Chief Harold (Buster) Hatcher, Waccamaw Tribe of South Carolina

Save Culture_Harold Hatcher - Waccamaw Chief

Interviewer: 00:01:00Could you just give me your name and what your role is with the tribe?

Harold Hatcher:

Well, my name is Harold “Buster”—Buster’s a nickname—Hatcher—H-A-T-C-H-E-R. I’m

the chief. I’ve been the chief now of the tribe, the Waccamaw Indian people of

South Carolina. 00:02:00(interruption; background announcer)

Interviewer: 00:03:00Can you start that over again, if you wouldn’t mind?

Harold Hatcher:

My name is Harold Hatcher—nickname is Buster. People call me Buster mostly. I’m

the chief of the Waccamaw Indian people, the first recognized tribe in the state

of South Carolina.

Interviewer: 00:04:00Tell me a little bit about the history of the Waccamaw.

Harold Hatcher:

Well, the Waccamaw people came from what is now known as the Dimery Settlement.

It was a community of Native American people that kind of banded together back

in the early 1800s that established their own school, their own church—that sort

of stuff—and they lived together on that little piece of land for hundreds

of—well, almost a hundred years because in 1924 or ’35, excuse me—1935 there

was—prior to 1935 there was a school, a church, and all that for the Indians.

But in 1935, Horry County decided they couldn’t afford to maintain three

different schools—a black school, a white school, and an Indian school—so they

decided to combine the black and Indian school, and they told the Indian people

to go to the colored school. Well, the Indian people didn’t want to the colored

schools. They wanted to go to the white school. So my granddaddy—his name was

Vander Hatcher—and my dad and all my aunts and uncles lived on the settlement.

He took them all to the white school, and they wouldn’t let them in. As a matter

of fact, according to the newspapers, a group of white parents came out, beat

the kids, and ran them away. So they didn’t—my granddaddy sued the county we

were in and demanded they build proper facilities. They didn’t do that though.

They sent a group of learned people out to look at each child individually and

decide, based on skin color and certain traits, whether or not they would go to

a black school or a white school. And we had—one of my uncles went to the black

school, and his sister went to the white school. Same mother, same father. So

that was the way they did things back in the 1930s. 00:05:00But since then, just prior to that in—the land was purchased to make the

settlement in 1813. It was purchased by my great-great-great-granddaddy, a

fellow named John Dimery. Now, he wasn’t John Dimery when he was born because

they didn’t have birth certificates back in those days. The Indians didn’t.

White people did. Indians even changed their name several times throughout a

lifetime, so we really don’t know what his name was. If an Indian person, when

he was born, traditionally the father and mother would name him. And as he grew

older, he’d reach the age of majority and, whatever age they decided that was

going to be back in those days, the person would pick his own name. And after

that, if something went bad for him or he just had a bad feeling about it, he

could change his name. So they changed their name several times throughout a

lifetime, so it’s almost impossible now to go back through any kind of documents

and find who was who back in those days.

So at any rate, right after the Revolutionary War, my great-great-great

granddaddy—whatever his name was at that time—they lived in the area that is

now—that actually became the Dimery Settlement. They had the houses and all of

that stuff on it. It wasn’t houses like you see now. We called them 00:06:00(???) (s/l sooks). I think the Cherokees called them wigwams. They were

bark-covered houses, but people lived in them and they were fairly stable. They

stayed in the same area. They raised their kids in the same area. They farmed.

They even had a farm. They had two types of gardens. They had a communal garden

where everybody worked, and they fed the older people and the disabled people

with that. And they had family farms as well. But at any rate, there were farms,

houses, and that sort of stuff on that property during the Revolutionary War.

But right after the Revolutionary War, the great state of South Carolina—for

whatever reason—decided to make land grants to certain white people. I don’t

know why they did it but they did it. Someone might have made a donation to some

senator’s campaign. That hasn’t changed much, has it? And that senator would see

that they got 10,000 acres of land somewhere. And the land that they gave these

people was inhabited when they gave it. At any rate, they decided that they

would give these lands for different reasons to different people, and I don’t

know why it was but I’d bet that money and influence had tradition in it. 00:07:00So this fella named Josiah Lewis got a big chunk of land that my people lived on

and, again, had houses and farms on. And he wanted to do whatever he wanted to

do with the land that he got. He might have wanted to build houses on it or rent

it out or whatever. So he went out to these people and told them they needed to

move off of his land. Well, they didn’t understand that, and people wouldn’t

understand it today if you had a house and someone came up and said, “You know,

this is my house now. You need to move.” So they didn’t do it. And so he goes to

the local law enforcement people—the sheriff, I guess, back in those days—and

the sheriff said, “Well, we can forcibly move them. We could shoot them if we

have to.” So they did effect the movement of these people away from the land. 00:08:00Well, in 1813 a fella named John Dimery, which is kin to me and I don’t

know—like I say, I don’t know what his name was when he was born—gathered

together a bunch of his friends, collected some money, and they bought 300 acres

of land back from Mr. Lewis. And that land is what became the Dimery Settlement.

