Cherokee
Language Groups in Southeast
Muskogeans
Creek
Choctaw
Chickasaw
Alabama
Seminole
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Macro-Siouan (Iroquoian family)
Tuscarora
Catawba
Caddo
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Cultural Influences
Cherokee name for themselves: Ani-Yunwiya (the principal people).
Probably not descendants of Mississippians.
Strong Mississippian influences were present, however.
Mississippian Influence
Charnel houses for bones of the elite dead.
Green Corn (Busk) Ceremony, celebrating maize harvest and lighting new
fires.
Game of lacrosse.
Cherokee Life after European Contact
About 1700, firearms and trade goods became widely available.
White settlers moved into area.
Hostilities soon arose between whites and Indians, and also between
Indian tribes.
Much description applies to all of Five Civilized Tribes: Cherokee,
Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole.
Cherokee Settlements
Most located on streams or rivers.
Town fairly large, with 350-600 persons.
Houses similar in structure to Natchez – rectangular, with pole walls
and gable roofs. Walls coated with clay and grass mats.
Cherokee Baskets
Best known artifacts from Cherokee culture are baskets.
Other artifacts were pipes, pottery for cooking and storing food, and
animal figures.
Physical Appearance
Traditional clothing: deerskin
Men: breechclouts
Women: knee-length skirts
After European contact: Buckskin shirts and cloth boots.
Body decoration: tattooing, hair plucking, and ear stretching.
Subsistence
Major crops: maize, beans, pumpkin, tobacco.
Women were primary farmers - - Europeans found this disturbing.
Wild plant foods.
Game animals: bison, deer, wild turkeys.
Fishing.
Domestic dogs also kept.
Transportation
Dugout canoe was primary transportation means.
Made from hollowed logs, 40 ft long and 2 ft wide.
Could carry about 20 people or lots of trade goods.
Kinship System
Matrilineal clans were main social structure.
Bifurcate merging system of kinship terminology.
Means that some people in the same generation are known by the same
terms.
Cherokee Households
Traditionally, household consisted of matrilineal extended family
Elder woman and her husband
Daughters, their husbands, unmarried sons.
Children.
Traditional Role of Father
Father teaches some of male duties, like hunting and fishing.
Mother’s brother is responsible for discipline and for passing on
sacred clan knowledge.
Cherokee Clans
Clans are primary social unit
Clan membership extends across villages.
7 clans: bird, blue paint, red paint, twister-long hair, wild potato,
and wolf.
Farming lands allocated by clan membership.
Clans involved in dispute resolution, and are responsible for acts of
other clan members.
Political Organization
White and Red organizations traditionally existed in each village.
Whites: faction that promoted peace; usually the older men.
Reds: faction that planned and prepared for warfare; usually younger
men.
Political System
Cherokee Villages were politically autonomous. Each governed own
affairs.
Culturally and socially related, but not politically unified.
Problems for British negotiators:
Failed to understand separate control.
Attributed acts of warriors of one village to others.
Ascribed leadership standing falsely.
Warfare and Raiding
Warfare and raiding common in region.
Internal conflict led to trouble - - e.g. Choctaw fought with French to
subdue the Natchez.
Revolutionary War: most factions of Five Civilized Tribes sided with
British.
Slave trade, competition for guns and horses increased warfare among
Indian tribes.
Religious Ceremonies
Busk, or Green Corn ceremony was the most important in the cycle.
Similar to Natchez activities: purging, cleaning village, and
relighting the sacred fire, symbolizing a new beginning.
American Independence
George Washington: initiated policy of assimilation – 1789.
Learning English
Adopting European farming methods.
Allotting land for private ownership, not communal land use.
Cherokee Assimilation
Five Civilized Tribes approached assimilation policies cooperatively.
Cherokee Nation formed in 1827.
Sequoya worked out written symbols for Cherokee language.
Cherokee capital with European style buildings established in New
Echota, Georgia.
Cherokee Phoenix newspaper began in 1828.
Cherokee Changes
Cherokee farmers adopted log cabins.
Kept African slaves for farming.
Wore European style clothing.
Established nuclear family households.
One area of some resistance: not much enthusiasm for Christianity –
preferred traditional religious beliefs.
Background for Removal
Biggest factor: sheer pressure for more and more land for European
settler’s plantations.
Cotton crops require huge tracts of land.
