Cherokee people

“ In these Cherokee practices the lamentations and the invocations of the Old Woman of the Corn resemble the ancient Egyptian customs of lamenting over the first corn cut and calling upon Isis, herself probably in one of her aspects an Old Woman of the Corn. Further, the Cherokee precaution of leaving a clear path from the field to the house resembles the Egyptian invitation to Osiris, "Come to thy house." So in the East Indies to this day people observe elaborate ceremonies for the purpose of bringing back the Soul of the Rice from the fields to the barn. ”

“ The proper name by which the Cherokee call themselves (1) 1 is Yûñ′wiyă′, or Ani′-Yûñ′wiyă′ in the third person, signifying “real people,” or “principal people,” a word closely related to Oñwe-hoñwe, the name by which the cognate Iroquois know themselves. The word properly denotes “Indians,” as distinguished from people of other races, but in usage it is restricted to mean members of the Cherokee tribe, those of other tribes being designated as Creek, Catawba, etc., as the case may be. ”

“ These are the people of whom little has been said and less written than most of the children of men. Yet of all of the native Americans the Cherokee tribe was the most noble, humane and intelligent.
Somewhere in the annals of the Aborigines of America, the Cherokee separated from the great Northern tribe, the Iroquois, and by preference inhabited the hills of the Appalachian range, and here we find them early in the dawn of American history, occupying a country which affords ample environment for the artist, the poet and the painter. ”

“ Once some young men of the Cherokee set out to see what was in the world and traveled south until they came to a tribe of little people called Tsundige′wĭ, with very queer shaped bodies, hardly tall enough to reach up to a man’s knee, who had no houses, but lived in nests scooped in the sand and covered over with dried grass. ”

“ Writing about transcription can be a bit dry, so I want to tell the story from the perspective of one of Wiksource’s newest documents. In 1829, the Cherokee Nation was at a crossroads. Settlers from Georgia had been steadily encroaching on their lands for years, despite past cessions, and the state government was becoming more strident in its demands for their removal from their traditional lands. The Cherokee, as a people and as a political society, were also in the midst of a great transformation. ”

“ Still the white man pressed upon the Cherokee and one piece of land after another was sold, until as years went on the dispossessed people began to turn their faces toward the west as their final resting place, and small bands of hunters crossed the Mississippi to learn what might be beyond. One of these parties pushed on across the plains and there at the foot of the great mountains—the Rockies—they found a tribe speaking the old Cherokee language and living still as the Cherokee had lived before they had ever known the white man or his ways. ”

“ The Cherokees are of a middle stature, of an olive colour, tho’ generally painted, and their skins stained with gun-powder, pricked into it in very pretty figures. The hair of their head is shaved, tho’ many of the old people have it plucked out by the roots, except a patch on the hinder part of the head, about twice the bigness of a crown-piece, which is ornamented with beads, feathers, wampum, stained deers hair, and such like baubles. ”

“ Long wars were waged between the Cherokee and their remote northern relatives, the Iroquois, with both of whom the recollection, now nearly faded, was a vivid tradition fifty years ago. The (Seneca) Iroquois know the Cherokee as Oyadaʼgeʻoñnoñ, a name rather freely rendered “cave people.” ”

“ Before we close this address, permit us to state what we conceive to be our relation with the United States. After the peace of 1783, the Cherokees were an independent people; absolutely so, as much as any people on earth. ”

“ She acknowledged the independence of the United States, and made peace. The Cherokees therefore stood alone; and, in the circumstances, continued the war. They were then under no obligations to the United States any more than to Great Britain, France or Spain. The United States never subjugated the Cherokees; on the contrary, our fathers remained in possession of their country, and with arms in their hands... We are aware, that some persons suppose it will be for our advantage to remove beyond the Mississippi. We think otherwise. Our people universally think otherwise. ”

