Museographs: The Cherokee, Ani'-Yun'wiya: The History Publication of World Culture

By Caron Caswell Lazar

Grounded in the maintenance of balance and the pursuit of peace, the Cherokee Nation has always had a difficult task. In The Cherokee accompany these Principle People on their quest -- from the first 1,000 years of harmony preceding conflict with DeSoto in 1540 to the present-day resurgence of tribal unity.

The Cherokee's pre-contact world was peaceful and often unrecognized or misrepresented by American history books. It encompassed a deep reverence for nature and commitment to equality between men and women that acknowledged certain strengths and weaknesses of the sexes, but was devoid of shame. The systems of war, religion, and justice encouraged prudent thought and action and frowned upon carelessness and waste.

The approach of whites threw a wrench into their peaceful balance and forced the Cherokee into a series of never-ending land disputes, a battery of inhumane and unjust treatment, and a process of decision-making that would profoundly impact the next several hundred years of their history.

After undergoing a long period of suffering culminating in The Trail of Tears of 1839, certain Cherokee, known as 'the Progressives,' made a conscious decision to embrace white culture. These Cherokee were able to remain in the East while most of their brethren were marched West to the wastelands of Oklahoma. In the short term, this sparked a period of achievement called the Renaissance, where the Eastern Cherokee attained literacy, saw economic prosperity, clung to a portion of their ancestral lands, and forged a much needed strength and nationalism.

In the long term the choice would show them to be an exceedingly adaptable and flexible union. Faced with complete tribal bifurcation at the hands of "the Traditionalists" who opposed the decision, and with elimination due to removal and disease, the Cherokee persevered. Empowered by pride and fueled with a desire to restore harmony again, they regrouped and fought for the signing at Red Clay. It is here that a common Cherokee culture was reinstated and harmony and balance restored -- at least for now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Feb 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781456617097

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Celts

The Cherokee: Ani’–Yun’wiya

Contemporary Booger Masks

Courtesy Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual

Photo by Robert Amberg

The Principle People

The Cherokees called themselves Ani’–Yun’wiya, the Principle People. Their traditional home is the area of the United States today called southern Appalachia and was roughly bounded on the west by the Little Tennessee River; to the north by the state of Kentucky east of the Little Tennessee and the western edge of West Virginia; to the east by the North Carolina highlands and western South Carolina; and to the south by the northern portions of both Georgia and Alabama. This had been their home for at least a thousand years before the first Europeans, in the deSoto expedition of 1540, reached their villages.

Unlike the tribes of the northern plains and others, the Cherokee were not a nomadic people. They lived in villages that sometimes stretched for miles along riverbanks. They particularly favored settling at the fork of two rivers where a smaller, quieter river flow joined a larger rushing river. In this way they kept their cooking and drinking water separate from the water used for cleaning and washing.

A Cherokee village included a variety of architecture. Each village had a council house (or town house) and a communal plaza where villagers socialized, gathered to make political decisions and conducted religious ceremonies. The town house was a large circular building constructed of wattle (interwoven saplings) and then covered with daub (a plaster like substance made from mud). Sometimes this building sat upon a mound.

The practice of constructing mounds in the villages originated while the Cherokee were still primarily gathering food over long distances. During this time the men might be off hunting deer several mountain ranges away and the women also traveled far from the village to gather staples like greens, berries, nuts and persimmons. While the working adults were away only the elderly and very young were left in the village. During floods, because of the settlements’ proximity to the rivers, many young children were carried off in rushing, rising waters. To avoid this ongoing tragedy the tribe built platform mounds of large rocks, gravel, sand and trash as a place for the young and infirm to climb on during high-water flooding. These mounds eventually became gathering places, representative high points, upon which town houses were built. They might also eventually act as burial places.

The council house opened onto a plaza with covered sheds where villagers could sit in warm weather during public events. Beyond this public area were the individual Cherokee homes. Cherokee households were large, often made up of several generations. Consequently, a Cherokee homestead consisted of several buildings. In warm weather they lived in large rectangular, clapboard houses. In the winter they moved into their asi (winter houses). These were small, round wattle-and-daub structures shaped somewhat like a tipi with a small opening at the top for smoke to escape. A Cherokee household also typically had storage buildings and cribs.

At some point the women began row farming as an act of efficiency. This not only ensured a constant supply of food but also cut down considerably on the time and physical energy formerly spent foraging far from home. Staple crops included corn, beans (grown together so in order for the nitrogen produced by the beans to naturally fertilize the corn), squash, sunflowers and pumpkins, among others. Although men might help in these efforts the primary responsibility for agriculture fell to the women. When the corn was edible, the women presented it to the village in the most important ceremony of the year, the Green Corn Ceremony.

In addition to the responsibility of growing and gathering the food, women were also responsible for preparing the food, child rearing (the Cherokee were extremely tolerant and lenient with their children, never hitting them. Parents shamed and teased naughty children into good behavior, believing that humiliation was enough punishment to secure good