Cherokees

Cherokees

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION, CULTURAL PRACTICES, AND LANGUAGE

CHANGES WITH EUROPEAN CONTACT

THE EASTERN BAND OF CHEROKEE INDIANS

THE CHEROKEE NATION OF OKLAHOMA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Cherokees have been one of the most historically significant indigenous cultural groups in the southeastern United States. There were three federally recognized Cherokee Indian nations at the beginning of the twenty-first century: the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) in North Carolina, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and the United Keetoowah Band in Oklahoma. In addition, more than fifty other organizations in at least twelve states, as well as many individuals, claim Cherokee descent. The question of who is legitimately Cherokee and how many individual Cherokee Indians exist in America is a point of contention, and the distinction between individual claims to cultural or biological identity, on the one hand, and legal membership or citizenship in federally recognized tribes or sovereign tribal nations, on the other, is an important one.

Other issues facing Cherokee communities in the early twenty-first century include development and refinement of mechanisms for self-governance, political factionalism, increased economic development of tribal communities (including gaming, tourism, and natural resource management on tribal lands), cultural preservation, and the implementation of tribal programs and services for media, education, health, mental health, and social services. Like many other Native American communities, the Cherokees face high rates of drug and alcohol dependency, suicide, and health issues such as diabetes, and communities are particularly concerned about their at-risk youth.

Cherokees and their ancestral culture, believed to be related to the Iroquois, have lived in the southeastern region for at least 12,000 years. Lands once occupied by the Cherokees—before European contact in the 1500s and then forced removal in the 1830s to Oklahoma—encompassed parts of what are now nine states, including most of the Southern Appalachian mountain and foothill region. From original lands that covered 250,000 square miles, the Eastern Band maintained its culture on approximately 56,000 acres in western North Carolina as of 2007; the tribal assets of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma include about 66,000 acres.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION, CULTURAL PRACTICES, AND LANGUAGE

Unlike many of the Plains tribes, the Cherokees were primarily agricultural rather than nomadic and called themselves Ani’Yun’wiya, the Principal People. They are matrilineal and matrilocal, meaning that they trace their descent through the women in their society and they live in the mother’s or wife’s household, since women traditionally owned all property. Traditional Cherokee social organization was structured around seven matrilineal clans, run by a Council of Grandmothers, reflecting the relationship of balance between the natural and spiritual worlds: Anigilo(la)hi (Long Hair); Anisahoni (Blue or Panther); Aniwaya (Wolf); Anigatogewi (Wild Potato); Ani(k)awi (Deer); Anitsisqua (Bird); Aniwodi (Paint). Each clan has traditional vocations, knowledges, and sacred ceremonial affiliations, and marriage within a clan is forbidden.

Throughout the Cherokee year, the communities have traditionally celebrated festivals or religious observances that reflected significant events related to the seasons, such as New Moon Festivals and Green Corn Ceremonies. Such events include feasting, dancing, purifications, sacred fires, and other ceremonies and rituals. The traditional Cherokee wedding is also a distinctive ceremony and a time for community celebration. Cherokees also actively participate in dances and ceremonies within the tribe as well as intertribal powwows to exhibit their traditional dance and music arts.

The arts have been a significant part of Cherokee culture and usually reflect the spiritual relationship between the Cherokees and the stone, wood, river cane, or clay from which various objects—baskets, pottery, carvings—are shaped. A revitalization of traditional arts is flourishing among the Cherokees through cooperatives and foundations such as the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, Inc.

The Cherokee language, called Tsalagi, a member of the Southern Iroquoian language family, has a number of dialects and was spoken by about 22,000 Cherokees as of 2007 (only about 5 percent of the Cherokee population, due to nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. government policies punishing native speakers), although numbers are growing since it has become a required subject in many Cherokee schools and universities.

CHANGES WITH EUROPEAN CONTACT

Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto’s entry into Cherokee territory in 1540, in his search for gold and silver, forever changed the way the Cherokees lived. DeSoto’s party killed and enslaved many Cherokees, and the European invaders brought disease, death, and what would be permanent cultural dislocation to the Cherokees. Some estimate that as many as 95 percent of the Cherokee population died within the first two centuries of European contact.

By the eighteenth century, when waves of European settlers pushed westward into Cherokee territories, treaty lines were created but ultimately failed to protect the Cherokees from encroachment into their lands. Most of the remaining Cherokees reorganized and incorporated many aspects of European society into their dynamic culture to adapt to the changing demands of living near and among the new settlers. A more conservative faction, called the Old Settlers, voluntarily entered into a treaty with the U.S. government in 1817 to receive land in Arkansas in order to avoid assimilation; these were the ancestors of the United Keetoowah Band, the most conservative and traditional of the Cherokees.

A silversmith, Sequoyah, introduced a written form of the Cherokee language, called a syllabary, which was officially adopted by the Cherokee Nation in 1825. This led to widespread literacy and the publication of books, religious texts, almanacs, and newspapers. The tribe adopted a bicameral national government, a constitution, and a Supreme Court by 1827.

However, after white settlers discovered gold on Cherokee lands in north Georgia in the late 1820s, the state and federal government collaborated to confiscate Indian land and then offer this prized land to white settlers through land lotteries. President Andrew Jackson authorized the Indian Removal Act of 1830, beginning the tragic removal period when Cherokees were forced to leave behind their farms, homes, and land. However, the removal was not without opposition and a legal struggle.

