CITIZENSHIP

THE TRUE ORIGIN OF THE CHEROKEE AND THE PRE-HISTORY OF THE CHEROKEE COUNTRY

The Cherokee ain’t from around here. Well, the Iroquoian part of them aren’t, anyway.

Until the twentieth century, this was a given, as was the truth that the Cherokee did not exist as “the Cherokee”, a defined people under that name, until the English colonial period. Historians, ethnologists, anthropologists, and missionaries among them from the late eighteenth thru the end of the nineteenth centuries all noted this historical fact and remarked on the mixed origins of the Cherokee languages. It wasn’t until after the turn into the twentieth century that anyone of note seriously claimed that the Cherokee nation as such originated in the South and as a people were of ancient origin.

The Six Civilized Nations of the Old Southwest

The Five Civilized Nations of the (former) Indian Territory are the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole ethnically-cleansed from the Old Southwest (the modern American Southeast) to the west of the Mississippi River in the nineteenth century. They are so called because in the early decades of that century, they had adopted many features of white society and were therefore considered “civilized”.

As Booker T. Washington commented on American treatment of indigenous people, “No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion.” The group which went the furthest in that regard were the Cherokee, who not only invented their own system of writing but adopted a formal written constitution and two-house legislature in a three-branch government.

Back in the home in the Old Southwest itself, there were actually Six “Civilized Nations”, the sixth being the Catawba. The Catawba assimilated the most, took individual plots rather than remove, and thus were robbed of their lands by unscrupulous speculators and developers and all but extinguished as a distinct people by the early eighteenth century. Such was their situation that Andy Jackson cited their example as the reason for striking out a clause from the Treaty of New Echota allowing Cherokee to follow the same course.

Of these Six Civilized Tribes, the only one which existed in any form remotely resembling its structure at the time of English contact was the Chickasaw. The Spanish first encountered the Chickasaw on the De Soto expedition, dwelling in modern east central Mississippi just south of the Alabama, who subsequently lived around the head of the river named for them at the confluence of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers. As they moved northwest to their traditional home, the Chickasaw very likely absorbed the Quizquiz and other smaller groups.

The Choctaw sprang from a federation of three different peoples, two closely related (Eastern and Western divisions) and a third from elsewhere (Six Towns division) which originally spoke a much different language.

The Creek (or Muskogee) Confederacy began as a defensive alliance of towns descending from the old chiefdoms of the Mississippian era (900-1600 CE). It was founded by its four “mother towns”:  Abihka, Coosa, Coweta, and Tuckabatchee.  Abihka and Coosa were in the Upper Towns on the Coosa River. Tuckabatchee, the main settlement of the Middle Towns on the Tallapoosa River, was the seat of the Confederacy, but was originally made of “foreign-speaking” people from the north. Coweta was the chief settlement of the Lower Towns on the Flint and Chattahoochee Rivers. The Coosa, from the Coosawattee site in northern Murray County, Georgia, and frequent players in 16th century Spanish chronicles, later dwindled such that they merged with Abhika. The Lower Town of Cusseta (Kasihta) then stepped into its place as one of the mother towns.

The Seminole previously made up part of the Creek Confederacy but migrated to what was then East Florida after the French and Indian War when it became British territory. Though several tribes and bands contributed to its makeup, the two primary were the Oconee and the Chiaha.

The Catawba, as the English of the colonial period knew them, coalesced from the different Siouan-speaking tribes of the Carolinas. Although one of the major nations at the time of the Revolutionary War, their numbers greatly dropped due to disease and intermarriage and they were not removed as were the others, so they are not usually included as one of the so-called “Five Civilized Tribes”.

The Cherokee did not exist as a people until after the mid-seventeenth century. In fact, none of the other Iroquoian-speaking groups familiar to English colonists (Tuscarora, Meherrin, Nottoway) lived in the Southeast until the seventeenth century.

Indian confederacies

As complex as that may sound, it is, in fact, rather simplistic compared to the true situation, as some groups which became part of these confederations or coalitions retained their individual identity, as some do even today, like the Natchez and the Yuchi, both of which are represented among both the Cherokee and the Muscogee (Creek) Nations.

Confederacies of Indian nations and tribes were not unique to the South. Nearly all of what we think of today as the nations and tribes at the time of contact were really amalgamations or confederations of different peoples, such as the Huron, or Wendat. None were as explicitly organized as the League of the Iroquois, however.

Speaking of which, and this is totally off subject, I just recently learned that there is another Iroquois confederacy, the Seven Confederate Nations in Canada made up of former Iroquois League towns and allies who supported France during the French and Indian War. These Seven Confederate Nations are the Mohawk of Akwesasne, the Mohawk of Kahnawake, the Mohawk and Anishinaabeg (Nipissing and Algonkin) of Kanestake, the Abenaki of Odanak, the Abenaki of Wolinak, the Huron of Wendake, and the Onondaga of Oswegatchie.

It’s tempting to write these federations, confederacies, and alliances off as being provoked by wars over trade with Europeans, but in the North, they had already been at war for nearly a century before first contact. The League of the Iroquois dates back to the 16th century, and they were still getting some of the kinks worked out in the next century. The Powhatan Confederacy had only formed a generation or two before the English established Jamestown. The changing climate at the beginning of the Little Ice Age was undoubtedly a contributing factor.

Languages in the Southeast

In the South, there was some warfare, but not nearly as much, certainly not on the scale of that in the Great Lakes-St. Laurence Valley region. At least not in the 16th century; however, the wide diversity of languages in towns in proximity to each other as well as the broad dispersal of groups with linguistic similarity argue that the sort of warfare and displacement the French saw in the north may have already taken place earlier in the south.

In the interior of the Old Southwest, the dominant (though not exclusive) group of languages was the Muskogean. Muskogean languages divide into three main families: Northern, the Muskogee language itself and closely related dialects; Southern, the Hitchiti language and its variants; and Western, languages similar to Choctaw.

Cultural anthropology of the pre- and proto-historic era

I’m going to be throwing around some terms that may not be familiar to some readers, so I’m providing this quick and very simplistic guide.

Paleolithic era

In North America, this covered the period from 18,000-8000 BCE.

Archaic era

In North America, this covered the period from 8000-1000 BCE.

Woodland era

The Woodland era is divided into three periods: Early Woodland (1000 BCE- 1 CE), Middle Woodland (1-500 CE), and Late Woodland (500-1000).

Mound complexes during the Woodland period served strictly ceremonial purposes and were almost never inhabited. They were central to groups of hamlets and homesteads. Hunting, gathering, and small-scale horticulture fed inhabitants.

The greatest site of the entire Woodland era is the Pinson Mounds site in Madison County of West Tennessee. Dating from the Middle Woodland period (1-500 CE), the site was purely ceremonial, without permanent habitation. There are seventeen mounds and an earthen enclosure. Saul’s Mound, the central feature of the entire complex, appears to have been a platform mound more for ceremonial purposes than burial. It is the second highest aboriginal mound or pyramid in North America.

Mississippi era

Anthropologists divide this Mississippi era (700-1730) into three periods: Early Mississippian (900-1200), Classic Mississippian (1150-1450), and Late Mississippian (1450-1600), the latter including first contact with the Spanish conquistadors of La Florida. These dates are general; the Middle Mississippian Culture began around 700 CE, while the Plaquemine Mississippian Culture survived in classic form until 1730.

During the Mississippi era, the population grew exponentially largely due to advances in agriculture, especially the introduction of maize. Social structures became more complex and stratified. Villages became towns which were palisaded.

In the Early Mississippian period, burial mounds still existed but were less important. The newer, larger platform mounds, or pyramids, replaced them in importance and dominated each of the towns. At this stage, there was never more than one large platform mound per town. Burials were still done outside the bounds of the village.

In the Classic Mississippian period, platform mounds grew and housed not just a religious building but houses for the elite. Burials of the elite occurred within the large mounds or around the central plaza, and commoners were buried elsewhere in the village. Ceremonies and ritual objects became more elaborate, the powers of the priesthood grew.

In the Late Mississippian period, platform mounds became shorter and the only building atop them was a community building used for secular as well as religious purposes. Overall societal organization downshifted to a more (though not entirely) egalitarian mode.

Southeastern Ceremonial Complex

The hereditary elite came to dominate the commoners through a religion based largely on the agricultural cycle, centered around maize production. The high celebration of the year was the Green Corn Ceremony, or the Busk, which became so much a part of the culture of the tribes of the Old Southwest that it survived well into the nineteenth century past the adoption of white culture and Christian religion.

Besides the ceremonies and the mounds, a number of cult objects, statuary, decorative motifs, and jewelry such as gorgets were features of the cult.

Several motifs were shared across eastern North America, the three most prominent being the Birdman, Red Horn and his Sons, and the Great Serpent. The latter, in many different forms throughout the region, bears some resemblance to the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. Some of these motifs, particularly the last, continued well into historical times.

It was through this Southeastern Ceremonial Cult and trade that the Mississippian cultures influenced the peripheral regions around it. The accounts of the earliest French colonials in the Lower Mississippi Valley (what became Lower Louisiana) provide the best picture we have of this religious ceremonial complex and the society which produced it and which it in turn supported and upheld.

Culture regions of the Mississippian era

The Middle Mississippian Culture rose along the middle course of the Mississippi River covering southern Illinois, southern Indiana, Iowa, eastern Arkansas, West Tennessee and the Cumberland Basin in Middle Tennessee.

Cahokia with its numerous mounds site was the premier center of Mississippian culture. Its central mound was over one hundred feet tall, and its central plaza alone spread across sixty-four acres. Its core population was between ten and forty thousand, with numerous satellite towns and villages. Besides its over eighty mounds, it contained two Woodhenges with astronomical accuracy equal to that of Stonehenge in England.

Moundville near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was contemporary with Cahokia.

Angel and Kinkaid were later centers, as were Parkin and Nodena, which were even later and west of the Mississippi.

This culture region included the Middle Cumberland Basin and vicinity (sites like Mound Bottom, Castilian Springs, Old Town, Beasley Mounds, Boiling Springs, Averbuch, Noel Farm, Gordontown, etc., fifty in all), Chucalissa near Memphis, and the Shiloh Mounds, which almost rivaled Moundville in size.

The Caddoan Mississippian Culture lay in eastern Oklahoma, western Arkansas, northeastern Texas, and northwest Louisiana. Its premier center was the Spiro Mounds site.

The Plaquemine Mississippian Culture covered southeastern Arkansas, eastern Louisiana, and southwestern Mississippi. Its premier center was the Emerald Mound, the second tallest of the Misssissippian period. Its people later moved to the Fatherland Mound site, where the French knew them as the Natchez.

The Southern Appalachian Mississippian Culture spread across a broad area, taking in East Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, northern Florida, South Carolina, and central and western North Carolina.

Some of the major sites in the region include Ocmulgee and Lamar, but the largest site was the town at Etowah Mounds, the central of which is the third highest platform mound at sixty-three feet.  It was occupied in three phases: 950-1200, 1250-1375, 1475-1539.

Other major sites in the Southern Appalachian zone were Citico in Chattanooga, Hiwassee Island, Toqua on the Little Tennessee River, and Long-Island-on-the-Tennessee.

In addition, the Mississippian culture as a whole influenced, primarily through trade, several other culture regions on the northern periphery.

The Oneota Culture was in northern Illinois, western Michigan, and Wisconsin.

The Fort Ancient Culture lay along the central Ohio River taking in the adjacent areas of northern and northeastern Kentucky, southern Ohio, southwestern West Virginia, and southeastern Indiana.

The Monogahela Culture existed in southwestern Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, and a small area of eastern Ohio.

The Western Basin Culture covered the White River Basin of southern Indiana, northeast Indiana, northwest Ohio, and southwest Michigan.

The Appalachian Summit Culture was in Upper East Tennessee, western North Carolina, and Southwest Virginia.

Rise and fall of Mississippian paramount chiefdoms

In the Middle Mississippian Culture zone, Mississippian culture emerged around 700 CE, a couple of centuries before spilling over its periphery. Elsewhere, emergent cultures appeared from 900-1000 CE.

The high point of Mississippian culture and the peak of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex came during the Classic Mississippian period. During the same period came the beginning of its decline, largely due to stress from an overtaxed environment combined with a disastrous drought and the beginning of the Little Ice Age. The following are only the largest and more prominent examples, given to illustrate the waves of collapse.

In the early stage of the Mississippian era (1100-1200) in the southern Upper Tennessee Valley, the major centers politically and culturally were at Hiwassee Island, Sale Creek, Mouse Creek, and Upper Hampton in Rhea County, upstream from the mouth of the Hiwassee River.

In the Southern Appalachian Culture zone, Etowah’s first occupation collapsed completely in 1200, and the entire Etowah Valley remained vacant to fifty years. The related centers in what is now the Chickamauga Basin collapsed too, though their entire region did not become vacant.

In the Caddoan Culture zone, the chiefdom at Spiro fell next, its population dispersing around 1250 into several smaller but nearby settlements which used its grounds as a ceremonial center.

The Early Mississippian period of the Middle Cumberland Basin dissipated at about the same time as Spiro (1250), giving way to the Classic Mississippian period, which saw the peak of the era in the local zone.

In the Middle Mississippi Culture zone, Moundville and Shiloh followed suit with Spiro in 1300, becoming uninhabited sites used for ceremonial and political purposes, much the same as ceremonial centers had been during the Woodland era. In the southern Upper Tennessee Valley, the towns at the Hixon and Citico sites rose as the local powers, the latter probably becoming the most influential in all of East Tennessee. Hiwassee Island was repopulated, Citico grew even bigger, and the former inhabitants of the Hixon site recrossed the Tennessee River to establish the Dallas site where the town of Harrison used to be.

Cahokia’s collapse came a bit later then Spiro’s but also more suddenly and more completely. It began about 1300 and the core site was deserted within a few years. By 1350, the entire American Bottom lay vacant and remained so until the colonial period. It was known as the Vacant Quarter.

Back in the Southern Appalachian zone, the reoccupied (in 1250) Etowah peaked in 1325 then entered a period of warfare ending in its destruction by fire in 1375. After that, the site remained vacant for a century. When reinhabited, it was far short of its former glory, never obtaining the same prestige or power, and by the time De Soto came through, the Itawa people had not been living there for around two decades. One of the main beneficiaries of its demise as a regional power was a town established in the Coosawattee Valley around 1400 called Coosa.

Also around 1400, the Middle Cumberland Basin peoples abandoned that region as entirely at those of the American Bottom had done theirs previously, some heading east and southeast. This mass exodus included the settlements along the Duck and Elk Rivers. By 1450, their former lands joined the Vacant Quarter, remaining deserted until the Chillicothe and Kispokore bands of the Shawnee relocated there in the mid-1600’s.

Artifacts from the Middle Cumberland began to appear in the southern Upper Tennessee Valley at this time. The major town at the Dallas site was burned to the ground, and it and its vicinity deserted until the eighteenth century. At the same time, the towns of the Mouth Creek Phase (see below) first appeared in the lower Hiwassee Valley and vicinity.

The year 1450 marked the collapse, or at least final collapse, of some of the major chiefdoms and/or ceremonial sites in the overall Mississippian cultural region. The Kincaid and the Angel sites in southern Illinois and southwestern Indiana collapsed about this time, which also witnessed the end of ceremonial use of the sites at Moundville, Shiloh, and Spiro.

By 1475, the chiefdom Coosa had asserted itself into a semblance of the position of power and influence held previously by Etowah, though in more decentralized form.

For most of the Mississippian era, towns along the Savannah River dominated the region on either side. At the beginning of the 1500’s, however, the peoples living on its middle and lower courses deserted to the regions on either side. The main beneficiaries, or perhaps victims, of this dispersal were the Piedmont towns, primarily Cofitachequi in the east and Ocute in the west.

With this, the polity and relationships of the towns and their people as the Spanish encountered in the sixteenth century had fallen into place.

