Crowdancing and the Cherokee Storyteller’s Bag: The Story Behind the Story
By Dr. K. Mark Hilliard
The Book:
Crowdancing and the Cherokee Storyteller’s Bag: A Memoir of My Expanded-Imagination
Crowdancing’s story is a personal memoir in that it covers portions of my real-life and imaginative-life from before I was born to about age fifteen—all blended together within authentic Cherokee and Irish history, legend, lore, poetry, and fantasy. The story will take you into the midst of ancient Cherokee ceremonies; into the enchanted lands of faerie and fae and dragon and crow; into the hiding places of the Little-People of the Cherokee; into the homes of the Faerie Folk of Ireland; and near and far beyond.
The Stories will take you into an enchanted world of unseen realms on earth and realms afar; into the lives of the Cherokee-Real-People, and their real-places; places that once stood within time itself, and some still do; yet by some magical mystical means, these places now transcend both time and space, and the hearer of these stories, along with them.
But that is enough . . . for now! Let me begin my first tale.
“O-E-A . . . Yah!
What I have said is true.
And I, the Storyteller, do tell this tale.”
September 2022
That First Copy!
The first copy of my new book, Crowdancing and the Cherokee Storyteller’s Bag, arrived from my publisher, Moloney-O’Brien, today—September 29, 2022. It is always exciting to see that first hard-copy proof with your own eyes and in the hands that tapped on those computer keys for month upon month wondering if The End would ever come; then to slowly flip through its pages hoping to find no mistakes; to take a sniff of the books utter newness (a mixture of paper and ink and glue); and to read aloud the first chapter and see if the rhythm you strove so hard to maintain, is still there.
And in this case, the excitement was especially rousing because the book was over three years in the creating and writing. And some portions of the book have been sitting idle within my mind and journals for over 25 years (since the time I wrote my doctoral dissertation about the Eastern Band of the Cherokee).
Crowdancing and the Cherokee Storyteller’s Bag is my first step away from traditional academic writing. Is a historic-fantasy, meta-narrative, novel. As such, I use stories within a story, tales within a tale, and narratives within a narrative to convey a united story of the early life of the lead character, Crowdancing, and his life among the Cherokee and Irish people of the 1600s.
These stories and tales and narratives are all based on my very individualized interpretation of actual historic information; my extensive ritualistic experiences with the Cherokee and Irish cultures; my graduate and post-graduate academic research and training into sensory teaching and learning, the expanded imagination, enchantment, and sacred space; and the personal meaning I have discovered in my individual pursuit and pondering of each. Throughout the book, I labored with love and sweat to place multiple levels of mystery into every single story.
October 2022
The Process!
As I am thinking back on the process of writing this book about Crowdancing and the Cherokee Storyteller’s Bag, I am convinced that all our imaginative stories of fantasy and mystery and magic speak of an inner awareness and belief in the impossible becoming possible. At some inward place, we all believe in magic. And we desire for a bit of that magic to show up today in our commonplace lives.
So I encourage everyone to go outside and look for it. For Godly Enchantment is literally and mysteriously EVERYWHERE! By reading the stories within this story, I hope my readers are stimulated to experience more and more of what I have coined, The Expanded-Imagination. That place where our mind joins with our spirit, our body joins with our soul, and our conscience joins with our heart; and our spirit and soul are asked, to come out a play.
November 2022
Why a book about the Cherokee, the Irish, and Enchanted Crows?
I've always loved crows, since a child, and in my young 20s I joined the Young Adult Conservation Corps for one year as a Wildlife Biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife; working with and studying crows, blackbirds, and other animals whose former areas of residence had been invaded by humans, and vice versa.
In my 30s and 40s, I lived and worked on the Cherokee Indian Reservation in North Carolina, conducting research for my doctoral dissertation. This was a place I had often visited as a child with my family. And I had a very mystical experience with a hover of enchanted crows while there.
In my 40s and 50s I conducted post graduate field college studies in Ireland and England. Visiting hundreds of sacred sites and studying at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.
So what I have done in writing this newest book, Crowdancing and the Cherokee Storyteller's Bag, is share my re-creation of what I learned during these multiple grand adventures, and in my studies of myths and facts and mystery and enchantment.