And even today there’s a lot of Indians living in and around that area. They

look a lot like me, but a lot of them claim to be white now or black now—whichever.

Interviewer: 00:09:00How far can you trace your lineage beyond that point? Are there other tribes

that Waccamaw were derived from way back when?

Harold Hatcher:

Well, you know actually the Waccamaw is the name of a river, not a people. The

Pee Dee, Edisto—what happened was we called ourselves human beings generally or

something of that nature. I think the Cherokee word or Lakota means “ally.” In Cherokee 00:10:00(???) (s/l sal-ah-yee) means “people.” We didn’t have names like Waccamaw back

in those days, but when the white people came here if they found you camped on

the Waccamaw they named you by the river you were living close to. That way,

when they went back they could say that the Waccamaw people live on this river,

and so we just kind of got renamed. But the Edistos, the Pee Dees— 00:11:00 - 00:12:00(interruption; background announcer)—the Edistos, the Santees, the Pee Dees—all

are the same people. We had the same culture, the same language. We call the

language today Catawba but we called it back in those days—we didn’t call it by

any specific language. We really didn’t have a name for it, but it’s the same as

the language that the Catawba speak.

Interviewer: 00:13:00The Waccamaw River—who named it?

Harold Hatcher:

We called it Blackwater. Waccamaw. So we became Blackwaters when the white

people got here. And it might mean also that—it’s kind of a cross because the

language is not spoken well anymore, and there are certain inflections in the

tone and that sort of stuff to make—that changed the meaning of the word. It

could also mean “the river that comes and goes” because, being close to the

seashore, if the high tide is in a lot of times the river will move a little bit

backwards, and it could be “the river that’s not consistent” or “the river that

comes and goes” as well, but we became known as the people of that—the People of

the Waccamaw. So that’s where we are now. And the Edisto people, living on the

Edisto River, they became the Edisto People. So now we’re different tribes. Now

all of us got along together. We spoke the same language. And Cherokee’s

different. We didn’t like the Cherokee. They didn’t like us. They didn’t speak

the same language, so obviously they weren’t civilized. Their habits and

cultures were different than ours. They didn’t act the way we wanted them to

act, and most of the time if we met them in the woods somebody was going to die

because we didn’t want them on our land. (laughs) Now the Cherokee chief here

and I are very good friends. In a history book called—I believe the name of the

book is Red Carolinians. 00:14:00 - 00:15:00(interruption; background announcer) In Red Carolinians it—or it might have been

The Indians of the Southeastern United States—it indicates that some Cherokees

came down into the Pee Dee area and killed a bunch of Waccamaws, and so we knew

we needed to plan some revenge on that somehow. I’ll come up here and kick some

Cherokee tail. 00:16:00 - 00:17:00(interruption; background announcer) Now right after they were—the king of the

Catawbas back a long, long while back—the king’s name was Hagler. 00:18:00 - 00:19:00(interruption; background announcer)

Interviewer: 00:20:00Say what you just said again.

Harold Hatcher:

The king of the Catawbas back in those days was a fella by the name of Hagler.

They just put him in the South Carolina Hall of Fame just recently. There was a

trading post up on the Black River that was called the Black River Trading Post.

And the Indians—the Waccamaws, the Edistos, the Pee Dees, the Santees would all

take their stuff up to that trading post, and they would trade for steel knives

or whatever. But the Waccamaws didn’t think they were getting treated as well as

the other Indians were, so they would meet these traders out in the woods

somewhere and then knock them in the head and take what they wanted. Well, that

didn’t set well with the local government, so that brought on what they refer to

as the Waccamaw War. According to history, they came in and killed about 100

men, women, and children, and the rest ran off and joined the Catawbas. Well,

they did the same thing up at Catawba. They’d meet somebody out in the woods

that had something they wanted and knock them in the head and take it. So the

governor of South Carolina at that time was a fella named Moore or Morer. It’s

one of the two. He called Hagler down to Charleston and asked him. He said, “You

need to contain these Waccamaws. Aren’t they your people?” And Hagler says, “I

can’t get them to mind me either.” So the history book that said we joined the

Catawbas probably is inaccurate. We went up there around them and hoped they

would protect us but probably didn’t become Catawba.

