Nine Stories, Worn on the Back

Each back panel is a framed woodblock picture with its story set underneath, so anyone standing behind you can read it.

• Trail of Tears: the forced removal of the Cherokee and other Southeastern nations in the 1830s.
• Cherokee Rose: the legend that a white rose grew wherever a mother’s tears fell on the trail.
• Navajo Code Talkers: the Marines whose code was never broken in the Pacific, 1942–1945.
• Sequoyah: the Cherokee syllabary, finished in 1821, one character for every syllable.
• River Cane: the plant the Chickasaw and Choctaw turned into baskets, flutes, bows and blowguns.
• Our Homeland: the Great Smoky Mountains, ancestral home of the Cherokee.
• Anitsutsa: the Cherokee story of six boys who danced into the sky and became the Pleiades.
• The First Strawberries: the Cherokee story of the berries the Sun grew to bring the first woman home.
• The Three Sisters: corn, beans and squash, planted together and grown together.