Secrets of Nanih Waiya Cave

All my life I have been known for uncovering deep unknown and hidden passages.

Grandmother told me of the cave buried within the woods. "It is a special, sacred place that dwells within my Spirit. It is the birth right of all Chata (the name the Choctaw Tribe call themselves)."

I was a curious child and felt a profound need to understand Grandmother's feelings toward this mysterious place.

The earth emitted a distinct odor after the rain. Damp, musty scents greeted me as I began to uncover the long closed entrance to the cave on the Pearl River stone by stone.

On hands and knees, I inched my way deeper and deeper into the bowels of the earth. I had no fear of the small space I was invading. Imagine, if you can, my astonishment as the tight enclosure began to widen and open into a space large enough to hold an entire tribe of Chata.

In the center of the room I could fully stretch and stand. Silence felt heavy, yet not ominous. Sitting, I allowed Great Mystery's Spirit to encompass my thoughts.

I could feel the tears of Spirits who have passed over, the depth of their grief at this sacred place becoming only dirt to humans now. No children sit around a fire in the center encircling the tribe's Storyteller to gain wisdom of the elders. Few even know of the secret beneath the earth that still holds so many Spirits.

Before time, it awaited the birth of the red man. In its infancy, the young learned to hide from danger here, to relish the company of the others in the tribe-old and young. During the civil war, many a Confederate soldier was brought into the cave through a hidden entrance on the Pearl River to keep them safe from the Union soldiers. It was here many sought a haven during the time family was being relocated to Oklahoma along a Trail of Tears.

It is the place that then and now secret punishments are ecked out according to Tribal Law. Indeed, there are tears of sadness mixed with those of peace of those no longer here.

The howl of Neshoba (Grey Wolf) beckons me come out into the sunlight again to a new world of Choctaw where a proud people have risen out of the ashes of poverty to a world of self-determination and prosperity again, but not without the cost of many of the old ways being lost, dwelling within the secret deep unknown and hidden passages on Pearl River.
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