WOLF EAGLE: ARTIST'S WORK SPRINGS FROM HIS NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE

At left is one of Wolf Eagle's vases with dried grass tied to it.

This coil-made toad pot was dung fired.

David Wolf Eagle displayed a hand-made bowl.

Until David Wolf Eagle went to his first powwow, he was an artist without a muse. Until they met, his wife, Georgia, was the vice president of the local chamber of commerce and managed a manufacturing company.

Things change.

Wolf Eagle learned to make Natchez pottery in Cherokee, N.C., capital of the Eastern Cherokee Nation. He was taught by the Big Cove People, the traditionals. Georgia now raises medicinal herbs.

Wolf Eagle will teach the art of making ancient Natchez pottery in a class beginning April 24 at the Southeast Art Academy. The class meets Tuesdays and Thursday from 7 p.m. through May 13 and will be limited to eight participants.

Wolf Eagle makes art from gourds, he makes traditional pottery, he does traditional paintings and paintings on stretched hides. He also carves flutes.

He calls his art "a celebration of a gift. I really didn't know what to do with it for so long. Now it's falling into place."

Natchez pots are formed from coils that are braided before being smoothed, making them stronger than Cherokee pots. "It's like the difference between bias-ply tires and steel belted," he says.

The class will fire the pots traditionally in an open-pit fire, burning pine and cedar for three to four hours to reach the right temperature. The pots then are placed mouth down into the ashes and covered with bark.

Natchez pottery is the only pottery of its kind in the U.S. In North America, only the Aztecs used the same braiding techniques. The Natchez lived in a band from New Orleans to Georgia but little is known about where they came from. They were one of the Mississippian cultures that predated the latter-day tribes.

Some of Dr. Carol Morrow's archaeology students will be taking Wolf Eagle's class.

Wolf Eagle was born David Charles Booher in Indiana and grew up in Florida. He knew he had Native American ancestry, but his parents didn't talk about it.

At the powwow in St. Petersburg in 1981, a woman began asking him about his native heritage. Her questions spurred him to ask his mother some of the same questions. "She began opening up," he said.

A Cherokee/Shawnee, Booher was given the name Wolf Eagle by tribal elders and joined the American Indian Movement. He is a veteran of many protests against the treatment of Native Americans.

He says he used to be single-minded about native issues. "It was native heritage or nothing," he said. "But everybody misses the big picture.

"We're all human beings and have something to share with each other."

Both David and Georgia, who has Sioux heritage, took part in last year's highly successful powwow at Southeast Missouri State University.

They recently moved to Cape Girardeau from Branson, where he was employed as an artist at Silver Dollar City and she was a tour guide at Ripley's Believe It or Not.

They moved here to be closer to his parents, who live in Piedmont. Georgia's daughter, Rebecca Burns, is a student at Southeast.

The poor soil around Branson was another reason to move away. The quality of the soil is important to Georgia's herbs.

They are planting trees on David's parents land in Piedmont and planting food for the wild turkeys. They are settling in.

Wolf Eagle has painted a mural inside the new office of the Northern Cherokee Nation at 105 Broadway. He also has been contracted to do paintings inside Jeremiah's downtown.

"There's a lot of history and a lot of Cherokee history here," Georgia says.