Museographs: The Cherokee, Ani'-Yun'wiya

Caron Caswell Lazar

Description

Grounded in the maintenance of balance and the pursuit of peace, the Cherokee Nation has always had a difficult task. In The Cherokee accompany these Principle People on their quest – from the first 1,000 years of harmony preceding conflict with DeSoto in 1540 to the present-day resurgence of tribal unity.

The Cherokee's pre-contact world was peaceful and often unrecognized or misrepresented by American history books. It encompassed a deep reverence for nature and commitment to equality between men and women that acknowledged certain strengths and weaknesses of the sexes, but was devoid of shame. The systems of war, religion, and justice encouraged prudent thought and action and frowned upon carelessness and waste.

The approach of whites threw a wrench into their peaceful balance and forced the Cherokee into a series of never-ending land disputes, a battery of inhumane and unjust treatment, and a process of decision-making that would profoundly impact the next several hundred years of their history.

After undergoing a long period of suffering culminating in The Trail of Tears of 1839, certain Cherokee, known as 'the Progressives,' made a conscious decision to embrace white culture. These Cherokee were able to remain in the East while most of their brethren were marched West to the wastelands of Oklahoma. In the short term, this sparked a period of achievement called the Renaissance, where the Eastern Cherokee attained literacy, saw economic prosperity, clung to a portion of their ancestral lands, and forged a much needed strength and nationalism.

In the long term the choice would show them to be an exceedingly adaptable and flexible union. Faced with complete tribal bifurcation at the hands of "the Traditionalists" who opposed the decision, and with elimination due to removal and disease, the Cherokee persevered. Empowered by pride and fueled with a desire to restore harmony again, they regrouped and fought for the signing at Red Clay. It is here that a common Cherokee culture was reinstated and harmony and balance restored – at least for now.

Sujets

• Histoire
• United States
• History

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 02 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456617097
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

MUSEOGRAPHS
 
The Cherokee:
Ani’–Yun’wiya
 
by
Carôn Caswell Lazar

Copyright 2013 Carôn Caswell Lazar,
All rights reserved.
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1709-7
 
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
 
The Museographs monographs are pub lications of The Lazar Group, Incorporated
 
Museographs The Ch erokee, Ani’–Yun’wiya Copyrigh t 1993 Carôn Caswell Lazar
All rights reserved
No reproductions of this newsletter, or its attending materials, in whole or in part or in any form may be made without written authorization of the copyright owner.
 
Museographs Titles:
 
Japanese Satsuma Pottery
Contemporary African-American Folk Art
Shaker Design
Mexican Painting of the 19th & 20th Centuries
The Sioux
Appalachian Handicrafts
The Cherokee, Ani’–Yun’wiya
The Art of Islam: A Survey
The Old City of Jerusalem
Illuminated Manuscripts
Mexican Folk Art
Kanien’kehaka
Art, Myth, Legend and Story
The Art of the Celts
The Cherokee: Ani’–Yun’wiya

Contemporary Booger Masks
Courtesy Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual
Photo by Robert Amberg
 
 
The Principle People
 
The Cherokees called themselves Ani’–Yun’wiya , the Principle People. Their traditional home is the area of the United States today called southern Appalachia and was roughly bounded on the west by the Little Tennessee River; to the north by the state of Kentucky east of the Little Tennessee and the western edge of West Virginia; to the east by the North Carolina highlands and western South Carolina; and to the south by the northern portions of both Georgia and Alabama. This had been their home for at least a thousand years before the first Europeans, in the deSoto expedition of 1540, reached their villages.
 
Unlike the tribes of the northern plains and others, the Cherokee were not a nomadic people. They lived in villages that sometimes stretched for miles along riverbanks. They particularly favored settling at the fork of two rivers where a smaller, quieter river flow joined a larger rushing river. In this way they kept their cooking and drinking water separate from the water used for cleaning and washing.
 
A Cherokee village included a variety of architecture. Each village had a council house (or town house) and a communal plaza where villagers socialized, gathered to make political decisions and conducted religious ceremonies. The town house was a large circular building constructed of wattle (interwoven saplings) and then covered with daub (a plaster like substance made from mud). Sometimes this building sat upon a mound.
 
The practice of constructing mounds in the villages originated while the Cherokee were still primarily gathering food over long distances. During this time the men might be off hunting deer several mountain ranges away and the women also traveled far from the village to gather staples like greens, berries, nuts and persimmons. While the working adults were away only the elderly and very young were left in the village. During floods, because of the settlements’ proximity to the rivers, many young children were carried off in rushing, rising waters. To avoid this ongoing tragedy the tribe built platform mounds of large rocks, gravel, sand and trash as a place for the young and infirm to climb on during high-water flooding. These mounds eventually became gathering places, representative high points, upon which town houses were built. They might also eventually act as burial places.
 
