Leading from behind: 'Last One Walking' explores the life and impact of Cherokee community leader Charlie Soap

“Last One Walking” is a discerning, broad-based book that is part biography, part memoir, part history. It carries the subtitle “The Life of Cherokee Community Leader Charlie Soap.”

Charlie Soap’s Cherokee name is On-dah, which translates to “Last One” or “Last One Walking,” according to the book’s author, Greg Shaw.

The phrase has special meaning for Soap and his family. They are members of the Wolf Clan. And in that clan’s culture, the “Last One Walking” refers to the wolf that trails behind the pack.

Leading from behind: 'Last One Walking' explores the life and impact of Cherokee community leader Charlie Soap

That’s an important place in Cherokee lore. That trailing wolf must keep a watchful eye on the rest of the pack.

In other words, the On-dah leads from behind, while the chief, who has “the vision of the course and sets the pace,” is at the front.

Shaw writes that the 79-year-old Soap has been more than the protector of the pack. He’s been a leader in mediating disputes, in finding mutually agreeable solutions to problems within remote Cherokee communities in eastern Oklahoma and between those communities and the tribal and federal governments.

Soap has led by example, showing fellow tribal members how to work, literally, hand-in-hand for the common good. Soap boils that down to the concept of “help one another,” or in Cherokee ga-du-gi.

In the 1980s, the book states, the then Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Ross Swimmer asked Soap to step in and be the spark plug for a project to construct desperately needed waterlines and improve housing in small, rural communities in the Cherokee Nation’s hill country.

The project began in the community of Bell, where some 25% of the households didn’t have running water and had to transport water from a well at a schoolhouse.

The estimated retail price of the new waterline was $250,000. The tribe’s “self-help” model would cost $100,000.

The tribe was awarded a community development block grant to pay for some pipes and minimal machinery. “But the entire scheme was built around volunteer labor,” Shaw writes.

Soap, the project’s on-site organizer, “spread the word in spoken Cherokee, built interest, camaraderie and a corps of workers who could run the machinery and get down into the ditch to construct the pipes that would carry water from a distant mainline to Indian houses in Bell,” the author writes.

Soap had to overcome the locals’ distrust of government promises and their own lack of self-esteem. “He knew that people must feel good about themselves in order to do something good for others,” Shaw notes.

Soap got the job done. And people took notice. Even CBS-TV’s Sunday Morning News shined a light on the Bell Project.

His encouragement for Cherokee communities to understand self-help developed out of Soap’s spirituality, his experiences in the U.S. Navy and playing on basketball teams.

He is quoted as saying that he began to believe that helping one another is the ancient Cherokee way, not unlike the Golden Rule — do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Though the book’s front cover identifies Shaw as the author of the book, the preface opens with a sentence that refers to Shaw and Soap as co-authors. And Soap wrote the afterword.

Shaw writes that the book anticipates two audiences. One audience is familiar with Native American history and present-day Indigenous issues.

That same audience knows about Wilma Mankiller, the famous first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

That audience probably didn’t know that Mankiller was married to Soap. She wrote the book’s prologue about her husband’s early life, based on about five years of conversations with him before her death in 2010.

The book’s other audience, Shaw writes, is unfamiliar with Native American history or its contemporary life.

Another example of Soap’s ability to settle differences surfaced after he had returned home after serving in the Navy.

A small replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial traveled to the Cherokee Nation. Indian veterans wanted to have a ceremony to honor them, but not with white veterans. The white vets didn’t understand why they would be excluded.

Soap is quoted as addressing his fellow Native American vets: “I don’t get it. You guys talk about brotherhood. You fought a war together. You saw your buddies killed. Many of you were wounded. Still, you treat these non-Indians the way you do. … You call them your brothers. I think you should let them take part in the ceremony. … They need help just like you do. I don’t see how you can turn them down.”

The Native American veterans relented.

Shaw, who is white, experienced poverty, homelessness and hunger growing up in Oklahoma. When he became a reporter covering Cherokee Nation issues, he and Soap became friends. Their friendship has lasted a lifetime.