Interviewer: 00:21:00Tell me about the traditional foods—the kinds of foods that you grew in the past

and how you farmed, how you preserved the food—all those food-related issues.

Harold Hatcher:

All right. I’ll tell you what I know about it. I’m not greatly familiar with it.

I do know about the Three Sisters. I guess you’ve heard of that, where the corn,

the beans, and the squash—the squash covers the ground and kills the grass kind

of, the beans climb the cornstalk, and so you’ve got all three there together.

You go in and pick and you get the corn, the beans, and the squash. And that was

traditional all over the southeast. And they also turnips—they ate anything they

could get that was edible. Traps and snares—you see some traps and snares over

there in the corner. That was—we didn’t have a word that meant hunt. Our word

meant making meat, and we felt like the only reason to take a life was to

sustain life. And we felt like—and I’m not saying all the Indians are saints.

Don’t get me wrong because we had some pretty nasty Indians, too, that would

kill for the fun of it, just like a lot of folks do today. But traditionally we

didn’t, and when we took the animal’s life we tried to use all of its parts in

one way or another. We thought it was wrong to waste anything. Like eyeballs,

for example, could be used for fish bait instead of just throwing them away. We

could use the feathers for decoration. We could use the gallbladders or the

bladders for balls. There were lots of ways you could use about any part of an

animal, intestines included. And of course, even the sinew on the bone that tied

the bone was used as string. So we tried to honor the animal by using all of the

animal. But they would also pick berries and grapes and whatever they found in

the woods. There was a way that they—I guess probably it came by years and years

of trial and error as to what you could eat and not get sick, but they knew what

they could eat. A lot of the things you eat today—I forget the name of the

plant. It’s got blue berries on it, but you can take the leaves and boil them,

and you can eat the leaves even if the berries and all of that are poisonous. 00:22:00There’s kind of an interesting story about what we call today pear pads. You

know the fruit on a pear pad is edible, and it’s not bad really. It’s pretty

good, but it also acts as a laxative. Well, in the old days they would eat this

fruit. It was real sweet. But when nature would call they would go outside the

village and relieve themselves. And these scientists came up several years back

and they found a village with a ring of cactus around it, and they said that was

a form of protection. It wasn’t. It was just where they went to relieve

themselves. (laughing)

Interviewer: 00:23:00Those were the bathrooms.

Harold Hatcher:

Yeah. The fruit of the pear pad doesn’t digest, so when you drop it there it

grows. I guess it could work as protection, too, but I always thought that was

kind of humorous though. And my dad—when I was a boy we would grow

tubers—turnips and potatoes and sweet potatoes—all that stuff. And he would make

us did a hole in the ground, and we would take that dirt and we’d use pine—not

pine straw but broom straw, and we’d line that hole in the dirt with broom

straw, and then we’d put all these tubers on it. 00:24:00 - 00:25:00(interruption; background announcer)

Interviewer: 00:26:00Go back again about the tubers. 00:27:00 - 00:28:00(interruption; background announcer) He’s got to lose his voice one of these days.

Harold Hatcher:

He would grow turnips, potatoes, yams—that sort of stuff—and of course you had

to preserve it through the winter because you had to eat during the winter, too.

So we would dig a hole, and he would do it in not just one place but several

places because if you got an animal in there you didn’t want to lose everything

you had. And we would line the hole with broom straw. 00:29:00 - 00:30:00(interruption; background announcer) Didn’t use pine straw. Pine straw would

taint the taste of the food. It was always broom straw. And he would put the

tubers on it and he would put more broom straw on top of that, and then we’d

cover it with dirt. The dirt would insulate it from freezing. The straw would

keep it from growing roots. And whenever during the winter, you’d just dig your

way in and you’d have just like they just came out of the ground. It was called

a—he called it a potato bank. But that was a traditional way of preserving food.

And of course, you know they dried food. They made jerky—deer jerky and all that

sort of stuff—and all that is it’s just they’d hang it out and let it dry and

use salt. They could get salt out of the ocean, and salt would preserve it as

well. So there were lots of ways that they preserved food, but they did depend a

lot on live food; and their traps and snares were designed in two different

ways. We have paw traps, which catches an animal and keeps it alive, and we have

neck traps that were likely to kill the animal. 00:31:00 - 00:32:00(interruption; background announcer) 00:33:00You couldn’t sometimes check the traps every day. So if you couldn’t be there