Assimilation policy misleading; real goal was European control of land.
Alliance with British in Revolutionary War lingering reason for
discomfort with Indian presence.
Andrew Jackson
Jackson’s presidency foreshadowed the Civil War:
Southern position (Jackson’s):
States rights over federal authority.
Right to keep slaves.
Removal of Indians from eastern lands.
Northern positions
Northern positions on same issues:
Federal authority supreme over states.
Slavery should be abolished.
Indians should remain in ancestral lands.
Andrew Jackson’s election in 1828 established the Southern position on
these issues for the 1830s.
Indian Removal Act of 1830
The Removal Act was passed by Congress and signed by Andrew Jackson in
1830.
Many appeals and challenges raised.
Choctaw: Act said that mixed-blood Indians could elect to stay. 1/3 of
Choctaw claimed entitlement to stay; they were removed anyway.
Cherokees and Removal Negotiations
Despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring that the state of
Georgia had no jurisdiction over the Cherokees, removal was still pursued.
Split in leadership:
John Ross: believed the American people’s sense of justice would turn
Jackson out of office in 1832 and the Cherokee would remain.
John Ridge and Major Ridge: took a more pessimistic view, and
negotiated a treaty with the U.S. calling for removal by spring of 1838.
Removal Process
Ridges’ group left in 1837, but the majority of Cherokee people
remained and had made no preparations for removal by 1838.
Step 1: Army rounded up people for relocation into camps, with poor
sanitation, inadequate food, and overcrowding
Conditions in camps were nearly unbearable.
Cherokee Trail of Tears
John Ross negotiated with the government about the mechanics of
transport.
Some made part of the journey by boat (John Ross elected this option
for his family), but some had to march the entire way became of low river
water levels.
Travel to Arkansas
Limited number of oxcarts available.
Most walked, carrying whatever they could.
No camping facilities, so people slept in open or under wagons.
Inadequate quantities of food provided and often was spoiled.
Exhausting effects of marching and disease took enormous toll, and slowed
travel. Some groups took more than 200 days.
During summer, even more died from heat, cholera, and many other
diseases.
When winter arrived, many died from hypothermia.
In all, at least 4,000 Cherokee people died during removal, but
impossible to know exactly how many because all were buried along the way.
Retaliation and Division
Once all reached Arkansas, great internal dissension and resentment
still existed because of the Ridge’s treaty. John Ridge, Major Ridge, and
Elias Boudinot, the other prime player in the treaty, were all
assassinated.
John Ross continued as the Principal Chief, and was linked by some to
the murders.
Life in Arkansas
No facilities had been created for the Cherokee people in Arkansas, so
they had to begin from scratch.
Land in Arkansas was rich and productive, and Cherokees decided to
raise horses and cattle there.
During the Civil War, they sided with the South.
Treaties abrogated after war; moved to reservation land in Oklahoma.
Eastern Cherokee
Meanwhile, about 1,000 Cherokee people had fled to the mountains to
avoid removal.
Ultimately settled in North Carolina.
Known as the Qualla Cherokee.
William Thomas, adopted by the Cherokee, purchased land that later
became the Cherokee reservation in North Carolina.
Eastern Cherokee Ceremony
The Cherokee had initiated a Booger Dance in defense against the
smallpox epidemics.
The Qualla Cherokee adapted this ceremony to reflect all of their
perceived enemies - - whites, African-Americans, and Chinese people.
Eastern Cherokee New Traditions
Farming still a major of life, although tourism and gambling now create
more income.
Nuclear family organization.
4 value systems:
Conservatives: preserve traditional ways.
Generalized: accommodate white world.
"White" Indians: mixed bloods who have minimal Indian heritage and
live as whites.
Middle-class Indians: involved in market economy.
Image sources:
Berlo, Janet C. and Ruth B. Phillips. Native North
American Art. Oxford, UK: Oxford U.P., 1998.
Furst, Peter T. and Jill L. Furst. North American
Indian Art. New York: Rizzolli, 1982.
Johnson, Harmer. Guide to the Arts of the Americas:
Pre-Columbian and American Indian Art. New York: Rizzolli, 1992.
Penney, David W. Native Arts of North America.
Verona: Terrail, 1998.
Wade, Edwin L, Ed. The Arts of the North American
Indian: Native Traditions in Evolution. New York:
Hudson Hills Press, 1986.
