A Cherokee Encyclopedia
Robert J. Conley
ISBN for this digital edition: 978-0-8263-3953-9
2007 by the University of New Mexico Press
All rights reserved. Published 2007
Printed in the United States of America
11 10 09 08 07 1 2 3 4 5
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE PRINTED EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Conley, Robert J.
A Cherokee encyclopedia / Robert J. Conley.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8263-3951-5 (CLOTH: ALK. PAPER)
1. Cherokee IndiansEncyclopedias. I. Title.
E99.C5C694 2007
970.00497003dc22
2007038318
To the
memory of
Talmadge
Preface
Cherokee history has been marked by a number of migrations that have resulted in, among other things, the formation of different tribes from the same original people. For instance, little is known of a legendary migration led by Dangerous Man. His people are said to have migrated to the Rocky Mountains. They may be the original Mexican Cherokees, but that is conjecture. The first Cherokee group to be recognized by the U.S. government as a separate tribe from the Cherokee Nation was made up of the followers of Bowles, who left the old Cherokee country in 1794 and settled in Missouri for a time. The great earthquake of 1811 drove them out of Missouri, and, upon reaching Arkansas, they became known as the Western Cherokee Nation. Their existence as a separate Cherokee nation ended following the Trail of Tears. But some of them, including Bowles himself, had in the meantime gone to Texas, where both the Mexican government and the revolutionary government of Texas recognized them as the Texas Cherokees. These Cherokees were driven out of Texas in 1839 and dispersed under the Texas administration of Mirabeau B. Lamar. During the U.S. Civil War, Stand Watie proclaimed a Confederate Cherokee Nation. It ceased to exist, of course, with the end of the Civil War. When the majority of Cherokees, along with their government, the Cherokee Nation, were forcibly removed into what is now Oklahoma in 1838, a number of people managed to stay behind in the Southeast. Their descendants became known as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Finally, during the period of Cherokee Nation dormancy from 1907 until 1973, a group of full-blood Cherokees made application under the Oklahoma Indian General Welfare Act in 1936 and formed the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma. Of all of these Cherokee nations, only three remain: the Cherokee Nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokees, and the United Keetoowah Band. In addition, there are people of Cherokee descent who cannot become affiliated with any of the three. This encyclopedia is intended to be a quick reference for many of the places, things, and people who are connected to these groups.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks are owed to the following individuals for their help in the preparation of this encyclopedia. Luther Wilson, director of the University of New Mexico Press, supported this project from the beginning; it would never have been done without him. Cheryl Glass, Travis Snell, Dan Littlefield, Dan Agent, David Fitzgerald, and many Cherokees and their family members very graciously provided me with information and photographs for their entries. There are too many to name here. Annie Barva did a meticulous and damn near perfect job of copyediting a difficult text. And finally, as always, my wife, Evelyn, has watched over my shoulder to keep me honest.
Introduction
Who knows how long the Cherokees have existed as a distinct people? Tales from the oral tradition vary as to the Cherokees origins. One tale has them coming from an island off the coast of South America and migrating north, presumably all the way to the Great Lakes area, and then, following wars with other Iroquoian-speaking peoples, migrating south again until they eventually settled in the area that we now know as the Old South. Another tale has them coming in from the far north through a land of ice and long nights. Of course, there are still those who would have all American Indians coming from Asia across a Bering Strait land bridge. Whatever the truth of their origins, once the Cherokees had been in the Old South long enough, they made it their own, for there is also a tale from the oral tradition, recorded by James Mooney, that tells of the creation of the Smokey Mountains and the origins of life there.
Mooney also recorded a tale that he called The Massacre of the Ani-Kutani, which tells of a powerful priesthood that once existed among the Cherokees and of its eventual overthrow by popular uprising. The tale ends by saying the Cherokees never again allowed a central government to develop among them. At the time the first Europeans encountered the Cherokees in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they found them living in autonomous towns, each with its own government. These townsabout two hundred of them, scattered over an area that today is divided into the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginiawere held together only by a common culture, a common language, and clans. There was nothing like a central government.
The importance of the clan system in this scheme cannot be overemphasized. Cherokees have seven matrilineal clans. Descent was traced through the female line. Women owned their homes and their gardens. Children belonged to their mothers clans. Most of what we would call law today was clan business. All seven clans were represented in each town, so if any Cherokee were to travel far in Cherokee country to a town he had never previously visited, he would find clan relatives living there.
The town government seems to have been made up of a war chief and a peace chief, each chief having his own advisory council. The simplified explanation of this system has it that the peace chief presided in times of peace and the war chief in times of war. In actuality, the peace chief was likely in charge of what we would call the internal powers of government and the war chief of the external powers. In other words, the peace chief was concerned with local matters including ceremonies, local disputes, and daily life. The war chief was responsible not only for war-related matters, but also for any dealings with people outside of the towntrade, alliances, disputes of any kind, and so on.
We know that the women played an important behind-the-scenes role in town government, but we do not know just exactly how that worked. It may have been as formal as a female mirror image of the perceived government by men. In other words, there may have been female advisors to the chiefs and female advisory councils. Or the relationship may have been less formal than that. The only thing we know for certain is that a woman known variously as the Beloved Woman, War Woman, and Pretty Woman had the power of life or death over captives. It is probable that she had other powers as well.