every day you needed to catch the animal by its paw because as soon as it dies,

especially in the summertime, it doesn’t take long before it’s not usable. So

they would catch an animal by the paw, and they would come probably at least

every three days or so and check on it, and that’s when they would take the

animal’s life and take it back with them. Or if they were going to be able to

check it every day, they might kill the animal by catching it by its neck, and

that’s when you see the tree spring up in the air and it actually hangs the

animal. They had deadfall traps, too—all these things, like I say, depended on

how often they could get to that trap. But they had bird traps, too. And that’s

kind of—bird traps are kind of a tough thing because a bird’s legs are real

small. So if your spring is too strong it’ll cut its legs off and it’ll just fly

on off. So you have to be very careful with that sort of stuff. So meat was a

staple, and there used to be buffalo in this area, too, and so what we call

buffalo now—bison. But they used to be here, and of course, if you’re out in the

South Carolina Museum they claim the Indians killed them all, but I don’t think

that’s really true. But they did disappear. There’s a lot of wild boar—still a

lot of wild boar. Anything that you could catch you could eat, and that included

possums, skunks—anything else. Everything was eligible for being on the table.

Interviewer: 00:34:00And your tribe was located close to the ocean.

Harold Hatcher:

Oh, yeah. About fourteen miles.

Interviewer: 00:35:00So what was the Waccamaw connection to the sea?

Harold Hatcher:

Well, I know that we ate a lot of oysters and shellfish because you found a lot

of it all over. We even use it in our gravesites to mark our graves, which is

traditional all over the southeast, not just us. But whenever you see a grave

out and it’s got a bunch of seashells on it, that’s generally an Indian grave.

So we did that. We used it for salt. We used it for food. I don’t think we used

it much for navigation. We used rivers usually for that, and they could go down

the river, for example. From the area now that is Lake Waccamaw in North

Carolina, they could travel by boat all the way to the ocean and bring back a

bunch of oysters and that. And contrary to what a lot of people believe, oyster

shells can be made into arrow tips, knives. They’ll cut the daylights out of

you. So they used everything they could, and so we had a connection to the

ocean. They even had ways of catching fish with nets and gigging for flounder. I

don’t know what other kind of connection I might could tell you about other than

that we used it for food. I don’t think we used it for navigation. We used it

for salt, I’m sure of that.

Interviewer: 00:36:00What about the spiritual connection to the ocean?

Harold Hatcher:

Well, I don’t know. I’m not a spiritual kind of person, but I do know that—for

those folks that are—they say you shouldn’t mix land stuff and ocean stuff. For

a long time I used to smudge with a seashell. I’d put sage, sweet grass, and

tobacco in a seashell, and I’d fan it with a feather to smudge. And then one of

the elders pulled me over to one said and said, “You shouldn’t do that. If you

don’t use all seafood stuff or all sea things, then you shouldn’t mix it. A

bird, for example, is an animal of land, and you’re using a seashell, and you

shouldn’t mix the two.” And a lot of people believe that, so I quit. I use an

earthen pot now to do it, but I’m not one that can answer you many questions on

spirituality because I’m a politician and I have to put the best face on everything.

Interviewer: 00:37:00John Cox mentioned that the sea turtle was an emblem on the pipe that you use in

the fire ceremony.

Harold Hatcher:

Yes. Right.

Interviewer: 00:38:00Can you tell me some more about that?

Harold Hatcher:

Well, we don’t actually always use the pipe in a fire ceremony. We don’t have to

have the pipe to do the fire ceremony. We use the pipe in about the same way as

we do a fire ceremony. You use it to make a deal, to show honor, and it is in

the shape of a turtle. When I first got it, it didn’t have any eyes in it, and I

gave it to John. John actually was the one that carved it. It’s carved out of

catlinite. Catlinite comes out of South Dakota. You might have heard of it. It’s

called a red stone or bloodstone, and only Indians could mine it. The pipe is

carved out of catlinite, and it has a turtle on it. The turtle was— 00:39:00(break in recording) and I won’t get into the whole story about it. But it was

given to another chief at one time, and it was blind. And when that chief gave

it back to me I gave it to John to smudge it—to purify it—and when he gave it

back to me it had eyes. And so I asked him, “Why does a turtle have eyes?” He

said, “Because the turtle can see now. It’s okay for it to see.” He said the

other man was evil, and that was John’s concept not mine. So I don’t know. We

traditionally will—if another chief comes to our site or several chiefs come to

our site and we have a meeting and we all agree on something, we can either burn

wood at the fire circle or we can smoke the pipe. And to smoke, there’s a great

amount of ceremony that goes into smoking the pipe. You have to keep the stem of

the pipe facing east until it’s smoked. Also the stem of the pipe and the bowl

of the pipe—one is called the blood of the ancestors and the other is called the

bones of the ancestors, the blood being the bowl. And you can’t allow them to

touch because if they ever touch it has to be smoked. So I have it—it’s wrapped

in two separate things and put in a main bag. But once you ever put them

together you have to have a ceremony to smoke it. So it is a—we do it

traditionally. We do it the way it’s supposed to be done, and we honor it,

whether it has any meaning to some people or not I don’t know, but it has a lot

of meaning to me, and I like that sort of stuff. I like that culture.

