Chickasaw Culture Center

One of the highlights of my childhood was going swimming in Sulfur, Oklahoma. Sulfur has its name for a reason. There are natural springs there with a high sulfur content, and they smell like rotten eggs. The swimming pool is nice, but the smell is hard to ignore.

I haven’t been to Sulfur in probably 60 years, but I went back last week during a trip to Oklahoma in order to see the Chickasaw Culture Center which opened there last month. Sulfur, Oklahoma was a meeting place for Chickasaws back in Territory days. Jim told me, “Mamma and Pappa used to go there for meetings. It took three hours to get there from Pauls Valley by horse and buggy.”

I invited my cousin Christeen to go along with me. She lives in Elmore City which is also a three or four hour buggy ride from Sulfur, but it only takes about 30 minutes by auto. As it turns out Christeen had already been there, but before it was completed.

The Center is spread out over several acres of land. It is dotted with lakes and streams and the buildings are connected by paved paths. The first thing you see on the walkway leading into the Center is a bigger than life statue of a Chickasaw warrior. It is really breathtaking. He’s surrounded by trees, like he just walked out of the forest.

There are several buildings in the complex: an administration building with a gift shop, a museum, a restaurant, a theater, and a research building. They have also built a “Chickasaw village” with a council house, some traditional Chickasaw dwellings, and a corn crib. The Chickasaws had summer houses that were open to let in the breeze and winter houses that were enclosed. There is also a stickball field and a burial mound.

We went first to the administration building to get oriented. The lady at the information desk gave us a nice booklet and we talked for a while. She had a Chickasaw English dictionary so I asked her to look up my aunts’ names: Kaliteyo and Oteka. I have a Chickasaw dictionary but it’s English to Chickasaw so it’s hard to look up a word unless you know what it means. She tried to find the names but couldn’t get very close. The closest she came was “oka’ aalhto” for Oteka. It means ‘water container.’ We had heard that Oteka meant ‘daughter of the moon.’ I like that better than water container.

Next we visited the museum. A young lady wearing traditional Chickasaw clothing first led us into a small auditorium designed to look like a Chickasaw council house from the inside, with thick wooden pillars and a thatched roof. The young lady gave a short talk, taught us a couple of Chickasaw words, and then showed us a short movie about Chickasaw history. The movie screen then rose up into the ceiling revealing a door which led to the "Spirit Forest." It was very fancy, like going to Universal Studios.

On the path through the forest there were animals representing different Chickasaw clans and recordings of a legend about each. The trail also follows the “Trail of Tears,” telling the story of the Chickasaw people’s forced removal to Oklahoma from their ancient homeland in Mississippi in the 1830's.

On the other side of the forest are exhibits which show pictures and artifacts from various stages in Chickasaw history. Also on display are examples of traditional Chickasaw costumes, a dugout canoe, bows and arrows and tomahawks; also corn, squash and beans, the staple crops of the Indians. There were also two large holographic screens, one showing a Chickasaw stomp dance and the other a stick ball game.

After seeing the museum we went over to the Chickasaw Honor Garden. It was quite a ways over there, but we were given a ride in a golf cart. I didn’t want Christeen to have to walk that far. The garden consists of several concentric circular walls mounted with plaques showing pictures and some information about each of the Chickasaw Hall of Fame inductees. We have several relatives represented there so we especially wanted to see it. It’s nice. It has streams of water running through it. For some reason the water doesn’t smell bad. Maybe it just smells bad close to the swimming pool.

It was lunch time when we got back to the Culture Center so we went into the restaurant. The menu included Indian fry bread and pashofa! I was excited to get to try the pashofa, a traditional Chickasaw dish that is supposed to have healing properties. It’s made from cracked corn and pork. Christeen ordered a chicken salad sandwich and she kept offering to let me have part of it, saying she had eaten pashofa before, and it wasn’t all that good. I turned her down and ate my pashofa, but it was pretty bland, kind of like eating grits with pork mixed in. It could have used a dollop of butter. The fry bread was pretty good.

All in all it was a wonderful day. I’d recommend it to anyone. Thinking back we missed the demonstrations. The lady at the information desk said there would be someone demonstrating Indian crafts. We’ll have to go back another time. It started raining and we also missed seeing the Chickasaw village.