{{Short description|Native American model maker and woodcarver (1907 – 2000)}} {{Infobox person | name = Goingback Chiltoskey | image = <!-- filename only, no "File:" or "Image:" prefix, and no enclosing brackets --> | alt = <!-- descriptive text for use by speech synthesis (text-to-speech) software --> | caption = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | birth_name = James Goingback Chiltoskie | birth_date = {{Birth date|1907|4|20}} | birth_place = Piney Grove, North Carolina, U.S. | death_date = {{Death date and age|2000|11|12|1907|4|20}} | death_place = | citizenship = {{nowrap|Eastern Band Cherokee, American}} | alma_mater = {{unbulleted list|Haskell Institute|Oklahoma A&M|Purdue University|Art Institute of Chicago}} | occupation = {{flatlist| * Model maker * Teacher * Woodcarver }} | spouse = Mary Ellen Ulmer | parents = | years_active = | known_for = | notable_works = | awards = NC State Art Society (1953) }} '''Goingback Chiltoskey''' (April 20, 1907 – November 12, 2000), also written '''Goingback Chiltoskie''', was an Eastern Band Cherokee woodcarver and model maker, "one of the most celebrated Cherokee woodcarvers of the Craft Revival era."<ref>Anna R. Craft, Tim Carstens, and Jason Woolf, [https://books.google.com/books?id=0i6OAgAAQBAJ&q=Goingback&pg=PA514 "The Craft Revival Project: Library Leadership in Creating Connections between Small Cultural Institutions"] in Kwong Bor Ng and Jason Kucsma, eds., ''Digitization in the Real World: Lessons Learned from Small and Medium-sized Digitization Projects'' (Lulu.com 2010): 514-515. {{ISBN|9780615379982}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Power |first=Susan C. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZPVEos7PKIgC |title=Art of the Cherokee: Prehistory to the Present |date=2007-01-01 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=978-0-8203-2766-2 |pages=6, 155 |language=en}}</ref>
==Early life== James Goingback Chiltoskie was born in the Piney Grove community of the Qualla Boundary in 1907, the son of Will and Charlotte Hornbuckle Chiltoskie. (''Chiltoskie'' was their preferred Anglicization of the Cherokee name ''Tsiladoosgi''; Goingback changed his surname to the ''Chiltoskey'' spelling in the 1950s). He was a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. After a difficult boarding school experience, Chiltoskey attended school in Greenville, South Carolina, and studied carpentry at the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas in 1929. He also studied jewelry making at the Santa Fe Indian School in the 1930s.<ref name="Greene">Joan Greene, [http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED310898.pdf "Goingback Chiltoskey Master Carver"] ''Now and Then'' 3(3)(Autumn 1986): 8-10.</ref>
==Career== Chiltoskey taught woodworking at Cherokee High School from 1935 to 1940. During World War II he created wooden models at Fort Belvoir, Virginia for the United States Army Engineer Research and Development Laboratory, and after the war he taught woodworking to veterans. He also made models for motion pictures and for architects.<ref name="Greene" /><ref>John Collier, [https://books.google.com/books?id=z8AgAQAAIAAJ&dq=Goingback+Chiltoskey&pg=PA236 "Office of Indian Affairs"] ''Annual Report of the Department of the Interior'' (Government Printing Office 1943): 236.</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7WSNKQdiLNUC&pg=RA15-PA33 |title=Army Research and Development Newsmagazine |volume=7 |number= 5 |page=33 |date=May 1966 |access-date=January 2, 2022}}</ref>
Chiltoskey was a member of the Southern Highland Craft Guild from 1948.<ref>Bonnie Krause, [http://southernhighlandcraftguild.blogspot.com/2012/11/goingback-and-mary-chiltoskey.html "Goingback and Mary Chiltoskey"] ''Southern Highland Handicraft Guild'' (November 2012).</ref> He was a founder of the Qualla Arts and Crafts Matual cooperative. He was also a blowgun champion.<ref>Anna Fariello, "People: Goingback Chiltoskey, 1907-2000" ''From the Hands of our Elders: Cherokee Traditions'' Western Carolina University, Hunter Library Digital Initiatives.</ref> He taught his niece Amanda Crowe some of his woodcarving techniques, and she became a sculptor too.