Interviewer: 00:40:00Tell me more about the tribe’s connection to nature.

Harold Hatcher:

Well again, we go back to some of the things earlier. We don’t believe in—if you

take all the— 00:41:00 - 00:42:00(interruption; background announcer) You know a lot of Indian people are not

Christian. It seems to fly in the face of some of the Indian beliefs. I’m not

down on Christians, and this is not an area to say I’m not Christian because

this is the middle of the Bible Belt. But that’s what I have to do. 00:43:00 - 00:44:00(interruption; background announcer)

Interviewer: 00:45:00How many tribes are participating today?

Harold Hatcher:

Let’s see. The announcer is Haliwa-Saponi. I’m Waccamaw. Gene is Cherokee. I

don’t know. How many tribes out here today? 00:46:00 - 00:47:00(interruption; background announcer) Oh, and Edisto is here—Edisto and—they’re

the drummers. And the guy that I was talking to when you came up used to be

chief of the Edisto. There was a lady here this morning from Beaver Creek, and

there’s two of the Beaver Creeks up there now. I got a few people out here.

Interviewer: 00:48:00And the Edisto were also a coastal tribe.

Harold Hatcher:

Uh-hunh (affirmative).

Interviewer: 00:49:00Do you have much of a tribe left of the Edisto?

Harold Hatcher:

Oh, yeah. They’re a recognized tribe.

Interviewer: 00:50:00I’ve been trying to find a phone number to reach their main—the only number I

could find was the Edisto Health System.

Harold Hatcher:

Well, I can give you the number and introduce you to the chief. He’s here.

Interviewer:

Okay. That’d be great.

Harold Hatcher:

And he’s good people. He’s young, but he’s pretty good people. 00:51:00 - 00:52:00(interruption; background announcer; break in recording)

Interviewer: 00:53:00Okay. You know everybody here, don’t you?

Harold Hatcher:

Pretty much, yeah. Well, Indian country is a small country. We were talking

about our ties to nature. Now the Indian—notoriously Indian people—a lot

of—maybe we came back too soon. Generally, Indian people—a lot of Indian people

are Christian. Most of my people are Christians. A lot of them are not. A lot of

traditional Indians are not Christians. I’m one of them. Like I say, I don’t

have anything against Christianity, but I don’t think it quite goes far enough.

I think that all living things are tied. Grass included. Trees. And you

shouldn’t destroy any of it. It’s kind of like everything that is alive is

rolled into a big ball or marble. And it doesn’t matter if you put the marble on

an anvil and hit it with a hammer—if you take all of this nature and it’s in the

marble and you put that marble on an anvil and you hit it with a hammer and it

flies into a thousand different pieces, it doesn’t matter how small of a piece

it is, and it doesn’t matter how far away from the anvil it flies. It’s always a

piece of God, nature. And a matter of fact, the Lakota people call it the great

Wakan Tanka—the things we don’t understand or the great thing we don’t

understand. I think that’s the way my heart leads me. I have to revere all

things. As a matter of fact, when my wife and I are driving down the road and I

see an animal or road kill and I want to take—the animal or fox tail or

something like that—I will offer corn or cornmeal or something to the place

where the animal lay to show my appreciation to the animal world for that

donation to me. And if I see a bird feather that falls on the ground, then I

will always pick it up and keep it. I don’t have to keep it forever, but I need

to pick it up because that is a gift. It’s a gift that the bird gives to me. And

I don’t know if you know the legend of the eagle’s feathers and all of that. But

you know, when we smudge and we say our prayers, we burn sage, sweet grass, and

other sacred herbs—cedar—and that smoke leads the prayer towards heaven, towards

God. When it gets to a certain height the eagles will pick it up and take it on

to God. And when God answers a prayer, he puts the answer on the back of an

eagle and the eagle brings it back to earth. And when an eagle molts a

feather—when it naturally falls from the eagle and hits the ground—it’s an

answer to a prayer. So we take that feather and we use it for smudging before we

put with the body when we bury the body. That feather knows the way to God

because it’s been there, and it will lead the spirit back to God.

Interviewer: 00:54:00Say what you just said again.

Harold Hatcher:

That feather knows the way back to God because it’s been there, and it will lead

the spirit back to God. So traditionally we like to put an eagle’s feather in

the casket of all of our dead people to lead their spirit back to God.

