Sing a song in Kiowa

southerners

Fred Tsoodle is a living treasure of Oklahoma and a winner of a National Heritage Fellowship for keeping his language alive.

It is the first Sunday after Pentecost, and Fred Tsoodle, 82, settles into his pew at Rainy Mountain Kiowa Indian Baptist Church near Mountain View, Oklahoma. Soon, he will sing.

His wife, Peggy, whose family helped found this church, takes her place at the organ. As ushers pass with their collection plates, Rev. Dr. Reaves F. Nahwooks asks Fred to sing. Seated, his eyes closed, Fred begins a hymn entitled "Jesus' Home Is Open for All To Come." As others join in, his voice rises and falls like the breezes outside on this hill 80 miles west of Oklahoma City.

You probably wouldn't understand the words. This is a Kiowa hymn, and Fred is one of the few who know it in his native tongue. After the offering, we stand and sing the doxology in English. Such is the way Fred, Peggy, and the Kiowa people live-between two languages and two worlds.

As a sacred song leader and one of the few keeping Kiowa hymns alive, Fred was one of 13 Americans honored in 2001 with a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In mid-September that year, he and his family were to fly to Washington, D.C., for the awards ceremony. But the program was postponed after the attacks on September 11. Instead, Frank Keating, then Oklahoma's governor, and Betty Price, executive director of the Oklahoma Arts Council, presented the award to him in Oklahoma City.

Fred doesn't fear a few terrorists. A true American warrior, he fought in Europe during World War II. He enlisted in January of 1942 and earned a Croix de Guerre and a number of other awards before coming home in 1945 to marry Peggy.

He could speak Kiowa then too. Fred grew up with his grandparents who taught him the old tribal songs, dancing, and the Kiowa religion. Later, he joined the Baptist church founded by two missionaries from Chicago.

As the church grew, Kiowas added their own songs to the Baptist hymnal repertoire. Over the years, fewer of the young people learned the songs, as they spoke English and forgot Kiowa. In the 1960s, several singers from the church were invited to the University of Oklahoma, where some 140 songs were transcribed by Wycliffe Bible Translators in their language. They included Kiowa versions of such standards as "Amazing Grace" and "Wonderful Words of Life."

At home just before the morning's services, Fred and Peggy sit together on their couch, her hand brushing his lightly as they talk. Fred is worried. "We're losing our language, like everything else," he says of the fading Kiowa tongue and customs. The NEA honor, however, which recognizes Fred as a traditional master artist, raises awareness.

He looks forward to the gourd dancing and other activities at the annual Kiowa Gourd Clan Celebration near Carnegie each July. Fred also helped revive traditional Kiowa gourd dancing, now featured at many powwows.

He has gone many extra miles for the Kiowa language and culture, raising his voice in a tongue nearly as old as the wind that drifts around this little church on an Oklahoma hill.

GARY D. FORD

Copyright Southern Progress Corporation Apr 2003
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