“ According to the testimony of a Cherokee mixed-blood named Gansĕ′ʻtĭ or Rattling-gourd, who was born on Hiwassee river in 1820 and came west with his people in 1838, a number of Yuchi lived, before the Removal, scattered among the Cherokee near the present Cleveland, Tennessee, and on Chickamauga, Cohutta, and Pinelog creeks in the adjacent section of Georgia. ”

“ In a broader application, the same idea is a foundation principle of every ancient religion. In ordinary Cherokee ceremonial the fast is kept for one day—i. e., from midnight to sunset. On occasions of supreme importance it continues four or even seven days. Among the plains tribes those who voluntarily enter the Sun dance to make supplication and sacrifice for their people abstain entirely from food and drink during the four days and nights of the ceremony.
The Thunders—See number 3, “Kana′tĭ and Selu” and notes, and number 8, “The Moon and the Thunders,” with notes. ”

“ The Cherokees in their dispositions and manners are grave and steady, dignified and circumspect in their deportment; rather slow and reserved in conversation, yet frank, cheerful, and humane; tenacious of the liberties and natural rights of man; secret, deliberate, and determined in their councils; honest, just, and liberal, and always ready to sacrifice every pleasure and gratification, even their blood and life itself, to defend their territory and maintain their rights. ”

“ The manifest benefits and many happy results that would inure to the Cherokee Nation from an exchange of their country for one beyond the limits of any State and far removed from the annoying encroachments of civilization were pictured in the most attractive colors, but all to no purpose, the Cherokees only maintaining with more marked emphasis their original determination to part with no more land. ”

“ They declared that the great body of the Cherokee desired to remain in the land of their birth, where they were rapidly advancing in civilization, instead of being compelled to revert to their original savage conditions and surroundings. ”

“ The fame which he had acquired by this intimacy and friendship with the Great Spirit was the means of giving peace to his nation. His reputation being spread far and near, no tribe durst try their strength in war, or measure their weapons in combat, with a people who were possessed of such a friend, protector, leader, and priest. So the Cherokees rested in peace, and the earth was no more made red with blood, but wore the robe which nature provided for it—the robe of green. They planted their corn in the Budding-Moon, and lived to see it harvested in the Moon of Falling Leaves. ”

“ Notwithstanding the many difficulties that had beset their paths and the condition of uncertainty and suspense which had surrounded their affairs for years, the Cherokees seem to have continued steadily in their progress toward civilization. ”

“ There is a dim but persistent tradition of a strange white race preceding the Cherokee, some of the stories even going so far as to locate their former settlements and to identify them as the authors of the ancient works found in the country. ”

“ It is complicated by the division between Cherokees into the Eastern Cherokees, who wished to become civilized and remain in the states east of the Mississippi, and those who preferred nomadic and hunting life in the West, and who first went to the Indian Territory and were called the Old Settlers. ”

“ The Cherokees occupied a country equally broad and beautiful. It lay in fertile valleys, green meadows, sunny slopes, and mighty forests, along the sides of lofty summits, that circled their extensive territory with natural fortresses of giant grandeur. Spreading from the Broad, or Cherokee river, beyond the Tennessee and the Savannah, it comprised every variety of soil and surface, and while adapted in a high degree to the hands of the agriculturist, seemed almost as easily made secure against the footsteps of invasion. ”

“ If the Government of the United States shall in this last resort of the Cherokees prove faithful to its obligations and maintain their country inviolate from the intrusions of white trespassers, the future of the nation will surely prove the capability of the American Indian under favorable conditions to realize in a high degree the possibilities of Anglo-Saxon civilization. ”

“ Southern Cherokees want a division of territory.—They had already proffered and were willing again to proffer the olive-branch of peace and reconciliation to their brethren of the so called loyal portion of the nation, but respectfully urged that after all the blood that had been shed and the intense bitterness that seemed to fill the bosoms of their brethren they ought not to be expected to live in an undivided country. ”

