Waccamaw Voices — recordings & film

In March 2021, students from Coastal Carolina University’s “Waccamaw Indian People: Past, Present, Future” project sat down with three members of the tribe and recorded them. Those recordings are among the most valuable objects in this museum — not documents about the People, but the People, speaking.

The museum preserves the audio and full transcripts in the tribal archive; the recordings below play from the project’s public collection.

Chief Harold “Buster” Hatcher

Forty minutes: the outsider childhood, the trip to Cherokee that told him who he was, Vietnam, the founding of the tribe, and what recognition means. Excerpts thread through the halls of this museum — start with In His Own Words.

Vice Chief Cheryl Cail

Recorded five years before she became Chief. The voice of the successor, before the succession.

John D Turner

Memories of the settlement and the People.

On film

Meet Harold Hatcher — SCETV’s Native American Heritage Month profile (2015):

Conversations with Nicole — two long-form conversations with the chief (Horry County Government TV, January and November 2021):

The history, in his telling — Chief Hatcher’s Digibridge presentation on the Waccamaw past and present (2022):

The Right To Bury Our Own — the documentary on the tribe’s fight for burial rights and the return of its ancestors: watch at waccamaw.org/documentary. And After Action (public television’s veterans series) profiles his Vietnam service.

The Death Chant

The family’s film archive holds a short reel — a minute and fifty-one seconds — in which the chief narrates the tribe’s funeral chant while it is danced. This is the ceremony behind the eagle-feather passage in In His Own Words, and behind the burial-rights fight in The Right To Bury Our Own — the rite the People carry to their dead.

Content note: this film demonstrates a funerary ceremony. The tribe chose to record it so it would not be lost; the museum presents it in that spirit.

“This is the Waccamaw Death Chant done by Susan Hayes Hatcher. The black feather you see in her hair will make her one of the Black Feather Dancers …”

“The shaft should have a piece of tobacco, or sage, or sweet grass tied to the top end of it and when the dance is over … or the chant is over they’ll take the tobacco off and place it on top of the casket. There’ll be four ladies, all facing east to begin with in a triangle shape. And it will begin like this.”

And then the chant itself — the women’s voices, in call and answer:

“Hey oh hi, hey oh hey. Hey oh hi oh hey.”

“And then when all four ladies are facing east again, they’ll remove the tobacco or whatever from their shaft and take it over and put it on the casket.” — Chief Hatcher, narrating the Death Chant demonstration; film from the private archive of the Hatcher family

The powwow on television — HTC’s “Connecting 4U”

Horry Telephone Cooperative’s community channel sent reporter Nicole Hyman to the tribe’s twenty-first powwow. The family’s copy of the segment is undated; twenty-one powwows on from the first puts it in the early 2010s.

“They are the first Native American Indian tribe to be recognized by the state of South Carolina. In a lot of ways, they’ve taken a leadership role in our country as far as securing equal rights for Native Americans. For the past 21 years, the Waccamaw Indian people have been gathering to preserve and honor their traditions.” — Nicole Hyman, HTC “Connecting 4U”

The tribal voice threading the segment is identified in the family’s copy only as Susan — Susan Hayes Hatcher, the same voice who carries the Death Chant above. On how the powwow came to the tribal grounds:

“This is our 21st powwow. We actually started over at the fairgrounds in Loures [Loris] and I believe it was in 2005 we started up, we were given the lands over here and that’s when we … moved our powwows over here.”

On why the tribe keeps holding them:

“Well, if we don’t keep doing the powwows and teaching about our culture no one will know about it. … We have school kids coming out two days before our powwow so we can teach them the culture and just let everybody know that we are here. … because if we educate the children, then they will tell their parents. So we really have to start with the education of the children.”

And on what state recognition — the fight the chief won in 2005 — changed on the craft tables:

“We as Native Americans could not sell our arts and crafts as Native Americans until we became state recognized because of public law 101-644. It said you had to be a part of a tribe, state or federal in order to sell it that way so with us getting state recognized our artists can now sell their crafts as Native American arts and crafts.”

“We do want them to know that we are still here and just come out and share our culture with them because if we don’t tell them, they’ll never know but at least we’re leaving our footprint so to speak out here so people know that yeah, we’re here.” — HTC “Connecting 4U,” at the tribe’s 21st powwow

A visitor, interviewed in the crowd, gave the segment its plainest line:

“History is important. If you don’t know about the history, then who knows what the future’s gonna bring?”