Cherokee

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Locality.—Valley of the Tennessee River.
Conterminous with the Southern Algonkins, the Southern Iroquois, the Catawbas, and the Choctahs.
The Cherokee is one of the few so-called savage nations which is increasing, and not decreasing, in numbers. It is, also, the most industrial of all the American families; the Cherokee landholder having, in some cases, as much as five hundred acres under tillage, and possessing slaves as well. Lastly, a native Cherokee has reduced the language to writing—the alphabet (which will be noticed in the sequel) being syllabic. ”

“ The neglected condition of the East Cherokee having been brought to the attention of those old-time friends of the Indian, the Quakers, through an appeal made in their behalf by members of that society residing in North Carolina, the Western Yearly Meeting, of Indiana, volunteered to undertake the work of civilization and education. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ The authentic records of unlettered peoples are short at best, seldom going back much farther than the memories of their oldest men; and although the Cherokee have been the most important of the southern tribes, making wars and treaties for three centuries with Spanish, English, French, and Americans, Iroquois, [232] Shawano, Catawba, and Creeks, there is little evidence of the fact in their traditions. This condition may be due in part to the temper of the Cherokee mind, which, as has been already stated, is accustomed to look forward to new things rather than to dwell upon the past. ”

“ The Cherokee being a detached tribe of the Iroquois, we may expect to find among the latter, if it be not already too late, the explanation and more perfect statement of some things which are obscure in the Cherokee myths. It must not be forgotten, however, that the Indian, like other men, does some things for simple amusement, and it is useless to look for occult meanings where none exist. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are a few stories concerning the first contact of the Cherokee with whites and negroes. They are very modern and have little value as myths, but throw some light upon the Indian estimate of the different races. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The whole primitive pantheon of the Cherokee is still preserved in their sacred formulas.
As compared with those from some other tribes the Cherokee myths are clean. For picturesque imagination and wealth of detail they rank high, and some of the wonder stories may challenge those of Europe and India. The numerous parallels furnished will serve to indicate their relation to the general Indian system. Unless otherwise noted, every myth here given has been obtained directly from the Indians, and in nearly every case has been verified from several sources. ”

“ The East Cherokee of to-day is a dejected being; poorly fed, and worse clothed, rarely tasting meat, cut off from the old free life, and with no incentive to a better, and constantly bowed down by a sense of helpless degradation in the presence of his conqueror. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Cherokee tribe has long been a puzzling factor to students of ethnology and North American languages. Whether to be considered an abnormal offshoot from one of the well-known Indian stocks or families of North America, or the remnant of some undetermined or almost extinct family which has merged into another, appear to be questions yet unsettled. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He had met their leading men at Newtown and had submitted a proposal for their removal which was peremptorily rejected. The advancement the Cherokees had made in religion, morality, general information, and agriculture had astonished him beyond measure. They had regular preachers in their churches, the use of spirituous liquors was in great degree prohibited, their farms were worked much after the manner of white people, and were generally in good order. Many families possessed all the comforts and some of the luxuries of life. ”

“ Beyond a few stories of encounters with the Shawano and Iroquois there is hardly anything that can be called history until well within the present century.
With some tribes the winter season and the night are the time for telling stories, but to the Cherokee all times are alike. As our grandmothers begin, “Once upon a time,” so the Cherokee story-teller introduces his narrative by saying: “This is what the old men told me when I was a boy.”
Not all tell the same stories, for in tribal lore, as in all other sorts of knowledge, we find specialists. ”

“ In the locative form this was the name of a former Cherokee settlement in Georgia, called by the whites Fighting-town, from a misapprehension of the meaning of the word. Of the white clover, the Cherokee say that “it follows the white man.” ”

“ Hand-breadth—The Cherokee word is utawâ′hilû, from uwâyĭ, hand. This is not to be taken literally, but is a figurative expression much used in the sacred formulas to denote a serial interval of space. The idea of successive removals of the sun, in order to modify the excessive heat, is found with other tribes. Buttrick, already quoted, says in his statement of the Cherokee cosmogony: “When God created the world he made a heaven or firmament about as high as the tops of the mountains, but this was too warm. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On ceremonial occasions they frequently speak of themselves as Ani′-Kitu′hwagĭ, or “people of Kĭtu′hwa,” an ancient settlement on Tuckasegee river and apparently the original nucleus of the tribe. Among the western Cherokee this name has been adopted by a secret society recruited from the full-blood element and pledged to resist the advances of the white man’s civilization. Under the various forms of Cuttawa, Gattochwa, Kittuwa, etc., as spelled by different authors, it was also used by several northern Algonquian tribes as a synonym for Cherokee. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Five Nations took up the matter in all their strength. They, contrary to what is above intimated, raised large war-parties, and marched through the country to the Cherokee borders, and brought away scalps and prisoners. There are now, he added, descendants of the Cherokees in the third degree 152 living on the Tonawanda reservation. Le Fort, an Onondaga chief, speaking on the same subject, said that there was, some years ago, a chief of pure Cherokee blood, by father and mother, living among them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is change indeed in dress and outward seeming, but the heart of the Indian is still his own.
For this and other reasons much the greater portion of the material herein contained has been procured among the East Cherokee living upon the Qualla reservation in western North Carolina and in various detached settlements between the reservation and the Tennessee line. ”

“ 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. ”