==Personal life== Goingback Chiltoskey married Mary Ellen Ulmer, a white woman and fellow teacher at the Cherokee School, in 1956.<ref>Elsie Hamilton, "Goingback, Mary Visit Orthopedic Patients" ''Gastonia Gazette'' (August 31, 1972): 7. via Newspapers.com{{open access}}</ref> Mary Ulmer Chiltoskey spoke Cherokee, taught Cherokee language classes, and wrote several books on Cherokee culture with her husband.<ref>Mary and Goingback Chiltoskey, [https://books.google.com/books?id=enobAAAAIAAJ ''Cherokee Cooklore: Preparing Cherokee Foods''] (1951).</ref><ref>Mary Regina Ulmer Galloway, [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006930613 ''Aunt Mary, Tell me a Story''] (Cherokee Communications 1990). {{ISBN|0962863009}}</ref> Goingback Chiltoskey spoke Cherokee, though he could not read or write in it. He and his brother Watty Chiltoskie, who could read, write, and speak the language, provided assistance to Mary Ulmer Chiltoskey for her 1972 book ''Cherokee Words with Pictures''.<ref name="NCHR">{{cite journal |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |date=October 1972 |title=Other Recent Publications |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23528998 |journal=The North Carolina Historical Review |volume=49 |issue=4 |pages=402–404 |jstor=23528998 |access-date=25 October 2021}}</ref>
Goingback Chiltoskey died in 2000, aged 93 years, exactly a month after Mary died.<ref name="Cantrell">{{cite news |last=Cantrell |first=Geoffrey |date=22 November 2000 |title=Cherokee lose a giant in Chiltoskey |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/200545828/ |work=Asheville Citizen-Times |location=Asheville, North Carolina |access-date=25 October 2021}}</ref>
Field recordings, interviews, and other documentation of Goingback Chiltoskey and Mary Ulmer Chiltoskey are located in the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild Collection and the Ron Robinson Collection in the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.<ref>[http://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/20372/#d1e1452 Southern Highland Handicraft Guild Collection], Southern Folklife Collection, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Ron Robinson Field Recordings of Mary Ulmer Chiltoskey and Goingback Chiltoskey, 1980|url=https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/20181/|access-date=2020-08-25|website=finding-aids.lib.unc.edu}}</ref> Works by Chiltoskey are in the North Carolina Museum of Art<ref>G. B. Chiltoskey, [http://ncartmuseum.org/art/detail/great_horned_owl "Great Horned Owl"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161009120857/http://ncartmuseum.org/art/detail/great_horned_owl |date=2016-10-09 }} North Carolina Museum of Art.</ref> and the National Museum of the American Indian.<ref>Goingback Chiltoskey, [http://www.nmai.si.edu/searchcollections/item.aspx?irn=274158&objtype=Made-for-Sale%20items%20and%20Souvenirs&objid=Bookends "Horsehead Bookends"] National Museum of the American Indian.</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== *M. Anna Fariello, {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20161009135814/http://store.cherokeemuseum.org/mm5/merchant.mvc?Store_Code=cm&Screen=PROD&Product_Code=03692 ''Cherokee Carving: From the Hands of our Elders'']}} (Western Carolina University Press 2013). *Mary Regina Ulmer Galloway, [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006930629 ''The Artist and the Storyteller: Goingback and Mary Chiltoskey – a Cherokee Legend''] (1991).
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Chiltoskey, Goingback}} Category:1907 births Category:2000 deaths Category:Eastern Band Cherokee artists Category:Cherokee people on the Baker Roll Category:American woodcarvers Category:20th-century American artists Category:20th-century Native American artists Category:Cherokee male artists Category:Cherokee artists