Unfortunately, if you’re not a federal tribe you can’t legally own an eagle’s

feather. So when we bury our dead, we’re compelled to slip it in and hide it.

But my mother died about two years ago. She was ninety-eight years old, and I

gave her an eagle’s feather. She’s buried with one. But I think that infringes

on an Indian’s rights to freedom of religion. I really do. Even though I’m a

combat veteran from the Republic of Vietnam—I served twenty years in the

military—I’ve got a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and a Vietnamese Cross of

Gallantry. And I can’t practice the religion of my choice. Something’s wrong

with that concept, especially with the Bill of Rights guaranteeing me the right

to worship as I choose. Somehow the federal government has decided now that

religion should be tied to a race—not only a race but it has to be a recognized

race, and that needs to change. But our problem is politicians cater to the

people that can get them elected. As long as they’re stepping on me it doesn’t

matter to them, and there’s not enough of us to get some of them in office that

would make a difference. And the ones you think that have got the guts and the

brains and the smarts and the drive to make a change don’t. And as I tell most

of them when I talk to them I say, “You know, there’s never been a man called

great because he did what his predecessor did.” A great man will see something

wrong and change it, and we ain’t got any with guts enough to do it around here.

Interviewer: 00:55:00What do we lose when we lose a part of our natural world?

Harold Hatcher:

I think you lose a lot. Any part of nature that goes away can never—you can’t

get it back, and I think Jesus Christ said it. If salt was to lose its savor,

from whence will you re-flavor it? You never know what’s out there. Even in a

blade of grass might be the cure for cancer or cure for any kind of disease. And

if you allow it to go away and disappear, where would you get it again? It’s

just that nobody knows what is available to us through all of nature—the

animals, the turtles, the grass, the trees, the flowers. Nobody knows. So you’ve

got to protect it. You’ve got to keep it. Not only do you lose that but you also

lose a part of you because we’re all in this thing together—the trees and all.

We’re all united in that marble, and we can’t lose a part of that marble. I

think that’s one thing that kind of goes back to Christianity. They talk about

heaven and hell. Well, if all of us are part of God, then we couldn’t go to hell

without him. So he’d have to go with us, and I doubt he would do that. And I

think, to me, when you talk about nature, the universe, and all these different

things that are around us that we don’t understand, that is what God is. It’s

not a judgmental thing. It’s a thing that we have to honor, and we have to

revere it or we don’t have it. And right now we’re headed towards global

warming. It’s probably going to wipe us all out, and we’re too dumb to stop it.

Not only are we too dumb to stop we want to blame it on everything but what it

is. It’s like burying our head in the sand, and more and more our politicians do

exactly that because they’re worried about the guy with the dollar might not get

another dollar. But what good will that dollar do him if the world is not here?

Interviewer: 00:56:00True. Tell me about the Waccamaw and the other coastal Native Americans’

connection to turtles.

Harold Hatcher:

Well, I’m not an expert on Edisto culture, but traditionally or generally the

Edistos, the Santees, the Pee Dees, the Waccamaws, Beaver Creeks all have the

same general background. We call earth Turtle Island, and so the turtle is a big

part of our culture. And it’s not just Waccamaw. It’s all. I believe even the

Cherokee honor the turtle because we believe that it carries the loads of all

humanity and all of the universe. The universe is carried on the turtle’s back,

and we live on the back of the turtle. So that is nature. As I said, I can’t

answer for what the Edistos might think or the Cherokees, but I think most all

eastern and especially southeastern woodland Indians have that same concept.

Interviewer: 00:57:00How does nature enrich our lives? How does the turtle enrich our lives? 00:58:00 - 00:59:00(interruption; background announcer) Did you tell me that you’re in the grand

entry as well?

Harold Hatcher:

It’s already over though.

Interviewer:

I thought they were doing two of them—one at five.

Harold Hatcher:

They might do one at five. They do that. I have to go do that. What time is it?

Interviewer:

That’s a good question. 01:00:00 - 01:01:00(interruption; background announcer)

Harold Hatcher:

So how does a turtle enrich our lives? I think—well, everybody, I think, would

look at it differently, so I don’t think there’s one universal answer to that.

To me, the turtle is a symbol of strength and serenity. It would be, to me, kind

of like eliminating all of the phone calls and all of the political issues and

all of the religious issues and maybe just being able to sit back and be part of

nature. That’s what the turtle would represent to me. But I don’t think there’s

any kind of a universal point of view on it. Of course, he’s going to interrupt

everything we do. 01:02:00 - 01:03:00(interruption; background announcer) I think most people feel that way about it.

I think turtles—you know, being slow and easy—I think that’s kind of what it

represents to most people, but I know that’s what it represents to me, and I

don’t know what it represents to everybody. But that’s about the best answer I

can give you on that.

