Jeff Davis Cypert (Chief Tahachee) — Poems of Dreams

Jeff Davis Cypert made a career as Chief Tahachee: actor, stuntman, horseman, vaudeville performer, lecturer, and author. Poems of Dreams mixes prayers, family poems, desert and nature lyrics, Hollywood-era public pieces, and a sustained performance of Native identity. Cypert claimed Old Settler Cherokee descent, but surviving publicity cannot substitute for tribal or genealogical verification, and the book belongs to a film culture that routinely blurred identity, costume, and stereotype. This edition resets the 1942 volume complete while treating “Chief Tahachee” as Cypert’s documented public name rather than proof of the claims made around it.