Cherokee Country at Spanish contact

There were no Cherokee in “Cherokee Country” at Spanish contact, of course, since there were no Cherokee anywhere at the time because they did not exist as a people. The area in which they later lived, the Appalachian Summit and the contiguous areas in the Carolina Piedmont and the Ridge and Valley region of East Tennessee, was inhabited mostly by Muskogean- speaking and some Eastern Siouan-speaking people who were demonstrably not Cherokee.

Like all Mississippians, the dominant political structure of the Muskogeans was the chiefdom, governed by an “orata” from the mound center, with satellite hamlets and individual homesteads. In many cases, these chiefdoms, in turn, paid homage to a paramount chiefdom, whose ruler was a mico. This was the typical structure of the Late Mississippian period. De Soto, De Luna, and Pardo encountered ten chiefdoms ruled by micos in our target area: Guale, Mocama, Orista, Escamacu, Cofitachequi, Guatari, Joara, Chiaha, Coosa, and Tascaluza.

Hernando de Soto ventured through the Carolinas, East Tennessee, North Georgia, and Northeast Alabama in 1540. Tristan de Luna’s party visited North Georgia then Southeast Tennessee (specifically the Chattanooga area) from their colony on the Alabama River in 1560. Juan Pardo’s troops traveled through the Carolinas and East Tennessee in 1567 and1568 from the then capital of La Florida at Santa Elena on Parris Island, South Carolina.

The following is a brief sketch of the lay of the land as the Spanish encountered it in their entradas of the sixteenth century. Information from the chroniclers of the various entradas plus brief sketches of archaeology, demonstrates that there was simply no room for the Cherokee in Cherokee Country in the sixteenth century.  The Spanish chroniclers mention numerous towns, or tribes, whom their leaders encountered. More inland, in areas the Spanish brushed without entering, lay towns whose record is mostly archaeological.

One of the terms I’ll be using is “phase”, as in “Dallas Phase”. An

archaeological “phase” is the physical cultural complex within a defined region between two given points during a certain time period. It does not necessarily correspond to ethnic group or language.

The central feature of these, like all Mississippian phases, were seats of central power with large platform mounds, of which thirty-three existed in the Dallas Phase region and fifty in the Middle Cumberland Basin. Not all were simultaneous, of course, many of those close together were used sequentially and some sites were inhabited, abandoned, and reinhabited,

Coastal Plain at Spanish contact

Leaving Santa Elena, the Coastal Plain north of the Savannah River was dominated by two paramount chiefdoms: Orista (Edisto) and Escamacu. The towns subject to them included Ahoya, Witcheough, Wimbe, Toupa, Mayon, Stalame, Combahee, Kussah, and Ashepo. All of these are collectively referred to as the Cusabo, and they may have spoken forms of the Arawak languages of the Caribbean.

Across the Savannah, the Coastal Plain between the Savannah and the Timucua peoples in northern Florida fell under the paramount chiefdoms of Guale and Mocama, north and south of the Altamaha River respectively.

Carolina Piedmont at Spanish contact

Moving inland, you would first encounter Cofitachequi in the vicinity of modern Camden, South Carolina. Pardo knew the town as Canos; its people later became the Cusseta, or Kasihta, of the Creek Confederacy. At the time of De Soto’s expedition in 1540, Cofitachequi’s authority spread across most of South Carolina and a large part of North Carolina, held by a woman. In archaeological parlance, Cofitachequi and its people and environs make up the Mulberry Phase. Being that the Cofitachequians became the Cussetas, it’s safe to assume that most if not all within the Mulberry Phase spoke Eastern Muskogean languages.

Thirty miles due west of the western outskirts of Cofitachequi’s territory across the uninhabited stretch of the Savannah River Valley from its mid- course to its mouth lay the people whom De Soto encountered along the Oconee River known as Ocute before his entrada into Cofitachequi in 1540. Ocute and its environs made up what archaeologists call the Dyar Phase. Its descendants and successors were the Hitchiti, who spoke a Southern Muskogean language.

To the immediate north of Cofitachequi in the Piedmont region of North Carolina was the “province” of Chalaque, or Xalaque. In the Mobilian trade language which was the lingua franca of the Southeast, “Chalaque” signified speakers of a different language. De Soto’s recorders do not mention the name of the town here, but Pardo’s chroniclers called it Otari, while maps as late as the early eighteenth century refer to it by the first appellation.

We can glean the identity of these “speakers of a foreign language” from the name of their dominant town, Xualla, which Pardo’s records call Joara. Except for the “l” versus the “r”, the pronunciation is identical; one would surmise that De Soto’s informants were Muskogean-speaking while Pardo’s were Siouan-speaking. The people at this town were the same later known to the English as the Siouan-speaking Sara or Cheraw. Most Siouan- speaking groups in the area later coalesced as the Catawba. In De Soto’s time, “Xualla” was subject to Cofitachequi but in Pardo’s time “Joara” was independent and a paramount chiefdom. Joara was the center of what to archaeologists is the Burke Phase.

By Pardo’s later time, the eastern region north of Cofitachequi also formed a separate paramount chiefdom under the town of Guatari, whose mico in his time was a woman. This name is even more clearly that of a Siouan- speaking people, those later known to the English as the Wateree, which held on to the most of its Mississippian culture as late as 1670. Guatari dominated what archaeologists have named the Caraway Phase.

Remember that although so far every archaeological phase I have named has coincided with a mico’s territory that the two are not equivalent. One is a cultural region, the other is a political entity, and sometimes the boundaries of the two overlap, as we shall see.

The lesser towns of the Carolina Piedmont, north and south, included Guiomae, Ylasi, Sanapa, Unuguaqua, Vora, Yssa, Catapa (Catawba), Vehidi, Otari, Uraca, Achini, Ayo, Canosca, Tagaya Major, Tagaya Minor, Suhere, Suya, Uniaca, Ohebere, Aracuchi, Chiquini (a subject town of Guatari whose orata was a woman), Quinahaqui, Uchiri, Guaqiri, Tocae, Uastique, Enuque, Enxuete, Xeneca, Atuqui, Sarati, Ohebere, Autqui, Osuguen, Aubesan, Pundahaque, Guanbuca, Ustehuque, Ansuhet, Guararuquet, Jueca, Qunaha, Vastu, and Dudca.

Having gone further north before turning west, De Soto and Pardo both missed the Tugalo Phase at the uppermost reaches of the Savannah River, which in the sixteenth century included the Chauga, Tugalo, and Estatoe sites.

Further directly west of the Tugalo Phase, on the headwaters of the Chattahoochee River sat the Nacoochee Phase, its two main sites being Nacoochee and Eastwood. Beyond there to the west was deserted until the outskirts of the paramount chiefdom of Coosa.

Appalachian Summit at Spanish contact

On the opposite side of Xualla/Joara to the west sat the town of Cauchi, the most important in its immediate area though still in the orbit of its eastern neighbor. Different historians have tried to equate it with either of two towns down the line, but neither really stands. Cauchi was at the time the most important town in what to archaeologists is the Middle Qualla Phase. This was in the eastern Appalachian Summit area of western North Carolina.

What is most interesting is the names of several towns whose oratas came to meet with Pardo here, later used by the Cherokee after their arrival and coalescence: Neguase (Nequasse), Estate (Estatoe), Tacoru (Tugaloo), Utaca (Watauga), and Quetua (Kituwa). None of these can be translated into any of the three dialects of Cherokee, not unusual for Cherokee towns, such as Chickamauga, Chatanuga, Tellico, Chatuga, Echota, Tanase, Chilhowee, Citico, Tuskegee, and Hiwassee. The opposite case, towns having names deriving from Cherokee, was the exception rather than the rule.

In the mountains of northwestern North Carolina, past the concentric spheres of influence of Cauchi and Joara, lived the Chisca, as named by De Soto’s guides, whom Pardo’s chroniclers called the Uchee. Obviously, these are those who still call themselves Yuchi. Their territory spread into Upper East Tennessee and Southwestern Virginia, and was roughly coextensive with the Late Pisgah Phase. As for their language, the Yuchi are a linguistic isolate.

The towns of the Chisca/Uchee Pardo visited were Guasili and Canasoga in Upper East Tennessee (probably on the upper Nolichucky River). Two others were Guapere on the Watauga River, probably the same site as the later Watauga Old Fields, and Maniateque near Saltville, Virginia, both of which were destroyed by Spanish soldiers under Hernando Moyano in 1567. The latter has been demonstrated fairly conclusively by archaeology and by examination of historical record by Jim Glanville.

Ridge and Valley at Spanish first contact

Geographically, the first two locations in this section belong to the Appalachian Summit, but politically in the sixteenth century formed part of a Ridge and Valley based polity.

A fifth town of the Yuchi people was the only one subject to outside control: Tanasqui, at the confluence of the French Broad and Pigeon Rivers. Tanasqui at the time seemed to be subject to the chiefdom on its immediate south.

At Zimmerman’s Island near the modern Dandridge, Tennessee, on the French Broad lay the major town of Chiaha, then the dominant chiefdom in East Tennessee. The town was also called Olamico, and now lies beneath Douglas Lake. The people were later called the Chehaw. The people of Chiaha spoke a Southern Muskogean language mutually intelligible with Hitchiti and Oconee.

Most archaeologists and historians consider Chiaha’s subject town of Tanasqui the northernmost limits of the paramount chiefdom of Coosa. I completely disagree with that idea, however, given that the chief of Chiaha was a mico in his own right according to all the annalists.

Both De Soto and Pardo stayed at Chiaha. De Soto’s chroniclers mention no other towns in the vicinity, but Pardo met oratas from Cansoga, Utahaque, Anduque, Enjuete, Guannguaca, Tucahe, Guaruruquete, and Anxuete there. Five leagues due west of there, he met the oratas of Otape, Jasire, and Fumica at his camp in the open.

At Chiaha, we begin the Dallas Phase, to which archaeologists have assigned almost all of East and Southeastern Tennessee, at least up to now.

Here the Spanish saw their first palisaded towns due to hostilities with Chisca. Other archaeological townsites besides Zimmerman’s Island on the French Broad known to exist in the sixteenth century were Henderson 1, Fain Island, and Brakebill at its confluence with the Holston River. McMahan and Henderson 2 in the Forks-of-the-Pigeon district in the vicinity. Halfway between Brakebill and Coste on Bussell’s Island is another on Post Oak Island.

South of Chiaha in the Holston Valley, De Soto found the town of Coste (Coushatta) on Bussell’s Island at the mouth of the Little Tennessee River, later home to the Overhill Towns of the Cherokee. Its people spoke a Western Muskogean language closely related to Alabama, Choctaw, and Chickasaw.

From Coste, De Soto traveled upriver and encamped his expedition on the riverbank across from the town of Tali on McKee Island which formed part of the Toqua site just south of where the Great Indian Warpath between Mobile and Newfoundland forded the Little Tennessee.

Nearly thirty years later, Pardo came down the Little Tennessee from Chiaha through a rough pass through the mountains through Chalahume (Chilhowee) headed toward Coste, stopping for the night at Satapo (Citico). Another sixteenth century town site lay upriver from Chalahume at Talasee, through or past which Pardo had to traverse but never mentioned. Pardo turned went back to Chiaha via a much less arduous route to avoid an ambush.

De Soto, on the other hand, turned south at Tali headed toward Coosa along the Warriors Path, which bisected the Great Indian Warpath at Vonore, Tennessee, going north to the Ohio River and southwest to the Coosa Valley.

The next town De Soto and his troops encountered after their turn south was Tasqui, which from the accounts can only have been the Late Mississippian site at Great Tellico near modern Tellico Plains. Here the Trading Path (aka Unicoi Turnpike) branched off toward the mountains in the east and the piedmont beyond.

From Tasqui, the next stop was Tasquiqui, whose people become known to the English and French as the Tuskegee. The Tuskegee spoke a Western Muskogean language, so it is not unlikely that the other villages along the whole route from Coste to there did also. The town of Tasquiqui can only have been at the later Great Hiwassee, now the site of Savannah Farm near Delano, Tennessee.

Tasquiqui was the last town of the Dallas Phase on the road De Soto’s road to Coosa. De Soto’s chroniclers did not name it nor Tasqui, rather when Pardo stayed in Satapo contemplating the later aborted journey to Coosa, his informants named them.

Leaving Tasquiqui, De Soto arrived in Coosa two days later after staying the night at an unnamed village or town which was probably in the vicinity of Ellijay. Coosa was the most powerful town of its day, dominating the entire Coosawattee Valley, the upper Coosa Valley, and parts of Southeast Tennessee. Though it was at its northeast extremity, Coosa was the center of the culture archaeologists call the Barnett Phase, lying at what they call the Little Egypt site at Coosawattee, now under Carters Lake in northern Murray County, Georgia.

The rest of the towns of the Barnett Phase from northeast to southwest the large abandoned townsite of Talimuchasi at the Etowah Indian Mounds; Itaba (Itawa), at the Leak site; Ulibahali (Hotliwahali), at the Coosa Country Club site in Rome, Georgia; Apica (Abihka), at the King site; Onachiqui; Tuasi (Tawasa); and, finally, Talisi (Tallassee), near modern Childersburg, Alabama, on the border with the paramount chiefdom of Tazcaluza.

The towns in Coosa’s realm spoke dialects of Eastern Muskogean languages. The last two towns tenuously under Coosa (Tuasi and Talisi) belonged to what archaeologists call the Kymulga Phase, while that of Tazcalusa covered roughly the same area as the Moundville III Phase.

Returning back to Coste at the mouth of the Little Tennessee River, had De Soto headed west and travelled down the Tennessee River instead of turning south, he would have encountered once sizable towns on Huffin Island, then at De Armond below it, perhaps also at Thief’s Neck peninsula below there.

Beyond that collection of towns lay the group of settlements in the Hiwassee Valley and its vicinity known as the Mouse Creek Phase, which were

abandoned shortly before or shortly after De Soto’s entrada. Ledford Island in the Hiwassee River was the largest, and there were also towns on North Mouse Creek, South Mouse Creek, the Rymer site on the south bank at Charleston Landing, the Ocoee site on Ocoee River just above its confluence with the Hiwassee, the Sale Creek site on the Tennessee, and the Upper Hampton site just north of Euchee Old Fields at Rhea Springs.

The Great Indian Warpath forded the Hiwassee at Charleston, Tennessee, near the Rymer site, intersecting the Black Fox Trail, between Black Fox Springs (Murfreesboro) and the southwest tip of North Carolina, at the Calhoun, Tennessee.

The next group of towns in the Tennessee Valley we learn about from both archaeology and from the chronicles of De Luna’s 1560 expedition north from the newly-established colony of Santa Cruz on the Alabama River to the town of Coosa in Northwest Georgia. While he was there to secure food and supplies and more firmly establish the Coosa-Spain alliance, the mico of Coosa requested he and his men take part in an expedition to put down a revolt by one of his subject peoples.

From descriptions of the terrain of these people, the Napochi, and the route to get to them there is little doubt of their geographic area: Southeast Tennessee. In this part of the sixteenth century, there were five towns Dallas Phase towns in the Chattanooga, Tennessee area. From southeast to northwest, these were at the “Little Owl Village” at Audobon Acres; the David Davis site at Vulcan Recreation; the Citico site at the mouth of Citico Creek (not to be mistaken for the other Citico site on Little Tennessee River); the Hampton Place site on Moccasin Point; and the Talimico site on Williams Island.

The joint Coosa-New Spain force attacked the town at Audobon Acres, only to find it deserted, so they burned it to the ground. They then followed the trail of the refugees to the Citico site on the Tennessee River.  Here had been an important town during most of the Hiwassee Phase and in the Early Dallas Phase before being abandoned around 1300. In its heyday, it was the most important town in East Tennessee. After being deserted for a century and a half, people returned, building a much smaller mound opposite the older, much bigger mound.

