The Chief

and his tribe

In the early 1980's when I first started collecting teddy bears and learning about their history, My grandparents took me on one of our yearly trips to the Cherokee Indian Reservation in the Great Smoky Mountains of the North Carolina and Tennessee border.Thru my grandmother I am of a tiny bit of Cherokee lineage--but that's a whole different story! It was here, of all places, that I bought my first teddy bear as a "collector". He was a 1981 Dakin Theodore I named "Chief". I got him an arrowhead pendant from another Indian Reservation on a much-later trip to Oklahoma.

Here he is, my little buddy.... he is shown here at Silver Springs in Florida, with a real grizzly bear!

You can see his arrowhead necklace fairly well here.

Chief, my little buddy.

Here we are at Walt Disney World in Florida with Brer Bear.

A very good shot of Chief with Penny, at Epcot. Epcot is divided into two sections--the futuristic part and the countries part, simply said. Here we are in "Italy" , in front of a beautiful fountain.

Chief remains a close companion to this day. He is one of my favorite designs by Dakin and I like him so much I have now begun to collect brothers and sisters for him thanks to e-bay.

As I said, he is "Theodore" by Dakin, and seems to have come in a 10-inch and 12-inch size, and in a red-brown and coco- brown color. He also has come in a musical version in the 10-inch size.

All of them so far have had 1981 on their tags.

I am in the process of thinking of funny Indian -themed names for them as his "Tribe" grows.