“THE CHEROKEE”
This report will examine the interaction and effects of the European culture clashing with the Native American culture when these new people [Europeans] came to a land and decided to take what they thought was theirs. Discussed will be who these people were and are, their way of life, and how they lived then and now. This paper will explain the “religious bigotry, cultural bias, and materialistic view” (Perdue and Porter 7) the Europeans had that conflicted with the naturalistic and simple view these people called The Cherokee had.
The Cherokee called themselves “Ani’-Yun’wiya” translated as “Principle People.” (Perdue 13) Their native language was Iroquoian.
Cherokee’s were a very naturalistic people. The reason they called themselves the “Principle People” cause they believed they were the ones who kept balance and harmony in nature, human and otherwise. “Cherokee religion centered on sustaining harmony.” Because of the strong conviction in balance and harmony, “they tried not to exploit nature.” They believed that if they abused nature in any way this would bring “disease and drought” and other misfortunes to the tribe. (Perdue 25) The reason they believed it was their duty to maintain balance is because they thought their “homeland was the center of the world.” (Perdue 13)
Their home was made in the southern Appalachian Mountains of “western North and South Carolina, northern Georgia and Alabama, southwest Virginia and the Cumberland Basin of Tennessee, Kentucky, and northern Alabama.” (Sultzman 1) There homes were usually located near rivers and communities were usually large. Every village had council houses where they went to “socialize, make political decisions, and conduct religious ceremonies.” This Plaza was located in the center of the village and was mounted on an “earthen mound.” Located around the Plaza was the private housing. These houses were large for the reason they held “several generations” this is why there homes also “consisted of several buildings.” (Perdue 15)
During the summer months they “lived in large, rectangular, clapboard houses” and in the winter they “moved into their asi (winter houses), which were small, round, wattle-and-daub structures.” (Perdue 15) This winter dwelling had no windows and had a “hearth” to keep w...
... middle of paper ...
...erokee because of the “covetous” of the land by Europeans led to many things most of all their “removal” from the land so Europeans could occupy it and build colonies. The cruel treatment of the Indians during this time was sanctified because the Cherokee were not “Christians.” (Perdue 33) In “May 1838” (Sultzman 10) Soldiers forcibly started removing the Native Americans from their land towards Oklahoma, which the trail received the name the Trail of Tears.
Many are now on reservations and still try to incorporate the old ways with the ways acquired through the centuries. They have had a long progression through life and a cruel one at that, but they have kept their spirit and respect for mother earth and endured many conflicts such as disease, removal, torture, slavery, and being misunderstood because of our prejudices.
Work Cited
Perdue, Theda. Indians of North America The Cherokee. Ed. Frank W. Porter III. New
York. Chelsea House, 1989.
Sultzman, Lee. “Cherokee History.” 28 February 1996. 19 September 2002.
http://www.tolatsga.org/Cherokee1.html
The Native American’s way of living was different from the Europeans. They believed that man is ruled by respect and reverence for nature and that nature is an ancestor or relative. The Native American’s strongly belie...
The Cherokees were very civilized in dealing with the trails of removal. These people endured more than any other group of people throughout history. They played within the rules in their struggle. They did not want to start a war with the Americans. The Cherokees resisted removal and took it to court. Despite all of their tries to keep their land, they were removed.
The Apache and Cherokee Indians, at face value, may seem as different as Native American tribes can be. They both had radically different methods of dealing with colonists and settlers in their territories, were located on opposite sides of the continent, and had vastly different ways of running their societies. Despite their differences, they were also alike in many ways, and among these likenesses was the idea of reciprocity, a chief similarity that the two groups shared.
Prior to 1830 the Cherokee people in the Southern states were land and business owners, many owned plantations and kept slaves to work the land, others were hunters and fishermen who ran businesses and blended in well with their white neighbors, but after Andrew Jackson took office as President, the government adopted a strict policy of Indian removal, which Jackson aggressively pursued by eliminating native American land titles and relocating American Indians west of the Mississippi. That same year, Congress passed the Indian R...
People have been living in America for countless years, even before Europeans had discovered and populated it. These people, named Native Americans or American Indians, have a unique and singular culture and lifestyle unlike any other. Native Americans were divided into several groups or tribes. Each one tribe developed an own language, housing, clothing, and other cultural aspects. As we take a look into their society’s customs we can learn additional information about the lives of these indigenous people of the United States.
One of the greatest injustices of American history included, starvation, illness, and death. These hardships were undeservingly forced upon an innocent group of people – the Native Americans. One may think that the Trail of Tears was only a simple journey the Indians made to discover new frontiers. This is not the case. The Trail of Tears was the result of the white man’s selfishness, causing Indians to lose their homes and belongings. The act was full of unfair treatment, cruelty, and heartlessness. This tragic event took place in the nineteenth century, and was mostly initiated by President Andrew Jackson. In 1814, Jackson proposed an idea for a new act called the Indian Removal Act. (pbs) This act was not widely accepted throughout America, but was initiated because of some Americans wanting more land and gold – resources owned by Native Americans. The Trail of Tears caused much controversy and confusion, and many tears and heartache followed along the way.