The two groups of refugees fled across the river, probably at Ross Shoals just above the head of Maclellan Island. After some back and forth, the

“rebels” agreed to pay tribute in food and goods three times a year. Then the invaders returned to Coosa in triumph. From Pardo’s informants we learn that the name of this town that was burned was Olitifar, a corruption of the Muskogee name Opelika.

Several miles downstream from the Napochi towns, at the head of yet another Long Island, this one straddling the Tennessee-Alabama stateline, was the southwesternmost Dallas Phase town, one of the multi-mound variety.

The Great Indian Warpath crossed the river at the foot of the island, then passed along the left bank until merging with the Cisca and St. Augustine Trail (between Nashville and Augusta and St. Augustine) until passing over the foot of Lookout Mountain in the east. A branch of the Cisca and St.

Augustine known as the Nickajack Trail split off at the mouth of Murphy’s Hollow, passing up it to Lookout Valley then over Lookout Mountain, rejoining its parent among the ridges of North Georgia.

Below Long Island, the Crow Creek Phase stretched down to the river’s westward bend at Guntersville, Alabama, with major townsites at Sauty at the mouth of North Sauty Creek, Crow Creek Island, and the Cox site four miles north of the latter and the most important of the three.

North and west of this lay the Vacant Quarter, comprised of the Middle Cumberland region, uninhabited since 1400, and the American Bottom, uninhabited since a century before that.

Central Mississippi Valley at Spanish contact

Though my main purpose with the foregoing discussion has been to demonstrate how full of other peoples the later Cherokee Country was in the sixteenth century, I need to include encounters from the other end of Tennessee because some of them will enter the picture in subsequent discussion.

After travelling through northern and central Alabama, a journey which included the Battle of Mauvilla, De Soto encountered the Chicaza and the Alibamu in eastern central Mississippi before traveling northwest to come out at the Mississippi River at the Chucalissa site, known to De Soto’s chroniclers as Quizquiz and to archaeologists as the Walls Phase, which straddled the big river.

On the far side of the big river, the Spaniards encountered Pacaha, or the Parkin Phase, and Casqui, or the Nodena Phase, who at the time were waging intensive war against each other. The latter enter our target region later. The next major “province” down the Mississippi was Quigualtam, to archaeologists the Wasp Lake Phase, the chiefdom of which was based at the Winterville site. Ethnologists and archaeologist surmise that these three peoples spoke dialects of Tunican languages.

South of there was an unnamed chiefdom, undoubtedly the precursor to the contact period Natchez then based at the Emerald Mound site, center of the Emerald Phase. The Natchez, of course, spoke the Natchez language.

Survival and dissolution of Mississippian societies

The politics and demography of the Carolina Piedmont remained remarkably stable from their configuration to the advent of English colonization.

Expeditions by Francisco Fernandez de Ecija in 1605 and 1609 and by Pedro de Torres in 1627 and 1628 reported Cofitachequi, Joara, and Guatari as the dominant towns in the region.

The Virginian explorer James Lederer echoed those assessments in 1670, with Wateree being the most powerful and most Mississippian politically.

With the advent of slave-raiding by the Occaneechi for the colony of Virginia and by the Westo on the Savannah River, these Mississippian remnants collapsed.

The Cheraw and the Wateree migrated south to refuge with other Siouan- speakers such as the Yssa (Esaw), Catapa (Catawba), Gueca (Waxhaw), Uchiri (Ushery), and Suhere (Sugaree) to become the Catawba nation of the eighteenth century. The Cusseta of Cofitachequi vacated the entire region for the lower Chattahoochee River to become one of the two leading Lower Towns of the Creek Confederacy.

The demographic landscape of the later Cherokee Country itself changed even more drastically after the Spanish abandoned Santa Elena and Carolina in 1587, withdrawing south of the Savannah and shifting their capital to San Agustin. Some of these changes may have occurred as much as a decade prior to that benchmark.

The Yuchi moved out of Holstonia, the Appalachian Summit area of Upper East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and northwestern North Carolina, from the end of the sixteenth century through the early seventeenth century.

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Collating information from various maps, mostly made based on information of French voyageur traders from Canada, we find the Yuchi dispersed by bands across a broad landscape under many different monikers: Yuchi, Hogohegee, Tahogale, Tongoria, Chichimeca, Chisca, Ogeechee, and Westo.

We can be certain the Yuchi diaspora included towns on the upper and probably middle Tennessee River, the Savannah River, the Chattahoochee River, and the Coosa River, and even on the Ohio River. One band of Yuchi migrated all the way to La Florida and the dominion of New Spain, where they were known by the name Chisca. Spanish authorities employed them to negotiate with the Yuchi-speaking Westo on the Savannah River. The Westo established their town of Hickauhaugau there in 1656.

During the same time as the Yuchi began to disperse, the Chiaha moved to the headwaters of the Chattahoochee River, where they were still located in 1720. The larger portion of them later moved downriver to join the Lower Towns of the Creek Confederacy, from which their greater portion moved into Florida to become one of the two main sources of the Seminole, along with the Oconee.

The Coushatta moved down the Tennessee River, at one point occupying a settlement in what is now Marion County, Tennessee, probably at the head of Long Island. The Tali did the same, and that will be covered soon. The fate of the Satapo and the Chalahume remains a mystery; they may merged with the Coushatta, or with another town/tribe, or may have stayed on location along the Little Tennessee.

The Tamathli, a Southern Muskogean-speaking people, established a town on that river near the end of the sixteenth century and remained to become one of the Overhill Towns of the Cherokee, spelled Tomotley. The lower Little Tennessee Valley was otherwise deserted after the first or second decade of the seventeenth century. Swanton report another town at Tomotla on the Valley River, Cherokee County, North Carolina.

The people of the Mouse Creek Phase vacated the Hiwassee region within a decade of De Soto’s entrada. Who they were, and where they went, is a mystery. The layout of their towns was similar to those of the Napochi towns in the Chattanooga area, but their burials differed in being fully extended rather than flexed. They share a feature with eighteenth century Cherokee towns in that domestic buildings were connected summer and winter abodes.

Of the Napochi, we know that the towns at the Audobon Acres site and the Dallas occupation at the Citico site were abandoned after the De Luna entrada, with their residents probably relocating to the Hampton Place site. In 1700, French trader Charles Levasseur listed a town of ‘Napaches’ among the Upper Creek in 1700, and Opelika was an Upper Creek town on the Coosa River in what is now Coosa County, Alabama.

It has been Reported Continued:

The people of the Crow Creek Phase and the Dallas Phase town on Long Island and dependent hamlets probably joined the towns formerly of the upper Coosa Valley, as they were abandoned at about the same time.

By the end of the sixteenth century, all the towns of the Coosa paramount chiefdom removed southwestward. They had already abandoned the upper Coosa Valley for the Weiss Basin by about 1575. Before 1630, the town of Coosa stood on the present site of Gadsden, Alabama, with the towns of Abihka, Hotliwahali, Itawa, etc., in the vicinity. Later, they moved even farther south into what is now Talladega County, where they became the foundation of the Upper Towns of the Creek Confederacy.

Tennessee River, seventeenth thru early eighteenth centuries

Cartographers bestowed a variety of names on the Tennessee River in the colonial period, the three most often seen on maps being Caskinampo, Hogohegee (one of the names for the Yuchi), and Cherokee, sometimes with different names for the upper and lower stretches.

From the second half of the seventeenth century, around 1660, explorers and traders from New France began to penetrate the interior more frequently and more deeply than before. At first these voyageurs came from Canada, but later they came from both Upper and Lower Louisiana. French cartographers converted their verbal accounts into maps. These are very valuable for getting a picture of what the make-up of the interior was like in terms of population location, though they are hardly of modern GPS precision.

Most relevant for the area in question are a number of towns always pictures close together, most on or adjacent to islands in the river. Different maps give different names, and different versions of names, and by sifting through all of them we can make a good guess as to which tribes they were and where these were during this period, seven in all.

Bookending this collection of tribes are a “small town” of the Chickasaw and a town of the Shawnee. The first town lower on the river can only be the settlement at what was later known as Chickasaw Old Fields in the vicinity of Guntersville, Alabama. In between these two are the Yuchi (under various names), Kaskinampo (De Soto’s Casqui relocated eastward), Coushatta, Tali, and Tuskegee.  Other than the two bookends, there is little agreement on the relative position of the towns.

Several maps, especially later ones of this period, show two towns on the same island, the Coushatta at its head and usually the Kaskinampo at its foot, though at least one map names the Yuchi. They also usually show a “French fort”, more likely a trading post, in the center of the island equidistant from the two towns. One cartographer shows Coushatta and Kaskinampo, then a few years later in an update shows two towns of Coushatta, indicating that the former absorbed the latter. This was most likely Long Island in Marion County, Tennessee and Jackson County, Alabama. The towns and the outpost remained until after the French and Indian War, when the two towns of Coushatta merged into a single entity, with one portion moving to Larkin’s Landing just below Scottsboro, Alabama, while another went south to join their long lost Alabama cousins in the Middle Towns of the Creek Confederacy.

Because of the elimination of other possibilities, the Tali probably settled Burns Island in the Tennessee River Gorge, in the section known as the Narrows.

The Tuskegee probably occupied Williams Island given that the militant Cherokee who refused to make peace in 1776 named it that when they lived in the area. These Tuskegee were the group who later moved southwest to the Creek Confederacy. There was also a town on the Little Tennessee River founded by a portion of the Tuskegee, who became part of the Cherokee.

From Cherokee accounts, maps of an even later period, and local names, we know that the Yuchi, at least some of them, settled the mouth of the Hiwassee River, and perhaps the island there, as well as at least one other locale nearby, Euchee Old Fields in Rhea County, which is probably the Chestowee reported by Charles Hicks.

As the upriver bookend, the Shawnee town would have been upriver of that, perhaps in the Chattanooga area or maybe further upriver or east of that.

The ford at the former Great Hiwassee carries the curious name of “Savannah Ford” from the earliest days of white settlement, probably carried over from the Cherokee occupation when Savannah was a synonym for Shawnee.

From 1684 to at least 1705, French maps shows three distinct towns or tribes living on the headwaters of the Tennessee River. With varying versions of the names, these were the Tchalaka, the Katugi, and the Taligui. All three belong to the later Cherokee as a whole and correspond to their linguistic (and perhaps ethnic) division into Western, Middle, and Eastern.

‍These were the later Cherokee in a middle stage of coalescence of Iroquoian-speaking refugees from the north, sometimes amalgamating with remnants of decimated local tribes and bands. And that is the rest of the story.

The last surviving Mississippian chiefdom

We cannot do justice to the survival of Mississippian culture without mentioning the Natchez of the appropriately-named Natchez Phase. The Natchez Phase directly succeeded the Emerald Phase of the Plaquemine Culture. When the French encountered the Natchez in 1682, their elite had recently moved from the Emerald Mounds site to the Fatherland Mounds site also known as the Grand Village.

In addition to practicing the Southern Ceremonial Complex in its classic form, the Natchez were ruled by Suns, as their chiefs were called, and their first chief was called the Great Sun, who had supreme authority of civil and religious affairs. His chief assistant, the Tatooed Serpent, wielded authority of matters of diplomacy and war. In terms of class, there were two overall categories with a few divisions each, but these were fluid. Women of the Sun class were required to marry from the common class, for instance.

While cultures in the Cherokee Country zone in the Late Mississippian period had long ago abandoned temples atop mounds for community council houses atop mounds, the Natchez kept their temples and residences of the elite on top of their mounds. When one of the great officials died, man of his family would sacrifice themselves in order to be buried with him, and mothers would even sacrifice their babies.

The division into Sun-class and commoner class echoes the Yuchi division into the Tsoyaha (“children of the sun”) and the Titdgo, their own commoners. While in the Holstonia region of the Appalachian Summit at first contact, the Yuchi probably originally lived in the Middle Cumberland Basin before moving east after whatever disaster left it deserted.

The French and their Choctaw allies destroyed the Natchez in 1730 in the Third Natchez War, selling survivors into slavery in the Caribbean. Survivors found refuge with the Chickasaw and with the Cherokee, and some probably with the Creek.

In the North

While Spain made its entradas into the South, France made entrees into the North. The first three were made by Jacques Cartier. In 1534, he

“discovered” Newfoundland and the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. It was his second trip, from 1535 to 1536, which proved the most useful, for he penetrated the interior via the St. Lawrence River and encountered several towns, or tribes, all of which were heavily fortified. This was due to warfare with the Iroquoian-speakers to the south, the Haudenosaunee or Five Nations (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk) of the nascent League of the Iroquois.

Cartier named several towns in his journals. The two most prominent were Hochelaga (at Montreal) and Stadacona (at Quebec City). The rest he named were Araste, Hagochenda, Hochelay, Satadin, Starnatan, Tailla, Teguenondahi, and Tutonaguay. They were not just at war with the

Haudenosaunee either. Unlike their more astute cousins to the south, they engaged in war with each other also.

In Cartier’s third voyage in 1541, he was second chair to Jean Francois Roberval in an effort to establish a colony. The colony, led by Roberval, collapsed two years later and the survivors returned to France. The French turned their attentions elsewhere for several decades.

In 1562, the French made their first attempt at planting colonies in the lower Forty-Eight with Charlesfort on Parris Island and Fort Caroline at the mouth of the Altamaha River in Georgia. The first lasted little more than a year and the second was destroyed by the Spanish fearing piracy who also exterminated its inhabitants in 1565.

When Cartier made his entrees into Canada in the first half of the sixteenth century, there were probably around 120,000 St. Lawrence Iroquoians, or Laurentians, living in an estimated twenty-five tribes. By the time Samuel de Champlain established a much more successful colony in 1605 (following failed ventures in 1598 and 1600, the Laurentians had vanished and the St. Lawrence Valley was a land without people.

Historians, archaeologists, and demographers have offered widely disparate theories as to the cause of the Laurentians’ disappearance and their ultimate fate. The earliest popular hypothesis was that they had been eradicated by warfare with the Haudenosaunee, with survivors adopted into the League and others by the Huron (Wyandot). Later, others floated the idea that they had been killed off by disease or starved due to drastic weather changes.

The truth is probably a combination of these factors.

Beaver Wars

The Beaver Wars as such began with an attack on the Haudenosaunee by Champlain’s troops in alliance with the Huron in 1609. Lasting nearly a century, the fighting ravaged the Great Lakes region, the Ohio Country, the Illinois Country, and Kentucky (from the Seneca word Kintake, “land of the prairies”), ending with a treaty in 1701.

Fighting between the tribes of the north had been going on for at least a century before that, however. For instance, the Huron had penetrated as far south as the Allegheny Mountains bordering West Virginia by the end of the sixteenth century, but the Haudenosaunee drove them out and back north.

Like the Haudenosaunee, the Huron of southern Ontario were a confederacy made up of five tribes: Attignawantan, Attigeneenongnahac, Arendarhonon, Tahontaenarut, and Ataronchronon. The immediate cause of attack was the Huron eagerness to acquire French products, particularly firearms, but the longer cause was the warfare which had been continual since the beginning of the sixteenth century. They and the French attacked the Haudenosaunee again in 1615.

Between 1610 and 1614, the Dutch established a series of seasonal trading posts, finally establishing Ft. Orange at the later Albany in 1618, which they replaced with Ft. Orange in 1624.  In 1628, the Haudenosaunee defeated the Mahican and gained a trade monopoly with the Dutch at Ft. Orange. The Andaste (Susquehannock) had similarly defeated the Lenape who had the monopoly with New Amsterdam before going on to destroy the Honniasont as a political entity.

West of the Seneca, the westernmost of the Five Nations, lived the Iroquoian-speaking Wenroe, approximately the same size as the average of the Five Nations. In 1638, the Haudenosaunee, having hunted out the Hudson Valley, turned on them for conquest and either absorption or eradication in order the acquire more land for the pursuit of the pelt.

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Survivors fled to the Huron and to the Erie on their immediate west

In 1648, the Haudenosaunee, led by the Mohawk, ravished the territory of the Huron, adopting hundreds of survivors and dispersing the remainder, who fled southwest seeking safety near the Odawa and the Illinois. Many of the refugees took shelter with the Haudenosaunee’s western neighbor (since the eradication of the Wenroe), the Erie.

