Chiltoskey, Goingback, 1907-2000

Goingback Chiltoskey, known as G.B., was born on the Cherokee Qualla Boundary in 1907. He learned woodcarving from his brother Watty and then participated in the woodworking program during high school in Greenville, SC. In the later 1920s and early 1930s he completed high school and studied carpentry at the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, KS, now the Haskell Indian Nations University. He went on to attend the U.S. Indian School, later known as the Institute of Ameircan Indian Art, focusing on jewelry from 1933 - 1935. Throughout his life, Chiltoskey continued to study crafts at Penland School of Crafts, Oklahoma A and M Univeristy, Purdue University, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

G.B. Chiltoskey, 93, of Acquoni Road, Cherokee, died Sunday, Nov. 12, at his residence.

Services were held at 11 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 15, at Acquouni Baptist Church. The Rev. Merritt Youngdeer officiated. Burial was in the Drama [Cemetery].

A native and lifelong resident of the Cherokee Indian Reservation, he was a former educator and retired from the civil service with the U.S. government. He was a master craftsman, specializing in and best known for his wood carvings, which are in numerous local, national and international museums.

He was a founding member of Qualla Arts and Crafts and the Southern Craftmans Guild and was a member of the International Wood Collectors Society. He was a writer and speaker who co-authored many books and spoke at numerous schools, colleges and universities with his wife, the late Mary Chiltoskey, who died Oct. 12. He was an avid sportsman in blowgun, basketball, football and bowling. He supported athletics and was recently honored as a lifelong athletic booster.

Goingback Chiltoskey was born into a Cherokee-speaking family in the Piney Grove community of the Qualla Boundary. Given the name James at birth, he was renamed Goingback while still a young child. Like most children born at the start of the 20th century, Goingback's parents made many of the things they needed at home. He grew up watching his father carve wood implements used by his family. Even before he went to school, Goingback was making his own toys, assembling toy waterwheels from cornstalks and setting them up in the rushing water of nearby streams.

Cherokee tribal elder Goingback Chiltosky was a master woodcarver who influenced several generations of carvers. His work includes carvings of animal and human subjects, often in native woods such as cherry, walnut, holly apple, and buckeye, but he also carved request orders from exotic woods. In addition to freestanding pieces, he carved large bas-reliefs. He said he always thought of his own “trademark as being a smooth finished piece of wood with a minimum of fine detail.”