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Native American culture
Thesis on cherokee indians
Native American culture
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The word Cherokee comes from a Creek word "Chelokee" meaning "people of a different speech." In their own language the Cherokee called themselves the Aniyunwiya or "principal people" or the Keetoowah, "people of Kituhwa." The Cherokee are perhaps one of the most interesting of Native American Groups. Their life and culture are closely intertwined with early American settlers and the history of our own nation’s struggle for freedom. In the interest of promoting tolerance and peace, and with regard to the United States government’s handling of Native affairs, their story is one that is painful, stoic, and must not be forgotten. The Cherokee people were a large and powerful tribe. The Cherokees' Macro-Siouan- Iroquoian language and their migration legends demonstrate that the tribe originated to the north of their traditional Southeastern homelands. Linguists believe that the Cherokee migrated from the Great Lakes area to the Southeast over three thousand years ago. The Cherokee language is a branch of the Iroquoian language family, related to Cayuga, Seneca, Onondega, Wyandot-Huron, Tuscarora, Oneida and Mohawk. Original locations of the Cherokee were the southern Appalachian Mountains, including western North and South Carolina, northern Georgia and Alabama, southwest Virginia, and the Cumberland Basin of Tennessee, Kentucky, and northern Alabama. The Cherokee sometimes refer to themselves as Ani-Kituhwagi, "the people of Kituhwa". Kituhwa was the name of an ancient city, located near present Bryson City, NC, which was the center of the Cherokee Nation. Long before Columbus discovered the "New World" or Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto arrived, the Cherokee territory stretched from the Ohio River to the north, and southward into Georgia and Alabama. Their homelands extended over 135,000 square miles. Cherokee villages had populations of about 350 to 600 persons. Before contact with Europeans, families built round, earth-covered homes for the winter. For the warmer summers they built larger, rectangular homes. The rectangular homes had upright poles forming a framework. The outer covering was bark, wood or woven siding coated with earth and clay. The Cherokee were primarily an agricultural people. They relied heavily on corn, beans, and squash, supplemented by hunting and the gathering of wil... ... middle of paper ... ...r near the North Carolina reservation. Cherokee tribal governments have fairly liberal membership standards compared to other tribes. Some population estimates exceed 370,000, which would make the Cherokee the largest Native American group in the United States It is amazing that through European epidemics, attempts to assimilate eradicate and remove, that any Cherokee are left today. Despite all they have endured and lost, Cherokee levels of education and living standard ranks among the highest of all Native American tribes. I am proud to be an American citizen. I am also especially proud that my Mother’s Great-Grandmother, a descendant of Trail of Tears survivors, was Cherokee. BIBLIOGRAPHY Thomas E. Mails, The Cherokee People: The Story of the Cherokees from Earliest Origins to Contemporary Times Merwyn S. Garbarino, Native American Heritage The Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians http://www.charweb.org/neighbors/na/cherokee.htm James Mooney, History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees Morris L. Wardell, A Political History of the Cherokee Nation 1838-1907 Collier, Peter. When Shall They Rest? The Cherokees' Long Struggle with America
The Choctaws thrived in the fertile sandy, red-clay soil, rolling hills, and dense forests, located in the Central Hills of the east-central region of Mississippi. The estimated population after early European contact was between 15,000 and 20,000 and was the second largest group of Native Americans in the Southeast (Blitz 1988:127).
In 1845, Ebenezer Carter Tracy published a book titled, Memoir of the Life of Jeremiah Evarts. Within this book is a statement from the Cherokee people from 1830 called, “Appeal of the Cherokee Nation.” In this statement, The Cherokee Indians refuse to move west of the Mississippi River. They made this refusal for two main reasons. The Indians believed that they had a right to remain in the lands of their ancestors and they also insisted that their chances of survival would be very low if they moved west. Their survivability would be impacted by their lack of knowledge of the new lands, and by the Indians that were already living in the western lands, and who would view the Cherokee as enemies.
The Cherokee lived along the eastern part of the Tennessee River thriving in the bottomlands from Virginia southward, and built their houses in villages, which were separated by daylong walks. Their houses were made of wood and stone, fields planted, nuts and berries gathered, game cured, and tobacco was smoked. The Cherokees predominantly relied upon hunting as their sole source of food, and lived peacefully with the Creek tribe, with whom they shared hunting grounds. Their hunting grounds extended from the Mississippi River to the Blue Ridge Mountains and from Central Georgia all the way north to Ohio River.
They made round objects by what was called the lost-wax method. These gold things were mostly used for decoration and for looks. Housing And Shelter One kind of house by the Cherokees were called teepees.
Thornton, Russell, Matthew C Snipp, and Nancy Breen. The Cherokees: A Population History Indians of the Southeast. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
Native American literature from the Southeastern United States is deeply rooted in the oral traditions of the various tribes that have historically called that region home. While the tribes most integrally associated with the Southeastern U.S. in the American popular mind--the FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole)--were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) from their ancestral territories in the American South, descendents of those tribes have created compelling literary works that have kept alive their tribal identities and histories by incorporating traditional themes and narrative elements. While reflecting profound awareness of the value of the Native American past, these literary works have also revealed knowing perspectives on the meaning of the modern world in the lives of contemporary Native Americans.
