9/26/20: Cherokee, NC: Museum of the Cherokee Indian

Last September, Steven and I stayed for just one night in the town of Cherokee, North Carolina, located at the southern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway. We didn't realize until we arrived that the town was part of, and owned by, the local Indigenous reservation. The main street seemed like one big souvenir store selling native items of every description. Though we did stay clear of the shops, the cutely painted bears caught our interest, even though we'd seen very similar bears a few days ago. Guess they must be a North Carolina 'thing'

The town of Cherokee's Museum of the Cherokee Indian opened in 1948 and was then moved to its current location in 1975. The museum had helped to revitalize the stamped pottery tradition by creating and working with the Cherokee Potters' Guild and bring back traditional dances and traditional 18th-century dress and feather capes. The North Carolina Arts Council presented the museum with the Community Traditions Award as a result of their work.

The statue honored Sequoyah, the Cherokee genius who invented the tribe's alphabet. The statue was carved from one piece of California Sequoia redwood log which was donated and shipped by the Georgia Pacific train company. The sculptor, Peter Wolf Toth, had also created 62 other sculptures in Canada and the US commemorating the Indigenous people in both countries.

The first people in North America were Paleo-Indians and they moved in groups seasonally to hunt animals and gather wild plant foods. There is little of their material culture that has survived over the millennia except for stone tools.

One of the exhibits mentioned Archaic Indians but without any reference to time or era. Because this group grew more knowledgeable about plants, they were able to create a surplus of food without the cultivation of crops. With a more leisurely lifestyle, more time was devoted to tool-making which became more sophisticated.

Archaic Indians used many methods to catch fish - one involved using a net of long grape leaves with small river stones attached at intervals, acting as weights to push the nets toward traps.

Woodland Indians showed a high level of adaptation to the environment, finding new ways to hunt and grow food. Using bows and arrows meant they could hunt a wider range of animals from greater distances. Cultivation of crops, including corn, a mainstay of their diet, and pottery manufacturing became more widespread.

As pottery was bulky, breakable, and tough to transport, it is thought that pottery making was popular for those living in more permanent villages. Pottery has been found with markings on it in what is now Eastern Tennessee that dated to 900 BC.

While Southeastern Indians celebrated festivals throughout the year, none was as important as the Green Corn Festivals when the corn first became ripe or later when it was perfect and mature.

Stickball, a form of Canadian lacrosse, was very popular by all tribes in the Southeast and apparently plaid with great ferocity!

After archaeologists discovered examples of twilled-split cane baskets as well as slippers made of twilled vegetable fiber at a Woodland site in Kentucky, they knew basket-making was common since early times for the Indigenous people of the Southeast. I could hardly fathom that many of the same weaving techniques currently being used by the Cherokee were in evidence as early as 7500 BC!

This 200-year-old, authentic, Cherokee dugout canoe was found in north Georgia in 1974 and donated to the museum.

With the arrival of European settlers, the Cherokee acquired horses which increased their hunting capabilities and transport goods. Trading with the British meant they had axes and hoes to use their land more efficiently and grow crops.

King George III's Proclamation of 1763 promised there would be no more White settlements in the Appalachian Mountains and all points west. We all know that, sadly, it could not be enforced.

The painting depicted the Cherokee Delegation who traveled to London in 1762 to meet the king.

The Cherokee thought they were 'safe' after the king had signed his proclamation but then came the American Revolution.

A Civilization Policy was adopted at the end of the 1780s under President George Washington's rule to transfer the nomadic Indians into farmers. The tribes were expected to adopt the American way of life through individual ownership, worship one true god, speak English, and govern themselves with written laws. All that entailed giving up their culture, tribal organization, and religion.

The policy meant different things to different people: some Whites saw it as 'civilizing' native people; others saw it as a way to gain native land for White settlers as farming would require less land for the Indigenous people. Even the Cherokee weren't united about the meaning of the policy as some wanted to adopt aspects of the White culture and therefore gain respect.

An example of The New Testament translated into Cherokee after their written language was devised by Sequoya. It was thanks to his genius that the Cherokee were able for the first time to keep records in their own language.

