A Modern Retelling of “Tales of the Bark Lodges”

Since childhood, I remember my Grandpa Kenny (Taurone Kenny Walker) instilling in us the importance of his great-grand-uncle, Bertrand N. O. Walker—also known as Hen-Toh—and the Wyandotte Tribe. Grandpa was born in Missouri, a descendant of the Wyandottes, and raised near the Missouri-Oklahoma border with other tribal members until the Great Depression drove his family west to California. That is where my own branch of the family story truly began.

Grandpa took immense pride in his roots. This was most evident in the name he bestowed upon his own son: Bertrand Walker, my "Uncle Bert." But while Grandpa often spoke of "Great Uncle Bert" and his book, Tales of the Bark Lodges, I don't remember seeing a copy in our home until much later in life. No one ever read those stories aloud to me.

The original Tales of the Bark Lodges was a scholarly endeavor. It didn't just record oral traditions; it captured them in the stylized, colloquial voice of someone navigating the bridge between ancestral ways and the emerging 20th century. Because of this, it is not an easy read, though I still encourage the curious to try.

Perhaps my grandfather never read these stories to us because they were always meant to be told, not read. I felt compelled to re-author these tales into accessible prose for a new generation of readers and literature enthusiasts. After all, old stories deserve to be told.