“ According to a letter written by him in 1825, the Christian religion was generally adopted by the tribe, and an advanced standard of prosperous civilization had been attained by them. He died before the Cherokees were dispossessed by the United States in defiance of treaty obligations. — His sister, Catharine, teacher, b. near Wills Valley, Ala., about 1800; d. 18 July, 1823, was a Cherokee Indian, but not full-blooded, her parents being half-breeds. They were prosperous and influential members of the then wealthy and largely civilized Cherokee nation of Alabama and Tennessee. ”

“ Instead of ceremonials and peace councils we hear now of railroad deals and contracts with cattle syndicates, and instead of the old warrior chiefs who had made the Cherokee name a terror—Oconostota, Hanging-maw, Doublehead, and Pathkiller—we find the destinies of the [147] nation guided henceforth by shrewd mixed-blood politicians, bearing white men’s names and speaking the white man’s language, and frequently with hardly enough Indian blood to show itself in the features. ”

“ From the last report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, it appears that the Cherokees are steadily advancing in knowledge and civilization. Many of them are said to be men of decided talents and learning. The constitution and laws of the nation are printed and circulated among the people. Education is popular among them, and it is probable that they will adopt the suggestion of the agent in their territory, and divide their lands into farms, as individual property. ”

“ He was possessed by that extraordinary renunciation of civilization which now and again was manifested by white men thrown among the Cherokee tribe—sometimes, as in his instance, a trader, advanced in years, "his pile made," to use the phrase of to-day, the world before him where to choose a home; sometimes a deserter from the British or French military forces, according to the faction which the shifting Cherokees affected at the time; more than once a captive, spared for some whim, set at liberty, free to go where he would—all deliberately and of choice cast their lot among the Cherokees ”

“ At the time of the English settlement of the Carolinas the Cherokees occupied a diversified and well-watered region of country of large extent upon the waters of the Catawba, Broad, Saluda, Keowee, Tugaloo, Savannah, and Coosa Rivers on the east and south, and several of the tributaries of the Tennessee on the north and west. It is impossible at this late day to define with absolute accuracy the original limits of the Cherokee claim. ”

“ My ears are always open when he speaks, and my mind is stronger. I now see that it is good he should not have a tribe. He may be a Cherokee, and then our warriors would wish him ill.” This was a home-thrust, most artfully concealed; a Cherokee being the Indian of all others the most hated by the chiefs present;—the Carthaginians of those western Romans. “It is better he should not have a tribe, than be a Cherokee. He might better be a weasel.
“Brothers, we have been told to kill ALL the pale-faces. ”

“ The Cherokee Nation has probably occupied a more prominent place in the affairs and history of what is now the United States of America, since the date of the early European settlements, than any other tribe, nation, or confederacy of Indians, unless it be possible to except the powerful and warlike league of the Iroquois or Six Nations of New York. ”

“ Although the Cherokee are probably the largest and most important tribe in the United States, having their own national government and numbering at any time in their history from 20,000 to 25,000 persons, almost nothing has yet been written of their history or general ethnology, as compared with the literature of such northern tribes as the Delawares, the Iroquois, or the Ojibwa. ”

“ Having traced for three full centuries their gradual evolution from a savage tribe to a civilized Christian nation, with a national constitution and national press printed in their own national alphabet, we can afford to leave the rest to others, the principal materials being readily accessible in the Cherokee national archives at Tahlequah, in the files of the Cherokee Advocate and other newspapers published in the Nation, and in the annual reports and other documents of the Indian office. ”

“ The Cheraw or Sara, ranging at different periods from upper South Carolina to the southern frontier of Virginia, are also remembered under the name of Ani′-Suwa′lĭ, or Ani′-Suwa′la, which agrees with the Spanish form Xuala of De Soto’s chronicle, and Suala, or Sualy, of Lederer. The Cherokee remember them as having lived east of the Blue ridge, the trail to their country leading across the gap at the head of Swannanoa river, east from Asheville. ”