Carmaleta Littlejohn Monteith has taken countless flights to innumerable destinations during her 86 years on Earth, so she no longer recalls exactly what year it was when she found herself on a flight to Los Angeles making what would later prove to be memorable small talk with the man who settled into the seat beside her.

Carmaleta Littlejohn Monteith has worn an impressive number of titles over the course of her life. 

For the past 79 years, Ella Wachacha Bird has lived a life defined by seasons and relationships rather than months and days.

Bird, the daughter of Rily Wachacha and Ancy Walkingstick, was born in a log cabin in the remote West Buffalo area of Graham County’s Snowbird community in 1939. She was delivered by her grandmother Maggie Wachacha, a midwife at the time who would later become a clerk to Tribal Council and, like Ella, a Beloved Woman in the tribe. 

Traditionally, the title of Beloved Man or Beloved Woman was reserved for Cherokee people who had proven themselves valiant warriors in battle but had grown too old to fight anymore. They would come home to an honored place in their tribe, serving their community in new ways, off the battlefield. 

Cherokee has lost its second honored member in the space of a month with the Nov. 24 death of Amanda Swimmer, 97. 

If anyone ever had an excuse to leave her hometown and never return, it would be Myrtle Driver Johnson. 

Born May 21, 1944, to a mother who didn’t want her, Johnson had a hard upbringing in the Big Cove community of the Qualla Boundary. While her younger siblings — one brother and four sisters — lived with her mother and their father, Johnson, who never knew which of two men her father was, was sent to live with her grandparents. 

A courageous leader. An empathetic caretaker. A driven taskmaster. An intelligent, resilient and love-driven organizer. A person who had no trouble telling other people what they ought to be doing, and who conversely had no trouble pouring herself out to help other people do better. 

A lifelong potter, storyteller and keeper of Cherokee traditions, 97-year-old Amanda Sequoyah Swimmer was given the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians’ highest honor last week when Tribal Council named her a Beloved Woman. 

Shirley Oswalt (pictured above, left, with sister Geraldine Thompson) was named a Beloved Woman of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians on Tuesday, Feb. 2, the highest honor that can be given to a Cherokee woman and one that’s held by only two other living people.

Shirley Jackson Oswalt can still remember the first words she said in English. 

Her older siblings had prepped her before she headed off to her first day of first grade at the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Snowbird Day School in Robbinsville, and when the teacher came over to greet her, Oswalt knew her line.