She notes that even remaining members of the Callahan family had lost their copies in moves from Oklahoma to California and that earlier Oklahoma historians had failed to notice any mention of
Wynema. The scarcity of copies of the novel has meant that it has received little attention from historians and scholars in spite of renewed interest in Native American literature.
Born in Sulphur Springs, Texas, on 1 January 1868, Sophia Alice Callahan was only twenty-three when her novel was published. She was the daughter of Samuel Benton Callahan, who was of Scotch and Irish descent through his father and Creek descent through his mother. Samuel Callahan was enrolled on the Creek Nation Rolls as one-eighth Creek Indian. Callahan's mother, Sarah Elizabeth Thornberg Callahan, was the daughter of a Methodist minister in Sulphur Springs. Alice was one of eight children and part of what the newspapers called the "Creek aristocracy"--Native Americans of the day who had amassed a fair amount of wealth and who held prominent positions in both Native American and Euramerican societies.
The Creek Nation, an amalgamation of Muskogee- and non-Muskogee-speaking groups, had originally been located in Alabama and Georgia. They had adapted to the onslaught of European immigrants by incorporating European material culture that they supported by hunting, although they had been sedentary agriculturists prior to contact.
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