The Erie, or Riqueronon, a confederacy of tribes, controlled a vast area from the east of Lake Erie to the west of it, and most of the land south of it halfway to the Ohio River.  At first contact, their main towns were around the southeastern shore of Lake Erie. After the wars began they moved several miles to the west. During the 1620’s they may have had settlements west of the Alleghenys near the colony of Virginia.  In 1641, they still lived on the lake, with the Wenroe to the east, the Attiwandaron (possibly a branch of the Chonnonton, possibly a different group entirely) to the south, and the Kickapoo to the west.

The Haudenosaunee overran and dispersed the Tionontati (who also called themselves Wyandot) in 1649, some of the survivors joining the refugee Huron.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Chonnonton (Neutrals, also Attiwandaron) were the largest political entity in the entire region, a twenty- tribe confederacy, governed by the Tsouharissen, or “Child of the Sun”.

They were on the verge of becoming a full-blown chiefdom before the Beaver Wars began. That, and the death of the current Tsouharissen without a successor led to the social and political disintegration of the Chonnonton. When attacked in 1650, they collapsed and were driven from their territory, some joining the Erie, some being absorbed into the ranks of their conquerors.

In 1652, the Haudenosaunee drove the Scahentoarrhonon from the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, adopting those they captured and killing or dispersing the rest.

The Erie started a war with the Seneca in 1653. The fighting between the two began in earnest the next year, but even though they lacked the firearms which the Haudenosaunee had in abundance, 1654 was not a good year for the League. By mid-1656, however, the latter managed to destroy the two biggest towns of their enemies after protracted sieges, killing the inhabitants, after which the survivors dispersed.

Some Erie survivors they adopted. Some fled to the Huron remnant in the west, some to the Susquehannock, where they became the core of the later Mingo, who were also known as the Black Mingo and closely affiliated with the Lenape and the Shawnee. The largest group of Erie or Riqueronon survivors struck southeast. One would imagine they took the Attiwandaron south of them (possibly a different group from the Chonnonton) along for the trip.

In the 1660’s, the Haudenosaunee attacked the settlements of New France directly.  The Dutch lost a war and the colony of New Netherlands in 1664, so the League found their supplies cut off, and the French conquered part of their territory in 1666. Then England took over where the Dutch left off, and even increased their support. Warfare against France’s allies, then again with France itself, continued until the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701, by which time the Five Nations had cleared the Ohio Country and eastern Illinois Country, and made Kintake (Seneca for “prairie grounds”) their personal playground.

Richahecrians

As mentioned above, the largest group of Riqueronon, or Erie, survivors crossed the Allegheny Mountains into Virginia, where they established a town “near the falls of the James River” of about six hundred warriors. The sudden appearance in the neighborhood of so many Trans-Allegheny invaders greatly upset the Trans-Atlantic invaders in the English colony of Jamestown.

Summoning their close allies formerly of the now dissolved Powhatan Confederacy, the English marched against the recent arrivals, known to them as the Richahecrians, in force. The resulting encounter, known in colonial records as the Battle of Bloody Run, proved to be a decisive defeat for them and their Pamunkey allies.

The “Richahechrians” may have been following the footsteps of previous Iroquoian refugees from Haudenosaunee aggression. The Iroquian-speaking Nottoway, Meherrin, and Tuscarora, perhaps descendants of the Laurentians or from recently defeated tribes or both, already had themselves well-

established before Edward Bland’s exploration of “New Britain” in 1650.

Although they had just kicked ass rather spectacularly, the Riqueronon/Richahechrian apparently had no real desire for any more continual conflict, as there is no subsequent record of them under that name in Virginia colonial records, indicating they left the area.

In 1823, John Haywood in his Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee to 1768 reported an account of Cherokee oral history regarding their migrations from the original homeland in the Alleghany/Upper Ohio Valley.

The story he relates from the Cherokee is that after fleeing the Beaver Wars in the North, they first settled on the Appomattox River in Virginia, one of the main tributaries of the James River. The confluences of the two rivers is just above the Falls of the James. After they had trouble with the English of Virginia, they removed again to the New River and the headwaters of the Holston River.

Rickahockans

In 1670, James Lederer ran across some of them in the town on Occaneechi Island visiting from west of the mountains to seek a trade agreement with the English. He calls them Rickahockans. They did not survive their visit; their hosts killed them for no reason apparent to Lederer, but one would suspect the Occaneechi wanted no rivals.

The map Lederer crafted for the publication of his journal (1672) show the Rickahockans clearly inhabiting a region bordering the later Cherokee Country. In his 1964 paper “Observations on Certain Ancient Tribes of the Northern Appalachian Province”, Bernard G. Hoffman states they were probably located on the New River (the easiest way to see this is to turn the map 90 degrees counter-clock-wise as the map is oriented with north to the right). This is the same place to which Haywood reports the Cherokee moved after leaving Appomattox River. Haywood next states that they left this place after trouble with “northern Indians”.

Batts and Fallam Expedition, 1671

In his account of the Batts and Fallam Expedition into the hinterland of Virginia in 1671, Fallam reported that after crossing the Appalachian Mountains to the New River, they saw the remains of a settlement destroyed recently enough that its cornfields were still standing, unharvested. It lay on the right bank/west side of the river. This was in New River Valley, which is separated from Kanawha River by the New River Gorge.

New River is the main tributary of the Kanawha River; in fact, the two are often referred to as one, the “New-Kanawha River”. Thomas Jefferson called the combined rivers “the Great Kanhaway River” in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1781), and that designation for the two can be found on maps of that period. On the other hand, some early accounts referring to the whole length of the two call it New River.

This above accounts also line up with Haywood’s statement that the Cherokee were driven out from their settlements on New River by troubles with the “northern Indians”.

In the next stage of their 1671 journey, Batts and Fallam encountered the Moneton on the Kanawha River, but by 1673, Gabriel Arthur found them in the vicinity of the later Charleston, West Virginia. This lines up with Seneca oral traditions as reported by Mohawk leader John Norton in 1816 that they had drive out the “Cohnowaronons”, which echoes pronouncements by Iroquois leaders during treaty negotiations in 1722 and 1744 to the same effect. All of which show that the Five Nations targeted the region during this time.

Cartographic evidence

The year 1682 saw the earliest maps to name the Cherokee, although for a few decades all did so as if there were three distinct peoples, as mentioned above, in varying forms of Tchalaka in the west, Katugi in the middle, and Taligui in the east. According to Swanton, this map was based on information dating to at least 1670.

Treaty of 1684

The next contact after Lederer on record between the people who became the Cherokee and the Europeans is the treaty of trade in 1684 with the colony of Carolina signed by five leaders from Toxaway and three from Keowee. Though the records do not mention the name “Cherokee”, we can be certain that by this time the people later known as Cherokee had coalesced.

Indian slave trade

American history books tends to ignore the fact, but the slave trade of Indians was booming business in Carolina (and later South Carolina), Virginia, Maryland, and Massachusetts in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Three times as many Indians slaves were trafficked outbound through the port at Charlestown than were African slaves during the years 1670-1730, the peak of the trade. Ports of destination included several countries in Europe, the Caribbean, and New England. The export trade from Jamestown and Baltimore targeted the same markets, while Boston also the same except switching Virginia and Carolina for New England.

While those so enslaved might object, it was not the Trans-Atlantic invaders who condemned them to servitude but their fellow Native Americans. A few tribes or rather tribal confederacies secured monopolies in trade between the colonies and more inland peoples, each partnering with a different colony as these were all separate and often competing entities both politically and economically (with more stress on the latter).

The trade monopoly business is largely what provoked the Beaver Wars.

The Haudenosaunee trafficked slaves, but the main reason they took captives was to replace dead members. Also, control of the supply source of beaver skins played a major role as more and more places were trapped out. In the South, the corresponding animal product trade was in deerskins, a bit of a problem since deer were also the major source of dietary meat.

Remember that the opening scene of 1992’s The Last of the Mohicans where Hawkeye shoots the elk and then prays to it asking its forgiveness for killing it for food? That was nothing but late twentieth century New Age Indian fantasy.

As indicated above, the Haudenosaunee displaced the Mahican to achieve the monopoly with Fort Orange of New Netherlands and later all of New York. The Andaste defeated the Lenape to obtain the monopoly with New Amsterdam and Baltimore. The Occaneechi were a confederacy that came into existence largely for the purpose of trade monopoly with Virginia. For Carolina, the Westo monopolized the position of middle-man.

Before their destruction as a power by the Haudenosaunee, the Huron served the same function with French Canada. After the foundation of La Louisiane, the Choctaw and the Chickasaw competed with each other until the Third Natchez War in 1730, at which the Chickasaw began to trade with the English at Charlestown instead. They even established a colony of their own on the Savannah River, where they were known as the Lower Chickasaw, that lasted until 1775.

The Spanish in La Florida had no slave trade of their own. Instead they subjected the tribes in their domain to the encomienda and repartimiento systems, the latter replacing the former by the end of the sixteenth century. In the former, local leaders were responsible for providing assessed tribute and labor. In the latter, tribute labor was usually managed through the missions.

The favorite targets of slave raiders were the settlement Indians of rival colonies and the mission Indians of Spanish La Florida. Settlement Indians came in seeking shelter from the local slavers only to find themselves easy prey for the slavers of a rival colonies partners.  For instance, the Occaneechi raided settlement Indians in Carolina but kept their hands off the settlement Indians of Virginia. The situation reversed in the case of the Westo.

Although the Occaneechi did skirt the later Cherokee Country, the party most responsible to the collapse of remnant Mississippian society in the Carolina Piedmont was the Westo, especially with the jump in demand beginning in 1670. In addition to the mission Indians of the La Florida provinces of Guale and Mocama and the settlement Indians of Virginia, the Westo harvested captives from the Cusseta, the Coweta, Chickasaw visiting for trade with Carolina, the Cherokee newcomers to the region, and even the Chisca, their fellow Yuchi living in La Florida.

After just a few years, neighbors, European and Native American, looked at these “middlemen” with increasing trepidation. The Haudenosaunee even appealed to their erstwhile enemies in French Canada for support against the Andaste in 1672. Three years later, 1675, they finally delivered a serious defeat, and the colony of Maryland gave them refuge.

Merely a year later, the Andaste found themselves embroiled in another war, this time with the colony of Maryland, a conflict instigated by the Doeg (a sub-tribe of the Nanticoke). The conflict helped spark Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia, and the two conflicts became intertwined for a period. After Bacon and his men had killed sufficient number of their native enemies to quench their bloodlust, they turned on their Occaneechi allies.

At the end of the rebellion, the Occaneechi who were left merged with the Tutelo and the Saponi. The Andaste fled north, taking refuge with their erstwhile foes, the Haudenosaunee.

Around this same time, Carolina took aim at the Spanish settlements on the coastal plain south of the Savannah River.  These were dominated by mission networks among the formerly larger chiefdoms of Guale north of the Altamaha River and Mocama south of it. Proceeding mainly through the proxies of the Westo and some of the Lower Creek, between 1675 and 1680, they had sent hundreds into Caribbean slavery and sent the rest fleeing.

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Some reached the vicinity of San Agustin, others went west and merged with other remnants to become the Yamasee.

Fear of their growing power on the part of Carolina and resentment over the slave-raiding and trade monopoly on the part of all their neighbors led both parties to attack the Westo beginning in 1680. The main native antagonists were the Hathewakela Shawnee on the Savannah River, who rendered unto the Westo as they had rendered unto so many others. By 1682, the Westo were so reduced that they left for the Chattahoochee. The Shawnee stepped into place as the main trading go-between. Several tribes picked up the mantle of local slave catcher.

The Erie’s old foes the Seneca may have played a part also. Around this same time (1680), they began slave-raiding among the Southern tribes, kicking off a war with the Catawba which lasted until a formal peace treaty in 1759.

The shattered remnant of the Westo moved to the Ocmulgee River and later merged with the Yuchi on the Chattahoochee. The Occaneechi merged with other Siouan remnants of Virginia such as the Tutelo and the Saponi which eventually migrated north to the Six Nations.

Two years after the expulsion of the Westo, the leaders of Keowee and Toxaway made their first journey to the capital at Charlestown to establish a trade agreement. While not identified as Cherokee at the time, by that year, 1684, they certainly were at least proto-Cherokee.

Nine years after that, in 1693, some twenty leaders of the Lower Towns on the Savannah, Keowee, and Tugaloo Rivers travelled to Charlestown again, this time seeking direct trade, especially for guns and ammo. They also sought members of their towns taken by the Catawba, Shawnee, and Congaree for sell in the slave trade, but these unfortunates were already in New England and in the Caribbean.

A decade later, 1703, several members of the Carolina assembly were complaining the Cherokee were capturing too many of their settlement Indians to sell in Virginia.

Apparently the other members of the assembly decided the best way to deal with the problem was to trade trafficked humans of the native variety directly with the slavers because South Carolina's slave trade with the Cherokee did not end until 1748.

Coalescence of the Cherokee

In what may be the earliest known written use of the name “Cherokee” (spelled “Cherakees”), Daniel Coxe produced a map 1705 of Greater Carolina, in essence the Southeast, which replaced Tchalaka, Kitugi, and Taligui with that name for all three divisions. An earlier map in 1701 by French cartographer Guillame de l’Isle had used the name “Tarachis”.

Regarding the first of those three names (Tchalaka, Kitugi, Taligui), it is interesting to note that between 1613 and 1633, Champlain used the name Chariouquois (also Charioquet and Charakay) when referring to Huron.

Similarly, the Mohawk name for the Huron, Quatoghi, was used by Americans almost exclusively when referring to the Huron until the very early 20th century. As for Taligui, that can be none other than another form of the Lenape name for the Erie, Talligew, which is also one of their names for the Cherokee.

English colonists began to use the name “Cherokee” (in various spellings) when referring to these Iroquoian-speaking people about this time, although that name did not consistently appear on maps until around 1720. This demonstrates that the Lower Towns were the point of contact in these early stages with the colonies for the Cherokee and with the Cherokee for the colonies. Had it been one of the other major divisions, the name would be

“Chelokee”.

William Bartram travelled throughout the Southeast in the mid 1770’s, and became the first to describe the Cherokee as being divided into five geographic divisions: the Lower Towns on the headwaters of the Chattahoochee and Savannah Rivers; the Middle Towns on the upper Little Tennessee, upper French Broad, and Nantahala Rivers; the Out Towns on the Tuckaseegee and Oconaluftee Rivers; the Valley Towns on the Valley, Cheowa, and upper Hiwassee Rivers; and the Overhill Towns on the lower Little Tennessee, Tellico, and lower Hiwassee Rivers. His journal documents forty-three towns; there may have been as many as fifty or sixty.

This distribution changed radically during the Cherokee-American wars of the late eighteenth century as the Cherokee removed themselves progressively more westerly.

The Moravian missionaries living among the Cherokee over two centuries ago called the Cherokee language a mixed language with an Iroquoian structure and grammar and vocabulary from a variety of sources. In this they saw no problem because they recognized that the Cherokee were an assimilationist people.

The closest dialect to the northern Iroquoian, Mohawk for example, was the Eastern dialect spoken in the Lower Towns which retained the “R” sound which the other two lacked. The Middle dialect (also called the Kituwa dialect) spoken in the Middle and Out Towns, replaced the “R” with the “L”, but mostly agreed with the Eastern dialect in grammar. The furthest removed and most mixed dialect was the Western dialect, sharing the “L” with the Eastern dialect but deviating more in structure and vocabulary.

The Middle dialect is still spoken by members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The Western dialect is still spoken by some members of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians. The Eastern dialect began a rapid decline once the former Lower Towns were lost early in the Cherokee-American wars and the people no longer lived in a separate geographic area.

