Michelene E. Pesantubbee's When The Earth Shakes

679 Words2 Pages

In When the Earth Shakes: The Cherokee Prophecies of 1811-12 by Michelene E. Pesantubbee, Pesantubbee discusses the reasoning behind and the influences on different Cherokee prophecies between 1811 and 1812. In the time leading up to the War of 1812, many Native American tribes had similar prophecies that followed the same patterns and which were influenced by the same occurrences and traditions. However, the prophecies did not reflect the traditional Ghost Dance, but they did have elements of a series of three events that non-Cherokee people grouped into one movement including their apocalyptic stories which were influenced by Tecumseh and his Creek and Shawnee following. The traditional Ghost Dance of the Cherokee Indians has frequently …show more content…

However, it has been found that three specific patterns encompassed the prophecies. The first pattern can be seen through Charlie’s Vision- involving more than one person who helped to disperse the vision among the people, and the provider (God) “told” the people that he was unhappy that the Cherokee embraced aspects of white culture- making the Cherokee feel the need to return to their traditional ways. Then next pattern is prominently visible when observing “A Father’s Healing Vision”: a father dreamed that God was mad that the Cherokee sold their land to white settlers, so he made the father’s children sick. Then a man covered in tree foliage came to the father and told him the Cherokee needed to free the land of the white man, and only then everything would be better. The tree-man healed the children then left. Here, the dream contains aspects of sacred myths instead of Charlie’s which related to the-present problems. The last noticeable pattern is shown through apocalyptic prophecies. The apocalyptic prophecies began to pop up after a comet and a series of earthquakes in 1812. Most of the prophecies predicted a natural disaster that would wipe out the entire world except for a certain sacred place, “The theme that the world would be destroyed or whites and non-believers would die appeared in all of the accounts…” (Pesantubbee 310).

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