Welcome to the American History Podcast.

Hosted by Sean Worswick. All right. Welcome back to the show.

Now, today we are talking to Deborah Yates, the author of a book that I think you're all going to love.

This book is titled Woman of Many Names.

I have a link in the show notes page so you can go

check it out and get your copy from Amazon. And you know what? I'm just really ready to do this.

So let's get right into it. Hello, Deborah. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great this morning, Sean. How are you today? I am doing A-OK, probably better than I deserve.

Oh, no, no, no, no. First question I've got for you, though, what is, because, you know, if our

listeners maybe aren't familiar with the book, what is the book about and what made you decide to write it?

My book is about my seventh great grandmother, who was the last Gagayu, which means beloved woman in Cherokee, of the Cherokee tribe before removal.

So this was the setting would have been back in the, you know, the mid-1700s to the early 1800s.

And I decided to make a journal is how it started for my grand nieces and nephew to, you know,

to record the stories that I'd heard from my grandfather, who had heard them from her mother.

And, you know, our oral tradition, you know, we did have the syllabary.

However, you know, oral tradition was our main way of communication and of telling the stories of our forefathers.

And Nancy Ward, you know, was a highly regarded chieftainess in the tribe,

and she was of the Wolf Klan. And her birth had been basically predicted, not necessarily

her birth, but a child, a girl child would be born of the Wolf clan that would lead her tribe to greatness.

And from very early age, Nanya He, which is one of her Native American names,

you know, showed that she had potential to, you know, speak many languages and to communicate well with others.

And she was just a really special child.

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