The council house opened onto a plaza with covered sheds where villagers could sit in warm weather during public events. Beyond this public area were the individual Cherokee homes. Cherokee households were large, often made up of several generations. Consequently, a Cherokee homestead consisted of several buildings. In warm weather they lived in large rectangular, clapboard houses. In the winter they moved into their asi (winter houses). These were small, round wattle-and-daub structures shaped somewhat like a tipi with a small opening at the top for smoke to escape. A Cherokee household also typically had storage buildings and cribs.
 
At some point the women began row farming as an act of efficiency. This not only ensured a constant supply of food but also cut down considerably on the time and physical energy formerly spent foraging far from home. Staple crops included corn, beans (grown together so in order for the nitrogen produced by the beans to naturally fertilize the corn), squash, sunflowers and pumpkins, among others. Although men might help in these efforts the primary responsibility for agriculture fell to the women. When the corn was edible, the women presented it to the village in the most important ceremony of the year, the Green Corn Ceremony .
 
In addition to the responsibility of growing and gathering the food, women were also responsible for preparing the food, child rearing (the Cherokee were extremely tolerant and lenient with their children, never hitting them. Parents shamed and teased naughty children into good behavior, believing that humiliation was enough punishment to secure good behavior in their offspring). They also assumed the responsibility of furnishing the home.
 
While the women ran the home, the men were responsible for providing meat for their families. Until sustained contact with whites the Cherokee did not keep domesticated animals, and so all meat was wild game and fish. Deer, bear and turkey were the staples — but deer was the most important game. The men also crafted all of their own weapons including arrows, bows, traps, spears, blowguns and darts, hooks and nets. To catch fish they even used organic poisons, such as ground horse chestnuts that were added to water that had been dammed up. This poison attacked the central nervous system of the fish, paralyzing them, and they floated to the top of the water where they were easily harvested. When the dam was opened, fresh water diluted the poison, the unharvested fish then recovered and swam away. The poison had no effect on the people who later ate the fish. During the winter months hunting parties would often be gone for months at a time in search of game, travelling as far west as the Mississippi River and perhaps beyond.
 
When the men were not hunting they honed their speed, agility and strength for those long hunts by playing games. They had bow and arrow contests, hurled sticks at a rolling disk and played stickball. The Indian version of stickball was similar to today’s lacrosse. A team sport, the game was called the little brother to war . Preparations for the game included rituals that also preceded real wars, such as fasting and scratching the skin. Because everything the Cherokee had he or she made, much of their life revolved around the production of arts and crafts.
 
The Cherokees were both matrilineal and matrilocal. In other words, they traced their descent through the women in their society as opposed to both men and women as those of European lineage do. And, they lived in the mother’s household.
 
Under the Cherokee matrilineal kinship system, children were not considered related to their fathers by blood. Although they loved and respected their fathers, it was to their uncle — their mother’s brother — they owed their greatest respect. Because of this system Cherokee women had enormous power and influence in Cherokee society.
 
Under traditional Cherokee government, women, as well as men, freely voiced their opinions. Villagers debated issues until they reached Consensus on any given issue. This independent democratic system was used in each individual Cherokee settlement, and it was not until the eighteenth century that there was a principle chief or national council.
 
Historically it was not a government: that unified the Cherokee people, but rather a common language (although there were always three or four dialects), the kinship system, shared beliefs that made the Cherokees one people.
 
The Cherokees did not traditionally go to war to fight for territory or out of patriotism. The only reason they went to war was to avenge the death of Cherokees who had been killed by an enemy. They did this because they believed that the spirits of those killed could not go to the darkening land , the place where Cherokees lived after death, until and unless their kinsmen had taken revenge on their killers. The enemy could be members of other Native American tribes — or some other people. It was the province of the council to determine who was responsible and to rally support for a war party. Clan members of those fallen had a special responsibility to avenge their relatives’ death. However, the decision to take part in a war party was entirely up to the individual. If a warrior had bad dreams or a sense of uneasiness about the venture, he was encouraged to stay home. It was considered good sense to heed omens.
 
Because the sole purpose of a war party was vengeance, the Cherokee sought to take an equal number of lives from their enemy. Once they had taken the required number of lives they took no more and returned home. Eventually, the enemy would come to avenge their kinsmen. Thus war was not a campaign to achieve a single goal — but an ongoing series of raids. War was never ending.
 
The Cherokee religion centered on sustaining harmony. So, vengeance was also important because they believed it was the Cherokees’ responsibility to keep the world in a state of equilibrium. When a Cherokee died the world was out of balance until vengeance was achieved. They believed if they did not maintain this balance, then drought, storm, disease and other disasters might occur. They be