You will be assimilated

Regarding the groups which contributed to the Cherokee melting pot, we know that the migrants from the north included Erie (Riqueronon, probably the largest group), Huron, Chonnonton, and Attiwandaron, and there were possibly others. If the Moravians are correct, the Shawnee and Powhatan also contributed bloodlines.

There can also be little doubt that the newcomers assimilated the remnant groups inhabiting the areas they settled as well as absorbing new refugees. In the first category, we can be sure the Tamathli on the Little Tennessee River were one, and most likely a band of Tuskegee who took refuge on the same river. Remnants of the Satapo and Chalahume may have been there when the “Rickohockans” arrived as well.

While the Cherokee destroyed the Yuchi town at Euchee Old Fields, there were also Yuchi living on Hiwassee Island as well as on Pinelog, Chickamauga, and Conasauga Creeks in Northwest Georgia. There may have been other tribes west of the Appalachians and probably were.

The Middle Towns clearly absorbed the people of the Middle Qualla Phase, represented in the name Katugi, or Kituwa (the contact era “Quetua”), the peoples whose center had formerly been at Cauchi (although there is an alternate explanation for the last name; see above). They may also have assimilated Siouan-speaking refugees. The name Katugi could also be a form of the Mohawk name for the Huron, Quatoghi.

The Iroquoians who settled the uppermost Chattahoochee and the Keowee, Tugaloo, and Chattooga Rivers most likely found those lands vacant, as they were able to preserve their language in a more pure form.

Among the more notable of the refugees the Cherokee absorbed were a good portion of the surviving Natchez. Many of these fled to the main body of the Chickasaw centered on Tupelo, Mississippi, but the greater number wanted to get as far from the French and the Choctaw as possible. These found a home with among the Cherokee at Notchy Creek in the Little Tennessee Valley, at Aquohee on the north bank of the Hiwassee River above the mouth of Peachtree Creek in Valley Towns area, and at Gulaniyi at the confluence of the Brasstown and Gumlong Creeks in the Hiwassee Basin, also in the Valley Towns area.

The Iroquoian newcomers seem to have adopted certain aspects of Mississippian society after their arrival, though in light of the polity of the Chonnonton, they may have brought it with them. According to some sources, the Cherokee were ruled or governed by a chief priest assisted by a secular leader for diplomatic and war matters and a college of lesser priests. These may be the class James Mooney refers to as the Ani-Kutani. His informants told him that the Cherokee got fed up with their abuses and killed them all.

Not your DAR grandmother’s cuddly Cherokee

The Cherokee of the eighteenth century were not the peaceful, cuddly, warm and fuzzy civilized version as which they have often been mythologized.

They liked war. If you doubt that, read some of the stories James Mooney collected for his book. They were often brutal, cruel, vicious, and indiscriminate, but that was native warfare. In their myths and legends, the Cherokee bragged about it. Captives were often tortured to death for amusement, though captives who showed bravery in the face of horribly painful torment and certain death became legends still told more than a century later.

Colonial writers frequently noted the fondness of the Cherokee for war.

Some even questioned whether they took part in any other endeavor. It’s not too surprising, therefore, that the Wolf clan, the one for warriors, was by far the largest of their seven (originally fourteen) clans. A quick look at their activities in the eighteenth century confirms that assessment.

First, however, look back half a century at their Erie, or Riqueronon, predecessors. They picked a fight with the Haudenosaunee. The League wiped out or at least destroyed as an entity the Wenroe in 1638, the Huron in 1648, the Tionontati in 1649, the Chonnonton in 1651, and the Scahentoarrhonon in 1652. So the Erie, ruled at the time by a woman, declared war on the Seneca, one of the Haudenosaunee’s constituent tribes, in 1653. We already know how that turned out, else we would not be reading about the Cherokee now.

In 1674, the Cherokee joined with the Cusseta and the Chickasaw in an attack against the town of Hickauhaugau on the Savannah River, the seat of the Westo tribe, which had a monopoly on trade with the Province of Carolina, including the Indian slave trade.

As the ranks of the Cherokee swelled from assimilation of new refugees from the north and local remnant populations and they began to spread out, the Creek towns, not yet a confederacy but in league, felt the threat and attacked in 1690, beginning the First Cherokee-Creek War. The war lasted until around 1710.

Small groups of Cherokee began returning to the Upper Ohio River Valley in the late 1680s, and in time established a settlement centered on the appropriately named town of Allegheny at the confluence of the Kiskiminetas and Allegheny Rivers, what is now Schenley, Pennsylvania. In 1698, the Iroquois permitted the Lenape to begin settling what is now western Pennsylvania with the provision that they drive out those who had come up from the South. The Cherokee-Lenape War lasted until 1708 , with the Cherokee drive back south.

Almost immediately on the heels of the Great Peace of Montreal in 1701, Seneca warriors began coming down the Warriors’ Path from the Ohio Valley to attack the Cherokee and capture live bodies for the slave trade. No less perturbed than the Catawba, the Cherokee responded with counter-raids in the north. The war with the Haudenosaunee lasted until the Treaty of Johnson Hall in 1768, meaning the war stretched across the years 1701- 1768.

In 1708, the Cherokee invaded the Mobile Bay area along with the Alabama, Abihka, and Catawba with the intent of destroying the French capital of La Louisiane and Ft. Louis. For some reason, the four thousand-strong force never made the attempt but contented themselves with destroying the nearby town of the Western Muskogean-speaking Mobile tribe.

Two years later, the Cherokee began a war against the Chillicothe and the Kispoko bands of Shawnee on the Cumberland River, fellow refugees from the Haudenosaunee armies, largely at the instigation of their Chickasaw co- belligerents. The Chickasaw began to feel threatened after some of the Hathewakela Shawnee began to relocate there due to the fighting in the Savannah Basin. The Cumberland Valley War lasted 1710-1715.

The Cherokee took an active part in the Tuscarora War of 1711-1715 as allies of North Carolina and South Carolina. The belligerent southern band of Tuscarora who started the war and their Algonquin-speaking allies faced the militias of both colonies and warriors of the Cherokee, Apalachee, Yamasee, southern band of Tuscarora, and many others.

In 1714, the brief Cherokee-Yuchi War took place, encompassing solely the destruction of the Yuchi town in the Hiwassee Valley vicinity, often said to be Chestowee on the Hiwassee River near the mouth of North Mouse Creek but more likely Euchee Old Fields in Rhea County. The attackers came from the Cherokee town of Great Hiwassee.

In 1715, the Cherokee joined the Yamasee, Catawba, and Lower Creek in the First Yamasee War, attacking South Carolina and the Catawba, only to switch sides the next year. The Indian allies were heavily defeated by 1717, with the Yamasee reduced and driven out of the area to evolve into the Yamacraw after merging with some of the Lower Creek.

While in the middle of that conflict, around the time they switched sides, the Cherokee killed an entire delegation of Creek leaders in transit to Charlestown and staying in Tugaloo. The resulting Second Cherokee-Creek War lasted 1716-1755, ending at the Battle of Taliwa, which the Cherokee won, an engagement noted for the participation of Nanyehi, later known as Nancy Ward.

In 1730, the Cherokee joined the Chickasaw in supporting the Natchez, Tunica, and Choctaw in the Third Natchez War (1729-1731), which resulted in the dispersal of the Natchez, some taking refuge with the Chickasaw, some with the Creek, some with the Cherokee.

Six years later, in 1736, the Cherokee allied with the Chickasaw, and the Natchez among them, to defeat twin attacks by the French allied with the Choctaw, Illini, and Quapaw.

During King George’s War (1744-1748), the Cherokee fought as allies of the British, mostly against Detroit and native allies of the French in Upper Louisiane.

Disagreements over trade and encroachment of settlers from North Carolina into Cherokee territory led to the Cherokee-North Carolina War (1755- 1756). Hostilities between the two ended when the Crown called the Cherokee to join the effort against the French and their Indian allies.

The Chickasaw-Cherokee War (1758-1769) began when the Cherokee attacked the Lower Chickasaw on the Savannah River (where they lived 1730-1775), largely over tensions begun when the Cherokee invited the Piqua band of Shawnee to settle on the Cumberland River. The fighting ended after the Battle of Chickasaw Old Fields in the later Alabama, which was a bad loss for the Cherokee.

During the French and Indian War (1754-1763), the Cherokee fought alongside the English mostly on the Virginia frontier beginning in 1756. In fact, the war with the French prompted the English to negotiate peace between them and the Creek.

In 1758, the Cherokee walked off the lines, so to speak, and returned home, where they launched their own war against the English, primarily of the Province of Virginia, in 1759. The Anglo-Cherokee War lasted three years, with a contingent of Creek under Great Mortar at Coosawattee, the “Old Coosa Place”, as allies.

Individual Cherokee warriors took part in Lord Dunmore’s War alongside

Shawnee, Lenape, and Mingo warriors in 1774.

The Cherokee-American Wars lasted 1775-1795 with constant fighting, and included their part in other conflicts such as the American Revolution in which they also fought as allies of the British, the Oconee War (1786-1794) as allies of the Creek, and the Northwest War (1786-1795) as charter members of the Western Confederacy. Their foes were Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, the Overmountain settlements in East Tennessee, the Cumberland settlements in Middle Tennesee, and lastly the United States of America.

A few closing comments

I have looked at a godawful number of seventeenth and eighteenth century maps showing locations of various tribes and towns, etc., over the past twenty years, too many to list even if I could remember them all.

American writers often use the name Attiwandaron as the autonym for the confederacy also known as the Neutral Nation, and when writing of their defeat in the Beaver Wars almost always describe them as being destroyed. The word Attiwandaron is a Huron word, not an autonym, and was also used for a separate group south of the Erie/Riqueronon as well as the Neutral Nation from which they were distinct. The Neutrals were not destroyed, in fact; they still exist as a First Nation in Canada, where they are commonly called by their true autonym, Chonnonton, which is why I have used the name here.

The French applied the name Huron to a distinct group whose autonym was Wyandot or Wendat, and they called another group Petun, also known as the Tionantati or Tobacco Nation. Since these later also used Wyandot as their autonym, I have adopted the French designations.

Some people have been putting out lately the mistaken idea that Xualla in De Soto and Joara in Pardo were completely different and widely separated entities. James Lederer equated the two in his account of his journeys in discussing the actual people in the actual town he actually visited in 1670, so I take his word for it.

When first reimagining the route of DeSoto through our target area, Hudson, et al, identified an island roughly a day’s journey down the Tennessee River from Bussell’s Island, below its confluence with Clinch River, as Tali.

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Continued: Sometime later Hudson wrote an article for Tennessee Anthropologist detailing his opinion change on that particular town to the Toqua site, about a day’s journey upriver on the Little Tennessee. Tali was clearly on an island and McKee Island is the only one in the vicinity with the correct archaeology. At the height of the town at Toqua, the island was part of the town.

Thomas Lewis and Madelaine Kneberg equated the Mouse Creek Phase with the Yuchi largely because of the account of South Carolina traders Eleazar Wiggan and Alexander Long inciting the Cherokee of Great Hiwassee into exterminating the Yuchi of “Chestowee”. That, however, was in the early eighteenth century after populations had shifted around quite a bit. At the time when the Mouse Creek site were occupied, the Yuchi were in the Appalachian Summit. Most anthropologists now recognize Mouse Creek as an in situ development out of Dallas.

Lynne Sullivan’s paper on the Chickamauga Basin chronology provided much helpful information about the Nickajack Basin on the Napochi towns.

The Napochi episode provides powerful evidence against the hypothesis that the authority, or at least power, of Coosa extended all the way up the Tennessee River to include Chiaha on the French Broad River. At least not in the time of De Luna and certainly not in the time of Pardo when the ruler of Chiaha was called mico, the title for a paramount chief.  While Coosa’s power and authority may have at one time reached to the Little Tennessee and the French Broad, even to the time of De Soto, I submit that at the time of the later Spanish entradas, it did not, and that Chiaha had risen much the same way as Joara and Guatari.

Thanks to Michaelyn Harle’s research, we now know that the town at the David Davis site, while interacting with its close neighbors in terms of marriage, did most of its trading with Coosa and little with its neighbors. It is quite possible that the Coosa-Spanish attack may have been directed against the wrong target, or that the attack may have been to reinforce the position of the David Davis site as Coosa’s local representative.

The Hampton Place site has produced more sixteenth century Spanish artifacts than any site north of the Rio Grande other than St. Augustine. Amazing, considering that not only did none of the Spanish entradas stay there, they did not even visit. The Napochi there could only have amassed the horde through trade.

Regarding my placement of a 17th century Yuchi town on the Ohio River, early 18th century French maps clearly show a town or settlement under the name Tongoria there along with a same-named town or group on and/or just below Hiwassee Island.

Many, maybe even most, will object to my location of a Shawnee as the upper river bookend town on the Tennessee River, the argument probably that it is a mistake for the town on the Savannah. However, the same maps that also show a town located on another river that is clearly the Savannah. Given that Hiwassee Island is probably one of the islands inhabited at that period and that the Hiwassee could have been misconstrued as the upper part of the Tennessee, the townsite could have been at the later Cherokee townsite of Great Hiwassee which I identify here with sixteenth century Tasquiqui. Which might explain “Savannah Ford”.

The Lenape, or Delaware, whom the Cherokee referred to as the “Grandfathers” referred to the Cherokee by the name Talligewi, or Alligewi, and still do to this day. In the first form, the relation to the Cherokee before they coalesced as such should be obvious. The name of the Allegheny Mountains and the Allegheny River derives from the second rendering of the name. Demonstrating the breadth of Erie power, the Lenape referred to the whole basin of the Ohio River (“Alligewi Sipu” in Lenape) as “Alligewinengk”.

Nearly all credible historians equate the Rechahechrian with ancestors to the Cherokee as they became known in the eighteenth century, and that these were Erie refugees from the north. A few erroneously identify them as a band of Yuchi. Likewise, no one I can think of has ever suggested the Rickohockan of Lederer’s account were a different people than the Rechahechrian.

While many identify Lederer’s Rickohockan with Gabriel Arthur’s Tomahitan of 1673, the two accounts negate that identification of the Tomahitan. The two encountered their respective groups just three years apart at the same town on Occaneechi Island. Had they been the same people, the Occaneechi would have undoubtedly called them by the same name. I also doubt the Rickohockan would have shown up again in 1673 to be murdered as they were in 1670. Others suggest the Tomahitan were a band of Yuchi or else the group later assimilated into the Creek Confederacy as the Tamahita, either of which is more likely than the first assertion.

According to James Mooney, the year 1708 was when the last town of the Cherokee in the north was burned by the Lenape, though after the “Cherokee” had departed, not with them still inside it. We can’t know if these people were remnant Erie, some other Iroquoians, or another tribe which ultimately sought refuge with the Cherokee in the south. It could very well have been an outpost from the Cherokee of the south in the same way during the Revolution and the Northwest Indian War there were Cherokee settlements in the Ohio Country.

It was on one of the Cherokee forays in the north during the wars with the Seneca in the eighteenth century that a young Nipissing child was taken south for adoption. The Nipissing had once been allies of the Huron and suffered their fate. That Nipissing child grew into a man named Attakullakulla, and he married a Natchez woman from the group along Notchy Creek, who gave birth to four sons along with several daughters.

These sons, later known as Dragging Canoe, Little Owl, Badger, and Turtle- at-Home, were the greatest war leader the Cherokee (or Erie) ever knew and his warrior brothers. Ironically, none would be eligible for membership in any of the three federally-recognized Cherokee tribes. Neither would William Holland Thomas not John Rogers, second Principal Chief of the Eastern Band and last Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation West respectively.

Conclusions

Fairly simple and straightforward.

First, there was no room for the Cherokee in the Appalachian Summit, Ridge and Valley region, and the Carolina Piedmont to have existed.

Second, the Cherokee were a multi-ethnic people descended from a core of former Erie or Riqueronon-Rechahecrian-Rickhockan who assimilated remnants of locals where they settled in the Old Southwest and refugee bands of other Southern tribes.

