Tomorrow, the 5th of December 2024, would have been Daniel’s 48th birthday and we will all miss him terribly. Rachel will miss her beloved husband and partner with whom she had planned and hoped to share her life. Abby will miss her precious twin brother, with whom she shared every day of the first sixteen years of her life. Tseyang and Kunphel will miss their beloved uncle, who was more like a father than an uncle to them.
Although we are not Cherokee, I often told Daniel that he was Tseyang’s and Kunphel’s “Cherokee father.” Dan’s heritage was Chickamaugan. Chickamaugans lived on the western slopes of the Appalachian Mountains (more isolated from colonial invasion and bitterly cold) and spoke a different dialect than the Cherokee Nation living on the Atlantic Seaboard. In 1776 they seceded from the Cherokee Nation in order to fight against the American seizure of their lands, and over the course of twenty years they evolved from a little group of Overhill Cherokees into a multitribal confederacy that included Indigenous people from many other First Nations, whites and Blacks. They signed treaties with Great Britain and Spain, After close to twenty years of guerilla warfare against the United States, they finally signed a peace treaty with the U.S. government in 1794. And Dan cetainly had the Chickamaugan spirit. Daniel dealt effectitvely with the statue of Margaret Thatcher that was on public display in Oxford. He also dealt with the National Front which planned, before Dan’s action, to come and speak at the Oxford Union. Well done, Dan!
Dan was, indeed, the “Cherokee father” of Tseyang and Kunphel. Among traditional Cherokees and their offshoot, the Chickamaugans, the husband of a woman was NOT the father of her children. A matrilineal society, the brother of a woman was the father of her children instead.
And Dan was proud as a peacock, or a Cherokee father, when Kunphel “graduated” from boot camp and joined the U.S. Army’s Tenth Mountain Division. And I am sure he would have been just as proud of Tseyang who completed a Foundation Year at Cambridge in 2023-2024 (in the college next-door to Dan’s former college) and is now studying anthropology at the University of Bristol. (Cambridge does not offer anthropology.).
Quite appropriately, I dedicated my book to Dan. In the first line of the Acknowledgments on page 483, I wrote, “To my sister and our children, who have been as affected by this history as I have been.” The book is dedicated to my sister, Nancy Hilles, and to Abby, Dan, Ryan and Robyn. I often said, “Daniel was a gentleman. He let his sister go first.” Abby Mae Tennessee Hughes was born at 15:28 and Dan twelve minutes later, at 15:40 on 5 December 1976 in the Salvation Army Hospital on Lower Clapton Road, East London. They weighed three kilos each.
Daniel had two namesakes. Sergeant Daniel Blodgett, a soldier in the Continental Army of George Washington. Daniel Blodgett died in a Brititsh prisoner of war camp in New York in 1776. And Dan was proud that he was able to join the Sons of the American Revolution as his direct descendant. And if anyone ever wants to see Daniel’s other namesake, Seth Toney, you can simply turn to page 211 in my book, Multitribal Indians in Search of No Man’s Land: The American Expansion and the Chickamaugans Between Resistance and Migration, published by the University of Vienna in 2023. Seth Toney led a wagon train from the southeastern United States to California, then turned around and went back again. Toney Canyon is between Graveyard Canyon and Starvation Canyon. In New Mexico.
Yes, Daniel’s youth was hard. Much of his life was not easy. One of his great aunts was enrolled as a member of the Cherokee Nation. Another married George Blue, a descendant of Blue Jacket, the great Shawnee chief. The Hughes and Toney families are connected to two of the greatest pan-Indian resistance leaders in US history (Blue Jacket and Tecumseh). And Daniel had their spirit. He overcame a hundred thousand hurdles, and a hundred thousand problems. He was the first person from his sixth form college in the poorest borough in England (at that time) to ever be granted a place at Oxford or Cambridge. Dan worked hard. His life was rich and full. He had a loving, devoted wife. He had a twin sister who treasured him and will treasure him till the day she dies. And his “Cherokee children” considered him their father and loved him beyond words.
We will all miss Dan tomorrow. Just as we all miss Dan today. And will miss Dan the day after tomorrow.
Carla Toney (formerly Carla Hughes, mother of Daniel Seth Toney Hughes)
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