Duane Champagne in Social Change and Cultural Continuity Among Native Nations explains that there has never been one definitive world view that comprises any one Native American culture, as there is no such thing as one “Native community” (2007:10). However, there are certain commonalities in the ways of seeing and experiencing the world that many Native communities and their religions seem to share.
usually built their homes on a river or stream valley and were scattered to take
The Cherokees would not have been able to survive on their own due to their outdated way of life. “You have lived by hunting the deer and buffalo – all these have been driven westward; you have sold out on the seaboard and moved westwardly in pursuit of them. As they became scare there, your food has failed you; you have been a part of every year without food, except the root and other unwholesome things you could find in the forest.” Deer and buffalo were the Cherokee’s main source of food and they had become scare due to the fact that the Cherokee had hunted fifty thousand deer annually. Deer population plummeted because of the Cherokee’s reliance on European goods with which they traded deerskin for. There was one good that the Europeans had that negatively affected the Cherokees, and that was alcohol. “Frequent wars, too, and the abuse of spirituous liquors, have assisted in lessening your numbers.” Alcohol was consumed in huge quantities by the Cherokee which cause them to fall into drunken stupors which c...
The tragedy of the Cherokee nation has haunted the legacy of Andrew Jackson"'"s Presidency. The events that transpired after the implementation of his Indian policy are indeed heinous and continually pose questions of morality for all generations. Ancient Native American tribes were forced from their ancestral homes in an effort to increase the aggressive expansion of white settlers during the early years of the United States. The most notable removal came after the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The Cherokee, whose journey was known as the '"'Trail of Tears'"', and the four other civilized tribes, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole, were forced to emigrate to lands west of the Mississippi River, to what is now day Oklahoma, against their will. During the journey westward, over 60,000 Indians were forced from their homelands. Approximately 4000 Cherokee Indians perished during the journey due to famine, disease, and negligence. The Cherokees to traveled a vast distance under force during the arduous winter of 1838-1839.# This is one of the saddest events in American history, yet we must not forget this tragedy.
Each village had a town square at its center with seats where spectators could sit.The town square was used for ceremonies and games. Each village had a circular town house with clay walls and a cone shaped bark roof about 25 feet high. This was a ceremonial lodge and was also used for shelter for the homeless. Some town houses were smaller with a slanted bark roof only about 10 feet high. The most common house had a slanted bark roof with the roof about 7 feet high these were used for individual families, it held about, four to five people in it.. Each family had a summer and winter house both were packed with mud. The summer house was often used as a guest house for when visitors came to visit. They also owned their own granary which was half open and they also had a warehouse which was open on all four sides similar to a chickee.
Before there was a United States of America, there were tribes of Native Americans living off the land. In the southeastern part of the country, the largest group of Native Americans were the Cherokee people (Boulware, 2009). Cherokees are networked through vast kinship lines that separates them from other tribes in the region (Boulware, 2009). They once occupied a territory that ran throughout the Appalachian Mountains (Boulware, 2009). Cherokees spoke a common language known as Iroquoian, different from the surrounding tribes (Boulware, 2009).
Historian Richard White put it the best when he said ““The Cherokee are probably the most tragic instance of what could have succeeded in American Indian policy and didn’t. All these things that Americans would proudly see as the hallmarks of civilization are going to the west by Indian people. They do everything they were asked to do except one thing. What the Cherokees ultimately are, they may be Christian, they may be literate, they may have a government like ours, but ultimately they are Indian. And in the end, being Indian is what kills
The federal government proceeded to find a way around this decision and had three minor Cherokee chief’s sign the “Treaty of New Echota” in 1835 giving the Cherokee lands to the government for 5.6 million dollars and free passage west. Congress got the treaty ratified by only one vote. Members of their tribes murdered all three chiefs who took part in the signing of the treaty. After this event there was not much the Cherokee’s could do and were forcibly moved west on what they called and are known today as the ‘Trail of Tears,’ which became a constitutional crisis in our history. In this instance the lack of cooperation between the branches of the government was the downfall for the Cherokee nation. The way the Cherokee’s were forced west caused losses of up to twenty percent of the nation. This figure is only a guess and scholar’s think it was more a third of the nation was lost. The ‘Trail of Tears’ was also a morale issue in the United States, later having an impact on our history the way other Native American races in general are treated in the future.
2. “Cherokee Culture and History.” Native Americans: Cherokee History and Culture. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Mar. 2014. .