The 1830 Indian Removal Act was one of the most horrific acts perpetrated by the US government. More than 16,000 Cherokee were deported from their homelands in four Southern states and relocated to Indian Territory or what is now Oklahoma. That forced relocation was called the Trail of Tears as it resulted in thousands perishing.

Because the Cherokee community of Qualla Town had separated from the Cherokee Nation in 1820, they were not legally required to emigrate on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma in 1838. Their white patron had received state and federal guarantees for the Qualla Town Cherokees' right to remain in their ancient homeland. 

I wasn't surprised to learn that the US Army still threatened the people of Qualla Town in 1838 when they searched for fugitives from the Cherokee Nation and forced the leader to help the Army find their own kinspeople who were hiding in the mountains. The troops were led on wild goose chases through the Smoky Mountains, far from the hiding places.

After the Army withdrew from eastern North Carolina in November of 1838, hundreds of Cherokee came from their mountain hideouts to join their relatives and friends at Qualla Town. They formed the nucleus of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.

This Cherokee printing press was used during the 1870s and 1880s  and was similar to the one used when the nation's first bilingual newspaper, The Cherokee Phoenix, made its debut.

The Chamber of Dissenting Voices statue represented three faces of the Cherokee and the different paths they took because of the forced removal policies. One represented the Oconalfutee Citizen Indians who had taken advantage of a treaty clause to separate from the Cherokee Nation and live on private reservations on ceded land. 

Though the majority of the Cherokee wanted to remain in their homeland and fought with every legal means at their disposal, their efforts failed and they were forcibly removed to what is now Oklahoma. Their westward journey came to be known as the Trail of Tears and was depicted by the image of John Ross, a Cherokee chief.

Another facet represented the Treaty Party led by Major Ridge, his son, and nephew who signed the Treaty of Echota which ceded their eastern homeland for five million dollars and western land. Because the majority of the Cherokee Nation thought they were traitors to giving up their birthright, they were executed. I thought the three-sided sculpture was a brilliant way to graphically display the horrors of the removal from different perspectives.

I'll say that it's because I was raised in the Canadian school system that I was totally ignorant of the Five Civilized Tribes, the major tribes of the Southeast that were removed from their homelands and transplanted in the West. The tribes were the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, the Creeks, the Seminoles, and the Cherokees. Even though they were considered to be mostly receptive to the Civilization Policy, had adopted agriculture as opposed to hunting, spoke English, sent their children to White schools, had written laws and their own government, they were still forcibly removed. 

The paintings were of leaders of the Five Tribes.

It was horrific to learn of the huge population losses suffered by the tribes during the removal: the Choctaws lost 15 percent of their people; the Creeks and Seminoles lost half of their total population; the generally accepted number of deaths for the Cherokee people ranged from 4-8 thousand people.

In1987 the US Congress established the Trail of Tears Historic Trail to commemorate the tragic removal of thousands of Cherokees to Oklahoma. The trail consists of both a land and water route which are administered by the National Park Service. Perhaps someday Steven and I can explore part of the land trail as it's not something we know anything about. 

The museum had a huge and quite riveting mask collection. One person remarked that people wearing the mask could almost feel the transformation; it was as if they were 'one with the mask.

These clan masks were a 20-century phenomenon that had been commissioned by an Indigenous Council to hang in the council house and made for tourists.

The museum took great pride understandably in displaying these sacred masks that had been repatriated from the Seneca Nation in New York state to the Eastern Band of the Cherokee. What was missing for me was the critical explanation as to how the Seneca Indigenous people had come to have the masks in the first place. 

A Cherokee wrote about how essential it was that young people of his nation learn how to make masks so that the culture will survive. Neither of us had been in a museum that so perfectly displayed the Indigenous perspective of one group's culture and history. I wish a visit to the museum were required for all those living in this country to gain a better understanding and appreciation of the Cherokee. 

Next post: Some civil rights sights in Montgomery, Alabama.

Posted on July 18th, 2021, from Atlanta, Georgia, just two days away from our long-awaited beach time in Gulf Shores, Alabama. It will have taken us over five weeks and close to seven thousand miles of driving as we took the most circuitous route possible! I hope you and your loved ones are healthy even as the Delta variant is gaining ground on the pandemic.