The Native Americans of the southeast live in a variety of environments. The environments range from the southern Appalachian Mountains, to the Mississippi River valley, to the Louisiana and Alabama swamps, and the Florida wetlands. These environments were bountiful with various species of plant and animal life, enabling the Native American peoples to flourish. “Most of the Native Americans adopted large-scale agriculture after 900 A.D, and some also developed large towns and highly centralized social and political structures.” In the first half of the 1600s Europeans encountered these native peoples. Both cultures encountered new plants, animals, and diseases. However, the Indians received more diseases compared to the few new diseases to the Europeans. The new diseases resulted in a massive loss of Native Americans, including the Southeast Indians which had never encountered the new diseases. Three of the main tribes in the southeast were the Cherokee and the Creek. They were part of a group of southeast tribes that were removed from their lands. These tribes later became known as “The Five Civilized Tribes because of their progress and achievements.”
The United States of American is a country that was previously inhabited before the European Anglo-Saxons came across that Atlantic Ocean. It was a nation of independent people, multiple tribes in many places both those who made one place their home year round and others who traveled with the seasons. In the middle of this big island laid a land that belonged to the Osage tribe, and what a mighty tribe it was and still is. In the 17th century the original Osage tribe separated from the Sioux their language almost extinct belongs to the Siouan family, few Osage still speak this native language. This tribe is federally recognized by the United States Government and the majority of the tribal members are located on the Osage Reservation in north-central Oklahoma, but members of this tribe are throughout North America.
The Iroquois Confederacy, an association of six linguistically related tribes in the northeastern woodlands, was a sophisticated society of some 5,500 people when the first white explorers encountered it at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The 1990 Census counted 49,038 Iroquois living in the United States, making them the country's eighth most populous Native American group. Although Iroquoian tribes own seven reservations in New York state and one in Wisconsin, the majority of the people live off the reservations. An additional 5,000 Iroquois reside in Canada, where there are two Iroquoian reservations. The people are not averse to adopting new technology when it is beneficial, but they want to maintain their own traditional identity.
The Cherokee lived in the present day United States of America hundreds of years before its occupation by the Europeans. History proclaims that members of this community migrated from the Great Lakes and settled in the Southern Appalachians. When the Europeans started settling down in America, the Cherokee decided to co-exist peacefully with her foreign neighbors. The Cherokee lands consisted of Alabama, parts of Virginia, Kentucky, North and South Carolina and Georgia.
The Cherokees lived in the valleys of rivers that drained the southern Appalachians (Perdue, 1). The British first came into Cherokee country in 1700. They came for two major reasons: deerskins and war captives. They brought guns and ammunition, metal knives, hoes, hatchets, fabrics, kettles, rum, and trinkets. They took the Cherokee and made them slaves. The British built two forts to protect the Cherokees while they were fighting the enemies of the British. The Cherokees entered the French and Indian War on the side of the British (Perdue, 6). Attacks on Cherokees by white frontiersmen and duplicity by colonial officials caused the Cherokees to shift their allegiance to the French. During the war, the British destroyed many Cherokee towns.
2. “Cherokee Culture and History.” Native Americans: Cherokee History and Culture. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Mar. 2014. .
Being one of the few tribes on the Great Plains they had more than enough food and water, meaning that the Pawnee population would exceed 35,000 people. Eventually the Pawnee split up into 4 separate groups. The 4 groups were the Pitahauerat, meaning people downstream, the Chaui, meaning people in the middle, the Skidi, meaning wolf, the Kitkehahaki, meaning little muddy bottom village. The Chaui lived by the Arkansas River in Kansas and the Platte in Nebraska. The Pitahauerat lived in the same place as the Chaui. The Skidi spread out across the northern prairie of Nebraska with their settlements on the northern part of the Loup River. The Kitkehahaki settled in Nebraska at the Loup River. These 4 groups eventually had to come together because the copious amounts of the food and water attracted more tribes.
Unconcerned about the legitimacy of their actions, European colonisers took lands unjustifiably from indigenous people and put original inhabitants who had lived on the land for centuries in misery. The United States also shared similarities in dealing with native people like its distant friends in Europe. Besides the cession of vast lands, the federal government of the United States showed no pity, nor repentance for the poor Cherokee people. Theda Perdue, the author of “Cherokee Women and Trail of Tears,” unfolds the scroll of history of Cherokee nation’s resistance against the United States by analyzing the character of women in the society, criticizes that American government traumatized Cherokee nation and devastated the social order of
The Cherokee Indians thrived for thousand of years in the southern part of the continent we now call the United States. They learned how to farm the land, hunt, and fish. They were a peaceful, self-sufficient people when the settlers came. With the arrival of the new inhabitants, the Cherokees soon taught them how to farm, hunt, and fish. “By the 1820s, many Cherokees had adopted some of the cultural patterns of the white settlers as well” (National Park Service, n.d.). In 1827, two leaders of the Cherokee nation devised a constitution that was based primarily on the American Constitution. “Even as Major Ridge and John Ross were planning for the future of New Echota and an educated, well-governed tribe, the state of Georgia increased its pressure on the federal government to release Cherokee lands for white settlement” (National Park Service, n.d.). Once gold was discovered in Georgia, the white settlers could not resist owning the land for themselves at any cost.