Honduras, and came from Honduran and Puerto Rican parentage. West also stated that he spoke Spanish and Portuguese as well as Native American languages including "Cayuaga, Seneca, Mohawk, Narragansett, Micmac, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Creek, Choctaw, Sioux, and Winnebago". In addition, he claimed he was able to recognize other Indian languages when he heard them spoken. Marriage West was briefly married to Jean Marilyn Miller, who also went by "Pretty Pony" and was "said to be a Blackfeet". Other activities In the late 1940s he self-published a newsletter called The Indian War Drum: The Voice of the Eastern Indians. In 1964 and 1965 he worked with G. Hubert Matthews, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was also able to convince Matthews that he could help document the Catawba language. Together they published five texts in 1967. Matthews included in these books West's fabricated family genealogy, listing West's nonexistent Catawba ancestors in his maternal line. West told Matthews his mother's name was “Singing Dove” and that her father was “Strong Eagle,” saying the latter was a graduate of Yale Law School and had died in 1941. However, West's mother was actually Roberta M. Hawkins West, and her father, William Ashbie Hawkins (1862-1941) was not only one of the first Black lawyers in Baltimore, but a prominent and well-known community leader, the son of the Rev. Robert Hawkins and Susan (Cobb) Hawkins, all very well-known, and well-documented African-American people. West continued to live under the Red Thunder Cloud pretendian identity, becoming a regular presence at local fairs and even some pow wows in New England, where he would sell his herbal products called "Red Thunder Cloud's Accabonac Princess American Indian Teas". Death West died at St. Vincent's Hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts following a stroke, January 8, 1996, at the age of 76. At the time of his death, Leonor Pena, a close friend from Central Falls, Rhode Island, gave his name as Carlos Westez and included the alias Namos S. Hatiririe. She listed his occupation as "shaman". His sister, as administrator to his will in probate court, gave his name as Cromwell Ashbie Hawkins West. Investigation of identity Linguist and ethnologist Ives Goddard of the Smithsonian Institution confirmed that West was non-Native by way of public documents, letters, and publications. He concluded that "West's life as Red Thunder Cloud confronts us with basic questions of race and identity that are emblematic of