Cherokee statesmen and leaders, such as Chief John Ross, and other Americans, including Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and Samuel Worcester, passionately spoke out against removal and challenged Georgia’s attempt to extinguish Indian title to land. These legal cases—espe-cially Worcester v. Georgia (1832) and Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831)—became the two most influential decisions in Indian law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled for Georgia in the 1831 case, but in the 1832 case affirmed Cherokee sovereignty. However, President Jackson defied the Court and ordered the Cherokee removal, using as justification the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, a treaty that had been signed by about 100 Cherokees who agreed to relinquish all lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for land in Oklahoma and the promise of money, provisions, and other benefits.

The signing and the removal led to bitter factionalism among the Cherokees. However, the U.S. Army, under General Winfield Scott, enforced the Removal Act in 1838 and forced about 15,000 to 20,000 Cherokees from their homeland. An estimated 4,000 died from hunger, exposure, and disease along the “Trail of Tears” by boats and on foot to Indian Territory in Oklahoma.

THE EASTERN BAND OF CHEROKEE INDIANS

However, hundreds of Cherokees in the mountains of North Carolina had been able to escape from forced removal in 1838, and their descendants make up the Eastern Band today. After several years of legal limbo, in 1848 the U.S. Congress agreed to recognize their treaty rights if the state would accept them as permanent residents; it was not until 1866, following the Civil War, that North Carolina agreed, and in 1868, the tribal tripartite government reconstituted and held its first elections since the removal. In the 1870s, the federal government established the Qualla Boundary (a reservation) for about 1,200 Cherokees. By 2006, over 13,000 enrolled members of EBCI lived on the Eastern Cherokee lands held in trust by the federal government.

The EBCI, incorporated in 1889, is a sovereign nation whose members are not subject to county property taxes or state income tax. Enrollment in the EBCI requires 1/32 degree of Cherokee blood through descent from an enrollee on the 1924 Baker Roll, a census carried out the same year that Native Americans were granted U.S. citizenship. Tribal governance is carried out by an elected principal chief and vice chief, a Tribal Council representing the various communities and clan townships, and appointed judicial positions.

Tourism and gaming are the two primary sources of economic development of the modern Eastern Cherokee, with an active tribal Office of Economic Development. With tribal lands nestled in the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains and surrounded by national parks and forests—as well as the cultural appeal of the Indian heritage attractions such as living heritage museums and an outdoor historical drama—tourism has long been the major economic base of the EBCI. Harrah’s Cherokee Casino opened in 1997 and became the largest tourist attraction in North Carolina. The introduction of gaming has radically affected living conditions in what was once one of North Carolina’s most impoverished areas, because of the advent of the per-capita distribution of tribal and casino profits to all enrolled tribal members (an amount totaling nearly $100 million in fiscal year 2004). In addition to tribal agencies, the independent Cherokee Preservation Foundation works to preserve Cherokee culture, create jobs and other economic development opportunities, and renew the environment on tribal lands.

THE CHEROKEE NATION OF OKLAHOMA

In Oklahoma, the Trail of Tears survivors soon rebuilt a democratic form of government, churches, and educational system, newspapers, and businesses, with Tahlequah as their capital and center of cultural activity. In 1844, the Cherokee Advocate, printed in both Cherokee and English, became the first newspaper in a Native American language, and the literacy level among the Cherokees became higher than among their white counterparts. Prosperity flourished until the Civil War, when most Cherokees sided with the Confederacy. The government divided what remained of Cherokee tribal land into individual allotments given to Cherokees listed in the Dawes Roll in the late 1890s. Descendants of those original enrollees make up today’s Cherokee Nation tribal citizenship.

The Cherokee Nation has the sovereign right, granted by treaty and law, to control and develop tribal assets. With about 280,000 enrolled tribal members as of mid-2007, the Cherokee Nation is the largest American Indian tribal nation (followed closely by the Navajo Nation with approximately 250,000 enrolled members). The land base remaining under federal trust relationship comprises more than 90,000 acres consisting of half tribal land and half allotment land belonging to individual tribal members.

The Cherokee Nation has a tripartite democratic government with a constitution, revised in 1976. Executive power is vested in the elected principal chief, legislative power in the elected Tribal Council, and judicial power in the Cherokee Nation Judicial Appeals Tribunal, comparable to a Supreme Court. It is the highest court of the Cherokee Nation, and it administers the Cherokee Nation Judicial Code as well as district courts and a law enforcement system.

The Cherokee Nation operates several enterprises, including Cherokee Nation Enterprises, which owns casino facilities, retail outlets, and Cherokee Nation Industries, Inc., a supplier to several major defense contractors. The Cherokee Nation also owns a landfill, golf course, ranch, and apartments for the elderly and disabled, and in total employs about 7,000 people, most of whom are tribal members.

SEE ALSO Culture; Gambling; Gold, God, and Glory; Government; Identity; Iroquois; Land Claims; Mankiller, Wilma; Mental Health; Native Americans; Sequoyah; Sovereignty; Trail of Tears

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. http://www.cherokee.org.

Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. http://www.nc-cherokee.com.

Ehle, John. 1988. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. New York: Doubleday.

Finger, John R. 1984. The Eastern Band of Cherokees, 1819-1900. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

Finger, John R. 1991. Cherokee Americans: The Eastern Band of Cherokees in the Twentieth Century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Leeds, Georgia Rae. 1996. The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma. New York: Peter Lang.

Mooney, James, and George Ellison. 1992. James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Fairview, NC: Bright Mountain Books.

Perdue, Theda. 1998. Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Perdue, Theda. 2005. The Cherokees. Philadelphia: Chelsea House.

Perdue, Theda, and Michael D. Green, eds. 2004. The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents, 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford Books.

United Keetoowah Band. http://www.unitedkeetoowahband.org.

Williams, David. 1993. The Georgia Gold Rush: Twenty-niners, Cherokees, and Gold Fever. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

Pamela S. Wilson