The idea of Cherokee origin in the South that began spreading at the cusp of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and maintained throughout the twentieth century even by normally diligent authorities such as Swanton and Hudson came about for a variety of reasons. Part of it is and was love for historical myth rather than historical reality, part is political, and part is economic in terms of tourist industry.  To me, the truth is a hell of a lot more interesting.

‍Bibliography

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It has been Reported: 

Were Creek Indians from West Mexico?

February 27, 2011

Gary C. Daniels

Corn, Cotton & Lima Beans

A new variety of corn arrived in Georgia at the same time that the first Mississippian sites appeared such as at Ocmulgee Mounds. Coincidentally, this corn arrived in the American southwest first around 800 AD. Cotton arrived in the American southwest at around the same time.[xliii] Both corn and cotton originated in Mexico and traveled along the new trade route established between Chaco Canyon and west Mexico.

Lima beans show up in the southeast around 1301 AD. This is the same time period that the newcomers arrived at Etowah thus making them the most likely candidate for the introduction of this crop.

There are two types of Lima beans. One, known as the Lima type, was first domesticated in Peru (hence its name). The second, known as Sieva type, was first domesticated in southern Mexico and Guatemala in the same geographical region where the Zoque live.[xliv] It is also the Sieva type that was first grown in the southeast in 1301 AD. In fact, the Sieva type is still considered a distinct bean from the Lima in the southeast and is referred to as the butter bean.

According to the latest research the distribution of the lima bean from southern Mexico and Guatemala “has been traced by the various ‘prehistoric varieties’ left along Indian trade routes. One course of prehistoric ‘bean migration’ extended up through Mexico into what is now [the American] Southwest, thence eastward to spread from Florida to Virginia.”[xlv]

Lima beans, corn, and cotton all appear to arrive in the American southwest via the same migration route suggested by all of the preceding artifact-based evidence as well as the Creek Migration Legends for the origin of the Creek tribe.

Thus the fact that three new food sources, corn, Chihuahuas and butter beans, all with Mexican origins showed up in Georgia the same time newcomers arrived in Georgia strongly suggests they arrived with these newcomers from Mexico.

A Question of Timing

There is a considerable time gap between the cultures of the Olmec, west Mexican, Ancestral Puebloan and Mississippian cultures discussed in this paper. The Olmec culture is believed to have “disappeared” around 900 BC. Evidence presented in this paper shows they had very likely migrated into the west Mexican state of Jalisco between 1000 and 700 BC. The west Mexican shaft tomb tradition and the associated Olmec-style artifacts found in Colima date between 300 BC to 600 AD suggesting that Olmec ideas if not the culture itself survived in some form until this time as well. Perhaps by this time they were simply a priestly clan within a foreign society.

The known trade contacts between west Mexico and Chaco Canyon in the American southwest date to 800 AD to 1200 AD. This leaves a 200 year gap between the end of the shaft tomb tradition and the earliest trade contacts with Chaco Canyon. This gap happens to coincide with the earliest estimate for the eruption of Mount Ceboruco, estimated to have happened sometime between 730 AD – 1130 AD. This eruption was the largest in North America for the previous 10,000 years thus it may explain why the shaft tomb tradition suddenly ended and then people with similar pottery styles showed up at Chaco Canyon 200 years later.

It should be remembered that the Aztec migration from Aztlan into central Mexico is thought to have taken almost three hundred years.  When an entire tribe migrates they do not do so non-stop. They must settle and grow crops for a few years before moving on again. The Creek Migration Legend says this is exactly how their migration took place.

Thus it would not be unreasonable to estimate a migration time of 200 years for the people of west Mexico to reach Chaco Canyon. Once arriving they would have undoubtedly retained stories about their original homeland and then sent out explorers to find it again. Once found they could have initiated a trading relationship between their new homeland and their old homeland.

This would also explain one version of the Creek Migration Legend that stated they originated from the area of the Rocky Mountains. Perhaps the tellers of this version of the legend simply forgot about their original location near an erupting volcano as referenced in another version of the legend.

The Caddoan culture was one of the earliest Mississippian cultures in the southeast. It developed beginning around 800 AD[xlvi], the same time that the first trade contacts between west Mexico and Chaco Canyon had been established. The distance between Chaco Canyon and Mount Ceboruco in Nayarit, Mexico is approximately 1429 miles. The distance between Chaco Canyon and the Spiro Mounds site in Oklahoma is only 873 miles.  Contacts between the southwest and the southeast had been going on for hundreds of years thus the ancestors of the Creek Indians could have migrated via established trade routes and arrived in the Caddoan area in 800 AD without problem. It should also be noted that corn arrived in the region at about the same time and seems to be an integral part of all Mississippian settlements.

The Long Nosed God masks featuring the cleft-head design first show up in Missouri around 900 AD. According to the Creek Migration Legend, the tribe encountered a river too large to cross, a likely reference to the Mississippi River, so they settled down for a few years. This may represent the establishment of the Cahokia site near St. Louis, Missouri. Evidence suggests that the copper breast plate found buried at Etowah featuring the Bird Man and three-pronged ceremonial mace was actually fabricated at Cahokia.

A burial at Cahokia between 950 -1000 AD featured a 40 year old man laid out on a bed of more than 20,000 shell beads arranged in the shape of a bird. Thus we can assume the Bird Man cult had arrived at Cahokia by this time. Cahokia then experienced a population explosion around 1050 AD.

The Ocmulgee Mounds site in Georgia dates from 950 AD -1150 AD. This is in the right time period to account for an eastward migration from the Mississippi River in 900 AD and arriving at Ocmulgee Mounds by 950 AD. According to their migration legend they were the first of the four migrating tribes to arrive in the east while several of the other tribes lagged behind. A completely new type of pottery showed up at Ocmulgee at this time as well which looked more like the pottery of the American southwest than it does the local Swift Creek pottery.

The new pottery featured shouldered bowls which is a common feature of pottery in desert areas because the shoulder forces water to bounce back into the pot instead of splashing out. This is an important consideration in desert areas where one must walk a long distance to retrieve water. This design feature enables one to return home with all the water one collects.

It would not be until 1250 AD that the Etowah Mounds site experienced a massive population influx and a major building spree. This building spree included the construction of the pentagonal Temple Mound and the Funeral Mound where the Bird Man copper plate and marble human pair statues were found in an elaborate log tomb inside the mound.

1250 AD is also the time that both Cahokia and Spiro Mounds experienced a depopulation of their respective sites. Though some of this population undoubtedly moved to nearby locales, it is likely many of these people moved to Etowah. Both Spiro and Cahokia are known to have had trade contacts with Etowah.

It was also in 1250 AD that the so-called Southern Cult or Southeastern Ceremonial Complex emerged. It appears there was a major revival of religious symbolism that had a remarkable similarity to Olmec religious symbolism including bird men, three-pronged ceremonial maces,  rectangular “clan” symbols,  feathered serpents, jaguars/underwater panthers, to name just a few.

After arriving in Georgia the migrants would have realized their long journey was over. The only thing east of Georgia was the Atlantic Ocean from where the sun rises each morning, thus their mission of finding from where the sun rose had been accomplished. Perhaps the thrill of knowing their wanderings was over was the impetus for the great revival of old religious symbols.

Interestingly, the Kachina religious tradition would emerge among the Ancestral Puebloan peoples in 1250 AD as well and would take over the old kiva system. One important kachina was in the guise of a bird man. 1250 is also when the pentagonal mound at Emerald Mound in Mississippi was constructed that has many features of the Olmec’s Stirling Acropolis from La Venta. Thus 1250 AD seems to be an important date in North American archaeology.

It would not be until 1325 that the spiral mound would be built at the Lamar Mounds site near Ocmulgee.  This is also when the Bull Creek Dog Effigy pot from Muskogee County, Georgia dates. This pot appears to represent a Chihuahua. By this time Etowah had collapsed and so had the great city of Cahokia.

According to Cherokee legends, a foreign priestly clan known as the Ani Kutani resided on the mounds and ruled over the local populations.[xlvii] The locals eventually rose up and overthrew these foreigners and massacred all of them. This was said to have happened 300 years before the arrival of Europeans which places it in the same time period as the fall of Etowah. Etowah Mounds does, in fact, show signs of having been subject to a serious attack in which its palisade wall was burned and its marble ancestor-pair statues smashed.

The Lamar Mounds site was built in the middle of a swamp with the mounds effectively becoming islands during the wet season. The Lamar-style pottery has features of both the earlier Swift Creek culture and the later Mississippian culture suggesting a merging of cultures at this time. Creek traditions suggest this is precisely what happened.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it appears that a culture influenced by both west Mexican and Olmec ideas settled in Georgia during the Mississippian period. Both the cultural traditions and oral history of the Creek Indians strongly suggest an origin from west Mexico.  Linguistic evidence also supports a Mexican origin. Archaeological evidence from excavations at Ocmulgee Mounds support the accuracy of the migration legends that suggest a western origin.

Although the volcanic eruption data rules out the western U.S. as a location for their origins, other evidence makes it likely they migrated through the southwestern U.S. area first before heading on towards the Midwest and Southeast.

The Ceboruco volcano is the most likely candidate due to the timing and size of its largest eruption and its location being in the same area as the shaft tomb cultural traditions. Chaco Canyon is also exactly due north of Ceboruco which coincides with the migration legend’s story of the original migrants mixing their fire with fire that came from the north. In Creek Indian tradition, mixing fire is the same as mixing of people.  Chaco Canyon also shows the earliest evidence of platform mound building and the construction of round ceremonial buildings called kivas on the edge of open plazas[xlviii] similar in design to the Ocmulgee Earth Lodge.

It is likely that the Creek Indian Wind Clan represents the people who migrated from Mexico. The west Mexican shaft tomb tradition was associated with circular stepped pyramids which were likely associated with the Mesoamerican god Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl.  Many Mississippian artifacts contain swirling wind/swastika symbols, feathered serpents, Venus symbols and sometimes all three together which supports the idea they also recognized a deity with characteristics of Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl.

Since many of these artifacts are similar to Olmec artifacts it is likely the Wind Clan was descended from or highly influenced by an Olmec tribe from western Mexico. They may be one and the same with the Ani Kutani of Cherokee legend. Evidence suggests the Olmecs or many aspects of their culture survived in west Mexico long after they “disappeared” from other parts of Mesoamerica. Since people don’t usually “disappear” it is more logical to assume they simply migrated away.

The obsidian scraper from Chopuca in central Mexico found at Spiro Mounds may have arrived by this same route or, more likely, it arrived by a more direct southerly route.  It is doubtful the west Mexico-Chaco Canyon-Spiro route was the only one in existence. The Mayan Huasteca were located much closer to the southeastern U.S. and featured town plans more similar to Mississippian era sites than anything found in either the American southwest or west Mexico. In fact, the Creek Migration Legend and Creek tradition both hold that the mounds at the Ocmulgee Mounds site were constructed by an earlier people and the Creek’s only contribution was the construction of a “mound with a central chamber,” i.e., earth lodge. Thus the Creek Migration was just one of many that may account for the many Mesoamerican traits of Mississippian culture.

It has been Reported: 

History Research Paper Sample: The Cherokee Syllabary

August 10, 2021

Through our history curriculum, Commonwealth students learn how to be historians rather than passive absorbers of facts. They read and analyze primary sources from a variety of voices in their historical contexts. They discover connections across continents and eras. And they graduate knowing that a single textbook could never tell the whole story. Core to this discovery process is an annual research paper, comparable to a college essay, that hones students’ analytical and writing skills and challenges them to dig deep into a variety of sources on any topic that interests them—whether it be debunking the "primitivist" myth around jazz, the effect of the breakup of the the AT&T monopoly, or evaluating the claim that the Wizard of Oz was a Populist tract. Keep reading for just one recent example.

The Cherokee Syllabary: Tenacity and Advancement through Writing

By Eitan '22

Why I wrote it: Language, writing, and Native American culture are all things that interest me, so when I learned about the Cherokee syllabary, it seemed like the perfect way to combine all three. Especially fascinating to me was the fact that, unlike most Native American writing systems, this one was created wholly by a native speaker of the language, giving it a unique cultural depth. And as I read through both secondary and primary sources, the sheer importance of the syllabary's existence began to come to light. Ultimately it was just that—its status as a powerful symbol of resistance, preservation, and cultural advancement in a time when Cherokee culture was under heavy threat—that made the syllabary so cool to me.

Twelve thousand years ago, the ancestors to what would become the native peoples of the Americas crossed over on a land bridge from Asia. Over the following millennia, they expanded across the continent, gradually separating into smaller groups that went on to develop their own unique cultures (Conley 48-54). One of these cultures was the Cherokee tribe. When the Europeans first arrived, the tribe ranged over a massive area in what is now the southern United States. Their territory was further split among numerous villages, each controlled by complex social and governmental systems (Conley 144-158), and playing host to a vibrant culture with an expansive tradition of legends, art, and more. While their initial contact with Europeans was trade-focused and relatively peaceful, it was not long before the settlers began taking advantage of them, as with the other tribes of America. Their culture was steadily replaced with that of the invaders, and they were forcibly removed from their land through what were in many cases underhanded techniques such as intimidation and bribery (Howe 348). Unlike the other tribes, though, the Cherokee had access to a tool that would prove instrumental to their survival and continued advancement—the Cherokee syllabary. A wholly unique writing system developed specially for the Cherokee people by a Cherokee named Sequoyah, also known by his English name of George Guest or Guess, the syllabary facilitated the preservation of Cherokee language and culture in a brand new way. Not only was it a tremendous source of national pride for them and a symbol of resistance against cultural assimilation, but it advanced Cherokee culture in a way that was completely theirs, free of white European influence. It contributed greatly to both the persistence and elevation of the Cherokee Nation, and would prove essential, especially in the face of the many threats posed to them. As Rose Gubele, an associate professor at the University of Central Missouri and member of the Cherokee Nation states, "Ultimately, the Truth is that Sequoyah and his gift, the syllabary, have helped us to survive" (Gubele 69-70).

At the time of the syllabary's creation, the Cherokee had long been caught up in a complex relationship with the European settlers. Trade relations between the two were first established in the mid-to-late 17th century, and for a time the Cherokee prospered with the aid of their new commercial partners. They took up agriculture and constructed new, permanent tribal settlements (Conley 472). Sequoyah himself lived in one of these, in what is today Sallisaw, Oklahoma, making his home in a European-style log cabin of his own construction. With this and their new access to schooling, farming, and technologies such as plows, mills, looms and more, the Cherokee standard of living increased as they modernized—and Westernized. European technologies and cultural aspects began to supplant traditional Cherokee culture, causing many traditions to begin to fade (Conley 1078). Along with this, the settlers began to take advantage of the tribe, nudging them into war against other tribes and then trading guns to both sides in exchange for prisoners of war, whom they would then sell into slavery (Conley 522).

The tumultuous association between the Europeans and the Cherokee would continue to develop in the years leading up to the syllabary's introduction, and as it did, the threat of cultural assimilation would increase. White people married into the tribe, creating a large mixed-blood population, and brought with them the increased presence of Christianity and Western values intended to "civilize" what they saw as a "savage" people. Some Cherokee, mainly mixed-bloods, even acquired slaves and entered into the cotton-plantation business (Howe 343). Still, even as the tribe became more "civilized" and more and more culturally similar to that of the whites, the settlers did not much change their negative attitudes towards them. Rather, as the threat of removal became more and more imminent and the more privileged of the Cherokee worked to defend their land, the whites perceived them as even more of a threat to their dominance and encroached even further on their territory (Howe 343). Unfair treaties, threats by the American government and military, and bribes offered to local chiefs all posed a danger to the Cherokees' hold on their native lands, and increased European influence posed a danger to the future of their culture. The time that the syllabary came into use was one of great change for the Cherokee, and it arrived at the perfect time to serve as a tool of advancement and nationalism. Its creation and spread were not simple processes, however, and tell an important story of cultural advancement in their own right.

