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Access to audio materials may require production of listening copies.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Ron Robinson Field Recordings of Mary Ulmer Chiltoskey and Goingback Chiltoskey #20181, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Acquisitions information unknown (Acc. 103513).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

This summary description was created in January 2019 to provide information about unprocessed materials in Wilson Special Collections Library.

Encoded by: Laura Smith

Updated by: Anne Wells, August 2020

Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Cherokee Indians--North Carolina--Folklore.
• Chiltoskey, James Goingback.
• Chiltoskey, Mary Ulmer.
• Oral tradition--North Carolina.
• Robinson, Ron.
• Tales--North Carolina.

• Southern Highland Handicraft Guild Collection #20372
• Michael J. Zogry Enduring Voices Project Collection #20339

Ron Robinson is the Perkins-Prothro Chaplain and Professor of Religion at Wofford College, where he directs Wofford's Interfaith Programs. A 1978 Wofford graduate, Robinson earned two postgraduate degrees from Duke University, an M.Div. and Th.M. While a graduate student at Duke, Robinson enrolled in a folklore class taught by Daniel Patterson at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he recorded Cherokee stories and mountain stories he had heard as a child growing up in Haywood County, N.C. He later earned his doctor of ministry degree (D.Min.) at Southern Methodist University and also received a certificate in church management at the Babcock School of Management at Wake Forest University. His research interests include spirituality in higher education, religion and the environment, and religion in the American South.

Storyteller and author Mary Ellen Ulmer Chiltoskey (1907-2000) taught the Cherokee language and served as librarian at Cherokee High School in Cherokee, N.C., in the mid-twentieth century. Her published works include Aunt Mary, Tell Me A Story: A Collection of Cherokee Legends & Tales, Cherokee Words With Pictures, and Cherokee Cooklore: Preparing Cherokee Foods. In 1956, she married Goingback "G. B." Chiltoskey (born James Goingback Chiltoskie), a member of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians, fellow teacher, and woodcarver whose artwork is exhibited in the North Carolina Museum of Art and the National Museum of the American Indian. Mary Chiltoskey, a white woman, became an honorary member of the Eastern Band in 1989.

Field recordings of Cherokee tales performed by Mary Ulmer Chiltoskey (1907-2000), a white storyteller, teacher, and an honorary member of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians. Select recordings also include a conversation with Goingback Chiltoskey (1907-2000), a woodcarver and member of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians. Ron Robinson, a white Duke graduate student of Waynesville, N.C., made the recordings for a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill folklore course taught by Daniel Patterson. The 1/4" open reel audio recordings found in the collection are dubs made from the original field recordings.

• Audiotapes (FT-5519-5521)