Wofford’s Blood (Mercer University Press 2024) is a stunning work of historical fiction based on the life of James Daugherty (J. D.) Wofford, a half White, half Cherokee, who became a conductor and interpreter on the Trail of Tears. Author Donna Coffey Little tells readers in an “Author’s Note” at the beginning that the interviews referenced in her novel don’t exist. Instead, she uses primary sources like Smithsonian ethnologist James Mooney’s Cherokee History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas (1900) and maps and wills as the basis for Wofford’s story. And a compelling, fascinating story it is.
Here’s an odd little nugget for lovers of American literature: “the great African-American novelist Toni Morrison was born Chloe Wofford, and her father George Wofford was from Georgia, a descendant of the slaves of the same Woffords who founded Wofford’s Crossing.” This fact, determined from wills and census records, plays no part in the novel except as a recognition that Indian, White, and Black families lived side by side and often intermarried. The African-American characters in the story are enslaved persons owned by the Woffords in real life.
In the Prologue, a narrator says she is in the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives waiting for a clerk to bring out a box containing interviews James Mooney conducted with J. D. Wofford. To be honest, as I read this book, I forgot the interviews were imaginary. I totally fell into believing they were authentic, which I hope Donna Coffey Little recognizes as a tribute to her skillful use of this literary device.
The imaginary interviews took place in 1891 in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, Cherokee Nation West. Yet most stories the eighty-nine-year-old J. D. Wofford tells to Mooney took place before the Trail of Tears. They tell of J. D.’s years growing up in Franklin County, Georgia, as a boy caught between two worlds. He spends half the year with the Woffords, who are referred to as Intruders. The other half of the year he spends with his Cherokee family. Caught between the two cultures, he is sometimes viewed with suspicion and feels he doesn’t fully belong to either world. He explains he was being trained by an uncle to become a Cherokee medicine man, “the keeper of our most sacred traditions.” Yet almost simultaneously his grandfather was educating him in Western philosophy and a Christian minister was training him in religion: “I was everyone’s Indian but my own.”
In an early chapter, Wofford explains to Mooney that he is a keeper of the fire, coals that had burned for centuries in a sacred mound in Georgia:
“I keep the fire. Someone has to. I carried this same fire all the way from Kituwah to Oklahoma. My wife died on the Trail, her mother died, my niece died. So many died on that journey. The only thing I saved was the fire. That, and the stories. As long as the fire burns, and the stories are told, there will be a Cherokee people.
I think the Creator kept me alive to tell this story.”
In a storyteller’s voice, Wofford shares Cherokee rituals, myths, legends, and prayers that were part of his life. Some, he says, are so secret and sacred, he is forbidden to share them with Mooney. He describes his companions dress, hairstyles, and mannerisms. He explains the importance of dance:
“A dance is a way of knocking on the door, and sometimes going through the door. You have to leave your mind behind and let your body say the things words can’t say. . . . My feet were always the feet of a dancer. I leapt not in faith, but in endless longing.”
That may be the most poetic description of dance I’ve ever read.
Wofford describes in loving detail childhood and adolescent adventures. Going on a buffalo hunt. Saving a drowning girl’s life. Watching stickball matches. Rescuing a kidnapped Irish girl. Losing his pinky finger. Many of these adventures are shared with his blood brothers, a White friend and a Black slave. They call themselves the Thunder Boys. Wofford is keenly aware of how differently each of them are regarded and treated even though they are cousins—and the guilt he carries because he did nothing to stand up for his slave cousin.
Each interview begins with a description of a piece of memorabilia that Wofford shows to Mooney. A large leather trunk. A deerskin pouch. A pink Conch shell. A tattered Bible. A booger mask. A bow. A musket. A map. These artifacts lend a further touch of realism to the interviews.
Donna Coffey Little succeeds in fleshing out rich personalities for all the characters regardless of their race. She delivers the perfect details of flowers, trees, animals, and terrain to transport readers to the mountains of North Georgia and North Carolina in a long-ago era. Anyone who has traveled the region will recognize names like Currahee, Black Mountain, and the Tugaloo River.
The Epilogue brings readers full circle, back to the Smithsonian archives and the transcripts. The narrator has read the last one and writes, “I was sad when I reached the end.” I understood just how she felt: I, too, was sad when the book ended. I wanted more of J. D.’s life. The narrator raises questions at the end of the book that indicate she is also intrigued about the missing parts of J. D.’s life, so perhaps a sequel will follow Wofford’s Blood. I hope so. It is truly an impressive, thoroughly researched, masterful work of historical fiction.
Donna Coffey Little
Donna Coffey Little is a professor of English at Reinhardt University and founder of the Etowah Low Residency MFA. Her publications include the chapbook Fire Street, as well as numerous scholarly articles.
Great review. I am so enjoying this book. The prose is sublime but that’s what you get when a poet writes a novel.