Interviewer: 01:04:00Okay. Why is it important to remember the Waccamaw culture?

Harold Hatcher:

There are many answers to that question, and that, again, is individual, too.

But there’s a law called Public Law 101 644. It’s the Indian Arts and Crafts

Board. It is against the law to sell or offer for sale any crafts and claim it

to be a Native American craft unless you’re recognized by either a state or the

federal government. We’re the only people in the country that have such a rule

to live with. So membership in a tribe would allow an artist to earn their

living selling their art and calling it Native American art. That’s one

advantage. Another, you would be able to go and learn what your ancestors knew,

and a lot of people know that anyway, but they don’t know they know it. We learn

in high school or in grade school. We learned to ignore what our ancestors tell

us, so if we don’t see it in a book sometimes we don’t believe it. But even in

infant is born with the knowledge of where the breast is, and that’s where food

is and he’ll go to it the day he’s born. So we don’t have to learn all things in

a book. We are born with some things, and we need to learn to go back and listen

to it. A lot of the things that they might learn by being part of the Waccamaw

culture is that there are natural things to people that just comes natural. You

just need to learn to listen to it and not question it because somebody didn’t

write it down. But the Waccamaw culture is about the same as the Edisto culture,

the Pee Dee culture. 01:05:00 - 01:06:00(interruption; background announcer) 01:07:00The Waccamaw culture, the Pee Dee culture, the Edisto culture, the Catawba

culture—all of it’s pretty much the same. As I said earlier, sometimes the

Cherokee’s culture and language were different but if you—well, I grew up in a

time when there was a colored water fountain and the white water fountains and

all that sort of stuff, so to me I want my state to acknowledge that we were

here and that we are just as important to society as their society is. People

don’t realize it but when they—I’ve heard people tell me, for example, you need

to wear a tie or you need to do this or do that. To me, I need to celebrate my

own culture.

Interviewer: 01:08:00Say that again because there was an interruption.

Harold Hatcher:

To me, I need to celebrate my own culture. I wear a choker, and to me that is an

acknowledgement that I’m trying to be formal. But it’s not a four-in-hand tie.

The four-in-hand tie came about— 01:09:00 - 01:10:00(interruption; background announcer) A four-in-hand tie was a way they used to

lead slaves, you know. They could take—I guess it wasn’t a tie at the time. It

was probably a rope. But they could carry four in each hand, and that was why it

became known as a four-in-hand tie. I don’t wear them. I wore one when I was in

the military. I don’t wear them now. I’ve been a slave long enough, and I’m not

going to be a slave anymore. But I think that my choker is just as valid. I had

a politician tell me, for example—I wanted to change the law where people

could—Native American Indian leaders and Native American Indian spiritual

leaders could do a marriage ceremony, and I had a politician tell me, “Just go

get you a Notary Public seal and you can notarize it.” No, I’m not going to do

that. My signature as a chief ought to suffice. A minister of the gospel and

select Jewish rabbis was all that could do it before, and notaries public, but

that did change. So it’s important to me because I want the state to acknowledge

that Indian people were here. Our culture’s just as valid as their culture. When

you see a bride walking down the aisle with the long, flowing gown and the veil

over her face, that’s a European culture. That came from Europe. When we do a

marriage ceremony, we tie the left hands together and the right hands together

and put the blanket over their backs. That’s our culture, and what’s wrong with

being married that way, too? That was the way it was done for many, many, many,

many hundreds of years, so I insist on that and I think the part—if you’re a

Waccamaw then that culture is available to you through the tribe. In other

words, I can do a marriage ceremony for you. You can attend the powwows. You can

dance at the powwows. You can learn to dance from other Indian people that know

how to dance. And it’s just a way for people to go back to something they lost

many, many, many years ago.

Interviewer: 01:11:00What do we lose if we lose connections to cultures like yours?

Harold Hatcher:

Well, if you think about it we would lose a lot if the Indian culture wasn’t

here because the majority of the history and the culture in this country— 01:12:00 - 01:13:00(interruption; background announcer) Spanish or European people arrived here

maybe in the 1600s, so our culture and our history goes back way further than

that. So if we lose it we lose the majority of the history and the culture on

this continent, and there’s no way to get it back. We’ve got to strive to keep

it alive while it’s here. So we would lose— 01:14:00(interruption; background announcer)

Interviewer: 01:15:00I just want to try to create these little spaces so you can finish a thought.

Just say what you just said again.