As crucial as that story is, though, it is by no means concrete. Most of the information modern scholars have on Sequoyah is based on hearsay, and there exist numerous conflicting accounts of how the syllabary originated. As Gubele puts it, "Ironically one of the few facts upon which all Sequoyah biographers agree is that the details of Sequoyah’s life are difficult to discern" (Gubele 52). Even his English name is not consistent across accounts, and he is called Guess, Guest, Gist, Guyst, and more across various sources. Generally agreed-upon is that he was a skilled, intelligent polymath, inventor, painter, and silversmith, born around 1770 in the village of Tuskegee, Tennessee, and that he had no knowledge whatsoever of any language other than Cherokee (Foreman 3). What is not agreed upon is how the creation of the syllabary began. It's possible that the idea entered his mind in any number of ways. Some popular possibilities include a conversation with friends about the "talking leaves" of the white man (Foreman 20), a realization that a writing system could be applied to Cherokee after a nephew learned to read and write English at a missionary school (Foreman 47), or simply that the idea was sparked by seeing English letters on the body of a white man (Gubele 58). A fourth story, and perhaps the most intriguing one, tells of an ancient Cherokee priesthood called the Ani-Kutani, who ruled over the tribe with the aid of a writing system until they became corrupt and were destroyed in an uprising. In this version, Sequoyah was said to be a descendant of the Ani-Kutani, not actually having invented the syllabary, but instead simply being the one to reintroduce it to the tribe (Gubele 62). While it's very unlikely that Sequoyah had no part in the actual creation of the syllabary, as this last story suggests, there do exist accounts that seem to indicate that the Cherokee did in fact have an ancient writing system, or at least something close to one. One such account was told to an Englishman named Alexander Long in 1717—"we are told by our ancestors that when we first came on this land that the priests and beloved men was [sic] writing but not on paper as you do but on white deer skins and on the shoulder bones of buffalo" (Conley 388). Still, whether or not Sequoyah's syllabary was in fact that of the Ani-Kutani, the potential that it might have been was enough to contribute to the initial popular distrust of it (Gubele 62), and as he set out on the long journey to perfect it for his people, he was not initially met with enthusiasm.

The development of the syllabary into its modern form took twelve long years of hard work (Foreman 4), but once it was put into use, it did not take long for that work to pay off. Sequoyah was faced by numerous challenges along the long road to Cherokee literacy, one of the first being the tribe's complete distrust of the idea of a writing system for the language. His countrymen saw what he was doing as black magic or witchcraft and shunned him, fearful of the potential that he might be bringing forbidden Ani-Kutani power back into the world (Gubele 60-62). He was undeterred, however, and continued to persevere, in a similar manner to what his final product would eventually help his people do. His next roadblock was realizing the impracticality of his initial plan, which was not to make a syllabary, but instead a system in which each word would be represented by a character. Even the loss of so much progress was not enough to discourage him, and he swiftly began work on what would become the syllabary. Through painstaking effort, he, with the help of his daughter A-Yo-Ka, recorded each syllable in the language and assigned them distinct, simply drawn and read symbols. Though he initially had 200, he and A-Yo-Ka were able to bring that number down to the modern count of 85 (Foreman 23). After that came his biggest challenge yet—convincing the rest of the tribe that the syllabary was worthwhile. Throughout the entire creation process, the tribe had venomously opposed him, seeing the syllabary as something inherently spiritual and difficult to trust. Despite attempts to make them understand it as an intellectual endeavor, Sequoyah was eventually forced to go along with their thought process to even be comprehended properly (Gubele 61). This still left the problem of convincing them of its actual usefulness. Before a panel of high-ranking Cherokee, he displayed that A-Yo-Ka, at the time still his only student, could read a sentence put down by him while she was in another room. Impressed, the tribe agreed to test its utility using a group of youths who were taught the syllabary, and upon the success of this realized its true worth (Foreman 25-26). Sequoyah received high honors from the tribe, quickly becoming one of its most respected members. The tribal newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, would later describe that "This astonishing discovery certainly entitles Mr. Guess to the warmest gratitude of his country; and, should the Cherokee language continue to be spoken, his fame will be handed down to the latest posterity." The syllabary spread quickly, and within a few years nearly the entire nation was fluent in it (Foreman 28). Though he was faced with opposition from practically every side, Sequoyah stood strong as a beacon of cultural pride and advancement and in the end was able to share those with his people. His quest to create a writing system for his native tongue was a shining display of cultural perseverance, one that would set the stage for even more in the near future. 

The most immediate example of that was the speed at which the syllabary spread, which was not merely because of enthusiasm for learning. Having been made by someone intimately familiar with the workings of the language it was created for, it was perfectly suited to express its intricacies. Firstly, the nature of the syllabary greatly simplified the learning process for anybody who already spoke the language. In contrast to an alphabet, where different letters can be used in many different ways, the characters of the syllabary each exactly correspond to a syllable in the Cherokee language and are never used differently, making it very intuitive to students (Cushman 69). There was more to it than this, however. As a polysynthetic language, Cherokee benefited greatly from having a writing system that was able to easily convey the many syllabic morphemes, or small meaningful units, present in its words, which often could represent entire sentences (Cushman 67). This meant that, at times, Sequoyah's writing system is more than just a syllabary, and, as Ellen Cushman's research suggests, individual characters often represent an implicit meaning as well as their sound. This further contributes to the ease of learning to read and write, and also helps preserve elements of the traditional Cherokee worldview, as it is possible for symbols to become associated with and convey a specific idea or concept (Cushman 58-59). Even something as minor as the order in which the handwritten syllabary was arranged was a carefully considered tool for preservation. Ellen Cushman determined that each symbol was based off of one of seven root forms. The language itself constructs its meaning through continually added ideas to base ideas, and the syllabary does a similar thing, adding additional details to individual root forms to create new characters. In the original arrangement, each syllable was carefully placed next to the root form that it was constructed from. When using this arrangement to learn to read and write, a student would have been able to notice the patterns and use them to more easily commit the syllabary to memory, thus helping to preserve the language and the culture it represented (Cushman 77). All of these elements contributed to the fast spread that helped make the syllabary the crucial cultural tool that it was. If it had not been so simple and well-suited to the language, it might not have been able to survive the opposition from whites it was confronted with.

Continued:

As Cherokees eagerly learned and taught the syllabary, many whites, especially missionaries, looked on it with disdain, but ultimately could not halt its influence. Of course there were some European scholars who recognized it as a stunning achievement, such as French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, who even wrote to the Cherokee Phoenix asking for copies he could send to Europe to maintain and study, but the majority were barely even able to conceptualize that it wasn't an alphabet. They saw it as inferior to alphabetic systems, which were generally considered to be "true writing" (Cushman 14). In fact, the first writing system for the Cherokee language had been an English-based alphabetic one using Roman letters, devised by a white missionary named John Pickering. It had been intended to serve as the tribe's introduction to the written word and eventually facilitate a language shift to English (Cushman 104), and in fact was far easier for English speakers to learn, a great help especially considering the difficulty of learning Cherokee from English. The syllabary was its complete opposite in both structure and effect. It made the Cherokee language more inaccessible to the missionaries, even as native speakers picked it up near-effortlessly, and certainly did not facilitate a language shift (Gubele 55-56). Although the missionaries continued to complain, arguing that there was no future to be had with the Cherokee language, and that the tribe would be, as the Missionary Herald newspaper put it, "deprived, in great measure, of an acquaintance with the many excellent works in the English language…" (Cushman 104-105), in the end Sequoyah's syllabary was simply too popular and easily-adopted, and they were forced to give in. This represented a tremendous victory and a turning point for the Cherokee. Here was a people elevating their own society through only the force of their own desire to, with a tool completely of Cherokee design, and in spite of white attempts to undermine them and take from them an integral part of their own culture—their language. As written by Samuel L. Knapp, an author who interviewed many Cherokee in the first half of the nineteenth century, "That a mass of people, without schools or books, should by mutual assistance, without extraneous impulse or aid, acquire the art of reading, and that in a character wholly original, is, I believe, a phenomenon unexampled in modern times" (Foreman 29). The missionaries did, however, unfortunately succeed in supplanting Sequoyah's original arrangement with one of their own, which ignored the base root forms and grouped the symbols based on similar sounds and from there alphabetically in an English-based approach. According to Cushman, it also would have placed a large degree of importance on the individual sounds of the syllabary, and as a result given less attention to the inherent meaning contained within many syllables (Cushman 42). Still, the tribe had succeeded in bringing the syllabary to the forefront, an act of supreme cultural defiance. It would go on to have a massive impact on their culture, and one driven by their own innovation. 

New doors were opened for the tribe, allowing them to preserve and express their culture in ways never before imaginable. In the first place, they had never truly had a way to record their extensive oral traditions. Previously, they would only be passed down through word-of-mouth, and suffer potentially being misunderstood or forgotten through simple human error, but now they had a way of writing them for posterity so that they would be far more likely to persist. Traditional incantations, legends, recipes, and many other things were all recorded, and aspects of Cherokee culture that otherwise might have been forgotten were preserved (Gubele 66-67). It is true that the missionaries, after realizing the futility of continuing with Pickering's system, would translate Christian texts into the syllabary to assist in converting the Cherokee to Christianity (Gubele 57), but far more important was its direct advancement of tribal culture. Along with preserving traditions, it also enabled the tribe to take a step forward in a more modern way that nevertheless still confidently embodied their culture—the very first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix. First published in 1828, it contained articles written in English side-by-side with the same content in Sequoyah's Cherokee syllabary (Foreman 14). For the first time, the tribe had an easily-accessible modern avenue of information that was theirs and theirs alone. They could read news about the world around them and receive messages from tribal leadership in their own native language. It was a symbol of both their national pride and the great achievement that was the syllabary. In a time when the US government was trying its hardest to quash the culture of Native Americans and remove them from their ancestral lands, the syllabary provided a foothold for the Cherokee, allowing them to preserve, advance, and express their culture in new, modern ways, and even today it gives the Cherokee a unique place in the world.

In the modern day, despite having a far lower speaker base than it did in centuries past, the Cherokee language, and the syllabary, remain important to the tribe's national pride and culture. The syllabary was an innovation that helped the tribe modernize, with advancements like the ability to print the language, and the Cherokee have continued to honor and make use of it. Countless texts in the syllabary were produced throughout both the nineteenth century and the twentieth, serving all of the purposes that written language serves in the everyday lives of any other culture (Cushman 167). Churches were an especially powerful example, using Cherokee-language religious texts and recording meetings and sermons in the syllabary (Cushman 171). Even so, the language would certainly have been in danger of dying out completely if not for the Nation's efforts to keep it alive. Cherokee-language courses began to be offered at various colleges (Conley 3476), and around the Nation and other Cherokee communities as well (Conley 4078). A Cherokee immersion school was created in 2001, in order to help increase the young speaker base (Cushman 192). The Nation has also taken full advantage of the technology of today through online language classes, which are easily accessible through their website from anywhere in the world (Cushman 207). Through all of these, including the multitudes of printed learning material, the syllabary is featured heavily. The Cherokee immersion school places special emphasis on teaching it (Cushman 192), and it's prominent in all of the online material. Even comic strips such as Blondie and Beetle Bailey found themselves translated into Sequoyah's characters for use with education, a prime example of its modernization (Cushman 156). The syllabary is a key part of both their language and their identity, and the Cherokee Nation is making sure that it will not be forgotten.

Since its creation, the Cherokee syllabary has been very beneficial to the tribe. It provided them with a writing system that perfectly captured their language, served as a tremendous cultural victory over oppressive white missionaries who sought to move them away from their native language, and allowed them entry into the modern world in a way that was completely theirs. As a great source of national pride, it granted the tribe a much-needed boost during a time when they were surrounded by threats to their native culture. Without the syllabary, the tribe may have lost countless traditions that it enabled them to write down, and they certainly would not have been able to create the Cherokee Phoenix, which still exists today. With the advent of numerous learning materials focused on the syllabary in the modern day, it is safe to say that the tribe would not be where it is today if it had never received Sequoyah's great gift. It is thanks to him that Cherokee culture has been preserved and has advanced in the ways that it has.

Bibliography

Conley, Robert J. The Cherokee Nation: A History. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2008.

Cushman, Ellen. Cherokee Syllabary: Writing the People's Perseverance. American Indian Literature and Critical Studies 56. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014.

Foreman, Grant. Sequoyah. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959.

Gubele, Rose. "Utalotsa Woni—'Talking Leaves': A Re-examination of the Cherokee Syllabary and Sequoyah." Studies in American Indian Literatures 24, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 47-76.

Howe, Daniel Walker. What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009.

The Cherokee syllabary is a set of written symbols invented by Sequoyah in the late 1810s and early 1820s to write the Cherokee language. His creation of the syllabary is particularly noteworthy in that he could not previously read any script. Sequoyah had some contact with English literacy and the Roman alphabet through his proximity to Fort Loudoun, where he engaged in trade with Europeans. He was exposed to English literacy through his white father. His limited understanding of the Latin alphabet, including the ability to recognize the letters of his name, may have aided him in the creation of the Cherokee syllabary.[25] When developing the written language, Sequoyah first experimented with logograms, but his system later developed into a syllabary. In his system, each symbol represents a syllable rather than a single phoneme; the 85 (originally 86)[26] characters in the Cherokee syllabary provide a suitable method to write Cherokee. Some typeface syllables do resemble the Latin, Greek, and even the Cyrillic scripts' letters, but the sounds are completely different (for example, the sound /a/ is written with a letter that resembles Latin D).

Around 1809, Sequoyah began work to create a system of writing for the Cherokee language.[27] At first he sought to create a character for each word in the language. He spent a year on this effort, leaving his fields unplanted, so that his friends and neighbors thought he had lost his mind.[28][29] His wife is said to have burned his initial work, believing it to be witchcraft.[27] He finally realized that this approach was impractical because it would require too many pictures to be remembered. He then tried making a symbol for every idea, but this also caused too many problems to be practical.[30]

Sequoyah did not succeed until he gave up trying to represent entire words and developed a written symbol for each syllable in the language. After approximately a month, he had a system of 86 characters.[28] "In their present form [of typeface syllabary, not the original handwritten syllabary], many of the syllabary characters resemble Roman, Cyrillic, or Greek letters, or Arabic numerals," says Janine Scancarelli, a scholar of Cherokee writing, "but there is no apparent relationship between their sounds in other languages and in Cherokee."[27]

Unable to find adults willing to learn the syllabary, he taught it to his daughter, Ayokeh (also spelled Ayoka).[27] Langguth says she was only six years old at the time.[31] He traveled to the Indian Reserves in the Arkansas Territory where some Cherokees had settled. When he tried to convince the local leaders of the syllabary's usefulness, they doubted him, believing that the symbols were merely ad hoc reminders. Sequoyah asked each to say a word, which he wrote down, and then called his daughter in to read the words back. This demonstration convinced the leaders to let him teach the syllabary to a few more people. This took several months, during which it was rumored that he might be using the students for sorcery. After completing the lessons, Sequoyah wrote a dictated letter to each student, and read a dictated response. This test convinced the western Cherokees that he had created a practical writing system.[29]

When Sequoyah returned east, he brought a sealed envelope containing a written speech from one of the Arkansas Cherokee leaders. By reading this speech, he convinced the eastern Cherokees also to learn the system, after which it spread rapidly.[28][29] In 1825 the Cherokee Nation officially adopted the writing system. From 1828 to 1834, American missionaries assisted the Cherokees in using Sequoyah's original syllabary to develop typeface syllabary characters and print the Cherokee Phoenix, the first newspaper of the Cherokee Nation, with text in both Cherokee and English.

The Cherokee language (ᏣᎳᎩ) is the sole survivor of the Southern Iroquoian branch, part of the larger Iroquoian Language Family. It's related to Northern Iroquoian languages like Mohawk and Seneca but distinct due to its unique syllabary, created by Sequoyah, making it a complex, verb-focused language with a rich linguistic history connected to the Great Lakes region. 

