffix for “people or tribe” . . . ki. The new name was Maskoki, which was soon Anglicized to Muskogee.
This is the old bank building that my Grand Papa Obie converted into a general store after World War II. It is where I learned all my core values, which I maintain to this day. There was one restroom for the store. It was used by people of all races, in an era when Georgia Law said that he could be put behind bars for not having racially segregated restrooms.
The store was heated with a big, coal-fired pot belly stove. All customers, regardless of race, wealth or background were welcome to sit around the pot belly stove and socialize all day. This was also against the laws of Georgia at that time. Some of Papa’s Obie’s best friends were the mixed African-Creek folks from Rucker’s Bottom. One of the favorite visitors was a severely retarded young man, who folks just called “Good Friend.”
This is Bone’s Pond in Irwin County, GA . . . now better known as Crystal Lake. Back in the early 1800s, a group of Creek families, who had state citizenship because of being descended from US Army veterans, settled here. Prominent among them were my Itsate Creek ancestors the Bone and Roberts families. In 1937, a federal court judge declared the Bone families and their relatives in Georgia and the southern tip of South Carolina to legally be Creek Indians. They could have formed a separate Creek tribe, but everybody was too poor to afford the time to do so.
The Bone and Roberts families in Irwin County were very active in the Underground Railroad. They were one of the first stops for escaped slaves from Florida and southern Georgia. In great danger to their own lives they continued to help escaped slaves, escaped Union soldiers and Confederate deserters to safety. In April 1865, shortly after Lee’s surrender, a pro-slavery band of vigilantes lynched my great-grandfather’s uncle.
This is Creek actor, Pernell Robert’s, Jr. His father was born near Bone’s Pond. Pernell and I were born in the same maternity ward at Ware County Hospital in Waycross, GA. His father delivered soft drinks to my official father’s short order restaurant, across the street from the Waycross Auditorium.
When I was six months old, Pernell, Sr. intentionally dropped me headfirst on a concrete floor. Never figured that one out, but it certainly made me bull-headed. Both my family and the Roberts were members of Trinity Methodist Church in Waycross. We would sometimes go with the Roberts to Waycross’s famous Green Frog Restaurant after church. Back in those days, your church was the center of your social life.
Pernell always dreamed of being an architect, but flunked out of Georgia Tech first year. After serving two years in the US Marine Corps Band, he returned to Waycross with the intent of becoming a Methodist minister. The church was going to pay the entire cost of him attending theology school at Emory University. The first steps in that endeavor were teaching my mother’s Young Adult Sunday School Class and acting as lay preacher in small rural churches that couldn’t afford preachers.
In a Sunday School lesson, Pernell stated his approval of President Truman’s Executive Order that racially integrated the US Armed Forces. The Boss Hogg’s of the church REALLY didn’t like that. The end result was Pernell walking away from being a minister and leaving Waycross for Washington, DC and then New York City. His official story in later years was that he couldn’t abide the hypocrisy of Southern churches.
We fast forward to winter 1965. Pernell Roberts is now the most popular star of the number one rated show on American television. In its early years, Roberts played a successful architect, who left his practice in Boston to return home to the ranch after his mother died. He and his two brothers are presented as affable, eunuch cowboys on a 1000 acre ranch. So, in the magical medium of television, Pernell realized his adolescent dream of becoming an architect.
Pernell’s repeated complaints about a role where he seemed to be a marginally educated eunuch eventually resulted in plots, where he had adult relationships with women, spoke English typical of a college graduate and showed off his considerable musical talents. Bonanza shot up to No. 1 and stayed there for years.
Adam Cartwright (Pernell Roberts) as a grown up man, seeking a soulmate
Network executives began to complain about Pernell’s increasing associations with Black civil rights leaders and actors, plus his aggressive efforts to replace fake Indians with real Native American actors on TV shows and in the movies. Apparently, he was also donating generously to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and had been in direct contact with the Rev. Martin Luther King. At the time, King was considered a Communist traitor by closet homosexual FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover and was hated by many Southern whites. Threats were insinuated that Pernell’s contract would not be renewed, if his outside activities alienated sponsors and Southern whites.
Bonanza’s director, David Dortort, later publicly expressed regrets for not being responsive to Pernell’s complaints about his boy-in-a-man’s body typecast and not making Pernell’s social consciousness a positive trait, rather than treating it as some sort of vice . . . “The Southern women would have adored him, even if played General Sherman.”
Pernell Roberts quit Bonanza and went on the famous Civil Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. In doing so, he kissed off a salary and promotional fees equivalent today to about $12 million a year. Had he stayed on Bonanza another five years and not had the onus of leaving a popular TV show, he would probably become one of top entertainment celebrities of the late 20th century. Remember he was also a professional musician and had a magnificent baritone singing voice.
As it was, he starred in dozens of conventional live plays and had roles in many TV programs, plus starred for three years in “Trapper John, MD.” The fascinating thing is that over 13 years after his death, there are more websites and Youtube videos than ever dedicated to his memory. Young women all over the world still fawn over his photos and acting appearances as if he is still alive and 35 years old.
Pernell Roberts the Native American activist
At this point, many readers from Oklahoma might have dissed off the article because it was about people, who were not real Native Americans, since they did not have a Bureau of Indian Affairs ID card. Oh really? What have you done for your people?
He was involved in many philanthropic programs around the nation that sought to raise the standard of living for Native Americans and African Americans. Behind the scenes, Pernell Roberts played an advisory role in the Muscogee-Creek Nation. I now know that he was on the board that reviewed my research reports. He played a major role in encouraging young Native Americans in California and Oklahoma to enter acting careers. He personally funded the college educations of dozens, perhaps over a hundred Native American young people.
Pernell was the first person outside of Georgia to subscribe to what is now called “The Americas Revealed” website. He told me his name was “Gator Joe” and that he formerly lived in Georgia. For the next five years, he periodically sent me, what he called “gas money” checks and encouraged me to study as many Native American heritage sites as possible. I did not realize who Gator Joe on PRoberts@aol.com was until February 2010, when his secretary or wife sent me an email, asking me to remove his email address, since he had died on January 24th.
Pernell Roberts Postscript Humor
On the first night that Vivi the French Courtesan and I met, she could not believe that I was real, since I was the first man in her life, who had not treated her as a commodity or a sports car to be acquired. She asked to see where I was born. I found a video of the recently broadcast National Geo TV show, “Realm of the Alligator” – staring Pernell Roberts.
Vivi squealed with delight, when she saw Pernell on the TV screen . . . in a lustful manner that only mademoiselles from northern France can master. At the time, she confessed that as a teenager she had a six feet tall poster of Pernell Roberts taped to her bedroom wall. Only later, did she further confess carnal thoughts like this young American actress on the Johnny Carson Show.
The Americas Revealed 