Harold Hatcher:

The European culture came here in the 1600s, so the majority of the culture and

the history on this continent is native, and if you lose that you lose hundreds

and hundreds of years not just since the 1600s. So I think it’s important. If

you go to a— 01:16:00 - 01:17:00(interruption; background announcer, traffic noise) If you go to a library and

ninety percent of the books aren’t there it’s not much of a library, and if you

go to a museum and ninety percent of the exhibits aren’t there it’s not much of

a museum. So how can we not think that the native history and the native culture

is important on this continent because that is ninety percent, if not more, of

the history and culture on this continent. So I think it’s very important, and I

think it has to be real, too. Now there are a lot of people that would fake it,

a lot of people that were born and lived white now have decided they’re going to

be Indian, and that’s another issue because some people are the kind of people

that you can show them one ceremony and the next time you talk to them they’re

experts on it. So that’s an issue. We have to be on guard for that. But you

know, also the culture is affected by schools. The kids in schools are our

future, so if you allow these charlatan-type people go to schools and talk about

Indian culture and that Indian culture’s not real, then they’re scarring minds

forever. But the state of South Carolina has no guard against that. Anybody who

claims to be a chief can go to a school and talk about anything they want to

talk about. I think it’s dangerous, and I think that we need to—first, we need

to make sure that our culture is what it was— 01:18:00 - 01:19:00(interruption; background announcer)—that our culture is what it was, and we

need to record it as you’re trying to do here to perpetuate it, and we need to

make sure that we don’t allow people that don’t understand it to become experts

in it because that is a definite danger, in my opinion.

Interviewer: 01:20:00What legacy would you like to leave to your children, to your family, to your

tribe, to nature around you? And just wait ‘til all of this stops to—

(background announcer; train whistle) At least we don’t have any helicopters today.

Harold Hatcher:

Well, I’ve often said, you know, when I was young I grew up in a white— 01:21:00 - 01:22:00(interruption; background announcer) When I grew up I grew up in a white

neighborhood or black neighborhoods going to white schools. 01:23:00 - 01:24:00(interruption; background announcer) I was wrong at home because I wasn’t dark

enough. I was wrong at school because I wasn’t white enough. And when I was

retired from the Army in 1988, I bought a company and I wanted to register it as

a minority-owned company. I thought that I had paid the dues. I drank out of the

colored water fountains. I had sat in the balconies at theaters. I had eaten off

of paper when other people ate off glass. I drank out of paper cups when other

people were drinking out of glasses. And I wanted my company to be recognized

and get that ten percent advantage in dealing with the government. But the state

of South Carolina at that time said there were no Indians in South Carolina, so

I ended up suing the state and I won. Any my legacy, I think, I want it to be

that I at least made it a little bit more palatable in South Carolina for

Indians to be known to have lived here, that we are human beings, and we have— 01:25:00 - 01:26:00(interruption; background announcer)—that we bleed and want, and we love our

mothers, and we love apple pie, too. But our culture is just as valid and it

needs to survive, and I think I’ve had something to do with that. I think that

our recognition was something I worked on for twenty-something years before it

happened. I worked with every governor from Carroll Campbell on down, but it

finally did happen. And now people know who I am as far as they know I’m an

Indian. They never knew that before, so if the Indian people accept that I did

something to bring that in that would be enough for me, I think. But some people

would be jealous of it and some people would be angry about it. But I think that

we have to—we also have to get away from the way the majority of us look at

things. Like I heard a guy say he went to the Gulf War. We only lost three

thousand men—or however many. I’ve forgotten the number. 01:27:00 - 01:28:00(interruption; background announcer) And to me that kind of offensive because if

you said your son was one of three thousand that got killed it doesn’t lessen

the hurt. We have to look at all as individuals not as groups because whenever

you step on somebody that’s an individual you hurt. And politicians tend to lump

us all. They worry about the majority of us. So there’s not enough Indians to

make a big difference in the state, but when you step on an Indian you hurt an

individual. When you deny me my rights to be buried with an eagle’s feather, I’m

an individual. I’m not just some group of people. I want to be buried with an

eagle’s feather legally, and I want the government and the state of South

Carolina to admit that it should be my and not something I have to beg for.

Because when I was in Vietnam there were none of these damned politicians there.

When I got the bullet holes in my belly there was none of them there. And now

they’re telling me what’s right and what’s wrong? I don’t buy that.

Interviewer: 01:29:00Anything else you want to add?

Harold Hatcher:

I don’t know of anything else I could add. I hope I gave you something you can use.

Interviewer: 01:30:00I think it was great. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for your time. I just

wanted to be shaking your hand on camera for a second. If you can just stand up

and let me—I hope I didn’t take too much of your time.

Harold Hatcher:

No, I think this is important. Take my hand like an Indian. Good to meet you,

sir. If I can help you somehow you let me know.