Key Aspects of the Cherokee Language Family:

Family: Iroquoian Languages.

Branch: Southern Iroquoian, with Cherokee as its only living member.

Related Languages (Northern Iroquoian): Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Huron-Wyandot, Tuscarora.

Distinctive Feature: Sequoyah's syllabary, a unique writing system representing syllables, not individual letters.

Linguistic Type: Polysynthetic, meaning single words can express complex ideas, with verbs being central.

Historical Context: Developed from common Iroquoian roots, diverging long ago, leading to unintelligibility with other Iroquoian languages. 

How it Connects to Other Languages:

Cherokee's Iroquoian heritage links it to a broader network of languages spoken by Indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes and Northeast, sharing ancient ancestry but evolving uniquely over millennia. 

In essence, Cherokee is a fascinating outlier, preserving ancient linguistic features while developing its own distinct written form and complex grammatical structure within the larger Iroquoian family. 

It has been Reported: 

Cherokee language connected to which ancient language

The Cherokee language is an Iroquoian language, related to languages like Mohawk and Seneca, originating from migrations from the Great Lakes region; however, some fringe theories suggest connections to ancient Anatolian (Turkish) or even Greek/Hebrew dueaup-to-date knowledge or factual verification is needed. or Hebrew due to some word similarities and the shapes of Sequoyah's syllabary characters, though mainstream linguistics links Cherokee primarily to its Iroquoian family. 

Mainstream Linguistic View:

Iroquoian Family: Cherokee (Tsalagi) is part of the Southern Iroquoian branch, sharing distant roots with Northern Iroquoian languages like Mohawk, Seneca, and Onondaga.

Migration: Cherokee speakers are believed to have separated from other Iroquoians around 3,000-4,000 years ago, moving south into the Appalachians. 

Alternative Theories & Influences (Debated):

Anatolian/Greek/Hebrew: Some researchers, like Brent Kennedy, propose links to Anatolian languages (Turkey) and even ancient Greek/Hebrew, pointing to shared words (especially for family terms) and the visual resemblance of some of Sequoyah's syllabary symbols to Greek/Hebrew letters.

Sequoyah's Syllabary: While Sequoyah adapted some symbols from English, Greek, and Hebrew, linguists note these are mostly visual resemblances, with no direct sound-alike relationship in the Cherokee language. 

In Summary:

Linguistically: Cherokee's closest ancient relatives are other Iroquoian languages from the Great Lakes area.

Popular Theories: Fringe theories suggest distant connections to ancient Mediterranean languages, but these are not widely accepted by mainstream linguistics. 

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SCN of KY

Fire Ceremony and Stomp Dance

Fire was and is sacred to the Cherokee, and is a living memorial.  It has been with the people from the beginning of time. Fire is a gift of the Great Spirit, it separates men from animals.  It makes civilization possible.  Fire can only be lit by a priest, typically a member of the Ani-Wodi clan (priests, keepers of the flame).  The fire is traditionally made of Oak wood.

 If the fire is not made of Oak, or is not lit by a priest, only bad luck can follow.  Once the kindling is placed, the priest lights a twig and offers the smoke to the North, East, South, West, Upward to the heavens, Downward to the Mother Earth, and Inward to the center (self) for purity. It is built at the bottom of a pit below the ground, and burns constantly. It is believed by traditional Cherokees that soon after creation of the Cherokee people, the Creator left his throne in Heaven and visited the Earth.  He chose four Cherokee men who were strong, healthy, good and true, and believed with all of their heart in the Creator.  They were each given a name:  Red, Blue, Black and Yellow.  Each was given a wooden stick that was very straight, and was told to place one end of the stick on a surface that would not burn. He said to place the other end in their hands, and start this material that would not burn to magically burn. . . by giving the sticks a circular, rotating motion.  

When this was done, and all the sticks were burning, they were told to go to the center of the cross, and there the four would start one singular fire.  This fire would burn for all time, and be the Sacred Fire.  The fire was started with the instructions and help of the Creator, and is maintained by the Ani-Wodi.  The Sacred Fire has been held since that time by the Cherokee, and is kept alive by the Chief, Assistant Chief, Firekeeper, and Assistant Firekeepers of the Ground.

A firekeeper (Ani -Wodi) and his assistant begins early dawn starting the official sacred fire.  He begins with small slivers of wood, inner most part of an oak tree called the sponge, flint and some rock to trigger a spark.  A medicine fire is also built where a small piece of meat is then thrown in and pipes are lit from the fire and a prayer follows.  The firekeeper does his job so well that he doesn’t have to come back until later in the day.

Sunrise:  The men sit around talking about political issues and the women prepare a meal for the day which consists of traditional and modern food. 

Later in the afternoon:  Sermons are held in the Cherokee language.  The sermon includes telling all to love all mankind.

After the sermon, a stickball game (A-ne-jo-di) is played–an ancient Cherokee tradition that resembles the American lacrosse.

At sundown, the sermons continue.  The Chief brings out the traditional pipe, and fills it with tobacco.  He lights it with a coal from the Sacred Fire, and takes seven puffs, to commemorate the seven sacred directions, and passes it to his neighbor. Then there is a meeting of Chief and tribal elders that call for the Stomp Dance to begin.  The first dance is by invitation, tribal elders, elders, medicine men and clan heads.

The members gather to visit, feast and dance far into the night. Stomp Dance participants include a leader, assistants and one or more “shell-shaker girls” who wear leg rattles traditionally made out of turtle shells filled with pebbles.   The ceremonial observance involves sacrificing meat to the sacred fire at the center of the grounds, taking medicine and going to water or river for ritual cleansing. The shakers provide rhythmic accompaniment while dancing around the fire, and a dance cannot begin without the shakers. The Stomp is a traditional dance that follows a strict order of preparation and execution.

The earliest record of Stomp Grounds takes us back to the Mound Building, or Mississippian Period.  During this period, one of the mounds was used as a ceremonial gathering place. When the people ceased to use the mounds for ceremonial purposes, they brought the square shaped ceremonial grounds with them. The dance grounds are carefully prepared, a large flat area, traditionally sunken, with seating arranged on all 4 sides. Around the Stomp Grounds are arranged seven arbors, one for each clan; Wolf (a-ni-wa-ya), Wild Potato (a-ni-go-ta-ge-wi) also known as the Bear Clan, Paint (a-ni-wo-di), Bird Clan (a-ni-tsi-ss-gwa), Long Hair (a-ni-gi-lo-hi) also known as Twister or Wind then the Blind Savannah as known as Blue (a-ni-sa-ho-ni). The members of each clan are related through their mothers.

The people prepare themselves with cleansing rituals, ‘going to water’ and taking traditional medicines to purify the body and spirit. This is a rededication to their way of life, Cherokee society, their clan, and the Great Spirit. 

The first round is from a selected group of people, the men start to sing, and the call is given for the women wearing the hells to enter the square, the song leader dances in front, followed by the lead shaker, who wears leg-rattles, some made of shells, some made of small turtle shells filled with stones.  Behind them come the rest of the singers and shakers, these followed by everyone else. The dance goes around the Fire in a counterclockwise direction, with the heart and left hand toward the sacred fire, everyone following in the steps of the person in front of them, forming a spiral.   

This is a slow shuffling stomp of the feet, one after the other. Stomp right, stomp left, stomp right, stomp left.  The sight and the sound reaches down deep into your soul and stirs something, both ancient and timeless. They dance until they are tired and rejoin the dance when they are rested.

A series of wampum belts serve to record and ‘read’ the traditional beliefs and stories.  The belts are very old, and are made of wampum beads sewn together with a form of seaweed from old Mexico.  The wampum belts are shown only on very sacred occasions.  The history of the belts relate that many years ago, the tribe was preparing to go to war.  The medicine men foresaw which would survive, and cut the original wampum belt into seven pieces.  After the war, the belts were scattered, and the last one was recovered by Redbird Smith in the very early 1900’s.

Although some have chosen to worship through other religious denominations, many continue to worship at regular Stomp Dances and are members of one of the several Grounds in Cherokee Nation.  Each ground has its own unique protocol and differences, but the general worship is similar with the same intention.

It has been Reported:

Despised Cherokee Ani-Kutani priests claimed to be extraterrestrials!

May 15, 2020

Written by Richard L. Thornton

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner

My book on the great Cherokee leader, Charles Renatus Hicks, is almost ready for publishing. This is the first book ever written on Hicks. I became interested in the man, while living in Pine Log, GA and being the consulting Architect for the restoration of Charles Hicks’ first home in Pine Log. It has taken me 23 years to dig up an accurate biography of the man. He essentially was the Father of the Cherokee Renaissance, but most of what you read about him on Wikipedia and in genealogical websites is inaccurate. He lived most of his life in Georgia and his white father lived in eastern Georgia. His older brother elected to live as a white man and established a plantation near Dublin, GA on the Lower Oconee River. His maternal grandfather was an Itsate Creek chief, who lived on the Flint River in Southwest Georgia.

Cherokee and non-Cherokee readers alike will be fascinated what Hicks wrote in his History of the Cherokee People in 1826. In Letter Two, he provided a description of the priesthood, who dominated the tribe until overthrown and banished.  Their name, Kutani or Kitani is an Alabama Indian word, which originally meant the priest who ignited and maintained the sacred fire in a temple.  The word was derived from the Alabama verb, meaning “to start a fire.”  In Alabama, kitani now means, “a sorcerer.”  Evidently, at some time in their past wanderings, the Cherokees came in contact with the Alabama . . . or else the Alabama once lived much farther north than their location in southern Alabama in the early 1700s.  Note that these priests claimed to be descended from extraterrestrials. 

He wrote: “ The Auh, ne, coo, tauh, nies  (Ani-kutawni), or Proud,— professed themselves, as is stated by traditioners, to be teachers of Heavenly Knowledge from the Creation; and the manner of their introduction to the assembled people is represented to have been usually at night times and when he approached near them, the lights of their fires were extinguished, as it was well known to them when he came near, by frequently repeating the words  Caul, lungh, luy, tee Tauk, che, lo, eh,  (I am from above).”

Hicks was not sure exactly how the Ani-Kitani were removed from Cherokee Society.  Some elders said they were banished.  Others said that they were all killed.  Hicks suspected that at least some of these priests survived and became a separate tribe.

It has been Reported:

"Greencorn priests" refer to spiritual leaders or officiants in the Green Corn Ceremonies (or Busk), vital harvest festivals for Southeastern Native American tribes (like Creek, Cherokee, Seminole), marking the new year, purification, renewal, and thanking the Creator for the corn harvest with new fires, fasting, feasts, and communal cleansing. These priests, sometimes called medicine men, guide rituals like leading dances, renewing sacred items, and facilitating forgiveness, embodying spiritual balance and community harmony. 

Key Aspects of the Ceremony & Priests' Roles:

Purpose: A New Year celebration, thanksgiving, purification, forgiveness of past wrongs (except murder), and community renewal, tied to the ripening corn.

Spiritual Leaders: Priests or medicine people (men or women) lead important parts, like kindling the new sacred fire from which all other fires are lit, symbolizing a fresh start.

Rituals: Involve fasting, ceremonial bathing, renewal of sacred bundles (medicine bundles), and communal dances (like the stomp dance).

Forgiveness: A time for forgiving debts, grudges, and crimes (excluding murder), restoring balance, according to this source and this source.

Significance: The ceremony ensures a successful harvest and reinforces cultural values like balance, respect, and interconnectedness with nature, with priests as central figures in maintaining these traditions. 

Historical & Modern Practice:

Tribes: Practiced by Creek (Muscogee), Cherokee, Seminole, Yuchi, Choctaw, and others in the Southeast and Eastern Woodlands.

Name Origin: "Busk" comes from the Creek word puskita (pusketv), meaning "a fast," according to Wikipedia.

Continued Tradition: Many tribes still hold Green Corn Ceremonies as a core part of their cultural and spiritual identity. 

A Cherokee priest refers to ancient spiritual leaders called the Ani-kutani, a hereditary priesthood believed to have been overthrown centuries ago, or to modern Native spiritual figures/Christian clergy of Cherokee descent who serve their communities, like Baptist pastors or Catholic priests, continuing spiritual guidance through traditional ways or introduced faiths, often using Cherokee language and culture. Ancient Priesthood: The Ani-Kutani Role: An ancient, hereditary class of priests or religious guides within the Cherokee Nation, known as the Fire Priests or Anigilohi, connected to sacred ceremonies and the Longhair Clan. Decline: Legend says they became corrupt and were overthrown in a widespread uprising, though their exact nature and fate are debated, with some linking them to early mound builders or even other tribes like the Yuchi. Cultural Significance: Their story reflects early Cherokee social structure and the deep connection between spiritual leadership, clans, and tradition before European contact. Modern Cherokee Spiritual Leaders Traditional Roles: Today, Cherokee spiritual leaders and healers (medicine people) conduct ceremonies, speak the Cherokee language, and offer guidance, often integrating traditional practices with other faiths.  In essence, a Cherokee priest can mean a historical figure from ancient lore, a contemporary traditional spiritual guide, or a Christian minister who serves the Cherokee people, reflecting a blend of heritage and faith. Ani-kutani - Wikipedia The Ani-kutani (ᎠᏂᎫᏔᏂ) were an ancient priesthood among the Cherokee people.

A Cherokee priest refers to one of three distinct types of spiritual leaders across the tribe's history:

1. The Ancient Ani-Kutani

The Ani-Kutani (or Anigilohi) were a hereditary class of theocratic leaders known as "Fire Priests" or the "Longhair Clan" [1, 2].

Role: They maintained sacred fires and held absolute religious and political authority [1].

The Uprising: According to oral tradition, they became tyrannical and were overthrown in a massive, coordinated uprising centuries ago [1, 2]. This event shifted Cherokee governance toward a more democratic system of civil and war chiefs [2].

2. Traditional Spiritual Leaders (Medicine People)

Modern traditionalists do not typically use the title "priest," instead recognizing medicine men and women or faithkeepers [1].

Function: They conduct seasonal ceremonies (such as the Green Corn Ceremony), provide herbal healing, and preserve the Cherokee language [1].

It has been Reported: 

Yuchi (Tsoyaha) Indigenous People

Stodpsronehlultc24f5lJ ma07122130l1mi5t9g,7l693261169 5y4t3h 

#205 – Ani-Kutani -- There are many wild myths about the Iniha Khutani Priests, and a dearth of real history – they remain a subject of much speculation and some apprehension among the Cherokee. While the word “kutani” has no meaning in Cherokee – it certainly does in Yuchi. As one Cherokee legend has it the Yuchi were the moundbuilders here before them. Knowledgeable elders of many of the Southeast tribes still relate traditions that the Yuchi were once the Greencorn priests among all the tribes. While historic records do not exist to verify the oral traditions, the Yuchean language with its unique structure does verify them. In fact the Yuchi language was the liturgical language, and has deposited many important words into the other Indigenous Southeastern languages. Words like Iniha (Yuchi for people of the ceremony), and used by the Shawnee & Lenape to denote the priests. Kutani (as in ani-Kutani – while "ani" means people in Cherokee, Khutani means “to make brothers” in Yuchean.), and is another designation used widely for the priesthood. Another Cherokee term for the priesthood was Nicotani (or Miccotani), which derives from the Yuchi Nekhotani (belief brothers). Another is Khotani, Yuchean for keyhole, and the term for the critical afterlife doorway in the constellation of Orion. And also Onkhathyna (a.k.a. Unktena) ‘plumed snake-enemy,” that grabbed the unwary spirit. So when I see all these references that profess only a mythic misunderstanding of the aniKutani, I find it sad and amusing. Sad, because so few know and understand the Yuchi language which unlocks the ancient Indigenous history of this great and ancient theocracy, and amused, that people would rather spin nonsense myths than actually know the past. The Kutani certainly were not exterminated, nor did they molest Indian maidens except in the propaganda of romantic Christian mythologies. 

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