Museum of the Cherokee Indian
Cherokee, North Carolina
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This is me in front of the museum
Many many years before Columbus discovered America (the "new world") or the Spanish explorer Hernando deSoto first set foot in the Great Smoky Mountains in 1540, 25,000 Cherokees ruled over 135,000 square miles covering parts of what are now eight states.
Since earliest contact with European explorers in the 1500s, the Cherokee Nation has been identified as one of the most advanced among Native American tribes. Cherokee culture thrived for thousands of years in the southeastern United States before European contact. After contact, Cherokee society and culture continued to develop, progressing with acquisitions from European settlers. Soon, they had shaped a bicultural government and a society that matched the most "civilized" of the time.
Unlike the Plains Indians depicted in western movies, the Cherokee lived in log cabins, wore turbans and adopted European clothes. In the museum, many wonderful murals depict the lives of the Cherokee. Here, the tribal leaders travel across the ocean to meet with King George in England.
Unique among the many tribes inhabiting North America, the Cherokee have a written language created by Sequoyah in the 1820's. By the early 1840's, a Cherokee newspaper, "Tsa la gi Tsu lehisanunhi" or "Cherokee Phoenix", was being circulated throughout the territory.
Most historians credit Sequoyah, the most famous Cherokee, with the invention of the syllabary. However, some oral historians contend that the written Cherokee language is much, much older. But even if there was an ancient written Cherokee language, it was lost to the Cherokees until Sequoyah developed the syllabary. The development of the syllabary was one of the events which was destined to have a profound influence on the Cherokee Tribe. This extraordinary achievement marks the only known instance of an individual creating a totally new system of writing.
Born in the 1770s in the Cherokee village of Tuskegee on the Tennessee River, Sequoyah was a mixed blood whose mother, Wureth, belonged to the Paint Clan. Sometimes the young man was known by his English name, George Gist or Guess, a legacy from his white father. Sequoyah, reared in the old tribal ways and customs, became a hunter and fur trader. He was also a skilled silver craftsman who never learned to speak, write or read English. However, he was always fascinated with the white people’s ability to communicate with one another by making distinctive marks on paper - what some native people referred to as "talking leaves".
Handicapped from a hunting accident and therefore having more time for contemplation and study, Sequoyah supposedly set about to devise his own system of communication in 1809. He devoted the next dozen years to his task, taking time to serve as a soldier in the War of 1812 and the Creek War. Despite constant ridicule by friends and even family members, and accusations that he was insane or practicing witchcraft, Sequoyah became obsessed with his work on the Cherokee language. In 1812, Sequoyah’s demonstration of the system before a gathering of astonished tribal leaders was so dramatically convincing that it promptly led to the official approval of the syllabary.Within several months of Sequoyah’s unveiling of his invention, a substantial number of people in the Cherokee Nation reportedly were able to read and write in their own language. Many mixed bloods were already able to read and write in English, but the syllabary made it possible for virtually everyone in the Cherokee Nation, young and old, to master the language in a relatively short period of time.
*from "Mankiller" by Wilma Mankiller and Michael Wallis
© St.Martin’s Press 1993 pages 81-83
Of all the injustices done to Native Americans, none equals the cruelty and betrayal culminating in the tragic "Trail of Tears" when the Cherokee Nation was forcefully driven out of the mountains and marched 1,200 miles to Oklahoma. The Cherokee had coexisted peacefully with early settlers but the white man's lust for gold and land was all consuming and between 1684 and 1835, over 30 treaties chipped away at their original 135,000 square miles of Cherokee territory.
The Cherokee issue was hotly debated in Congress for many years. Sadly, speeches on behalf of the Cherokee by Henry Clay, Davy Crockett, Daniel Webster, and other prominent statesmen fell on deaf ears. President Andrew Jackson, whose life, ironically, was saved by Cherokee Chief Junaluska at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1812, was the one who signed the final "Removal Treaty."
Beginning in spring of 1837 and continuing through the fall of 1838, the Cherokee people were rounded up and corralled into hastily constructed stockades. So began the "Trail of Tears," a 1,200 mile journey to unfamiliar land. Under the command of General Winfield Scott, over 600 wagons, steamers and keel boats moved about 16,000 Cherokee by land and by river.
The infamous journey took between 104 and 189 days and before they arrived in Oklahoma, torrential rains, ice storms, disease, and utter despair had claimed the lives of at least 4,000 men, women and children.
A Georgia soldier who took part in the removal wrote, "I fought through the War Between the States and have seen many men shot, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew."
"Cries at Whitepath's Grave" by John Guthrie
Guthrie Studios
Will Thomas, an adopted Cherokee, purchased acreage which eventually became the Qualla Boundary where the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians now reside.
Those who survived the journey to Oklahoma are known as the Cherokee Nation. Descendants of those who hid in the Great Smoky Mountains to avoid removal are known as the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
The Cherokee seal (above) was designed to embrace the early government structure, and the eternal endurance of the Cherokee Indians. It was adopted by Act of the Cherokee National Council, and approved in 1871. The seven-pointed star symbolizes: (1) the seven age old clans of the Cherokee: (2) the seven characters of Sequoyah’s syllabary, meaning "Cherokee Nation." (The Cherokee characters are phonetically pronounced "Tsa-la-gi-hi A-yi-li") .. The wreath of oak leaves symbolizes the sacred fire which, from time immemorial, the Cherokees kept burning in their land. Oak was the wood traditionally burned, different species of oak having ever been indigenous to Cherokee country, both in North Carolina and Georgia as well as in the Indian Territory. The margin wording proclaims the authority of the seal in both the English and the Cherokee languages, and records the date (1839) of the adoption of the Constitution of the Cherokee Nation West. This seal was imprinted on all documents until the dissolution of the Cherokee Nation at Oklahoma Statehood.
References: Muriel H. Wright, "Seal of The Cherokee Nation." The Chronicles of Oklahoma,
Volume XXXIV (Summer, 1956): original painting by Guy C. Reid.
Today, there are nearly 12,000 members of the Eastern Band and many live in the Yellowhill, Birdtown, Painttown, Snowbird, Big Cove, and Wolftown communities on the Qualla Boundary - the Cherokee Indian Reservation.
The Cherokee's vast territorial holdings have long since disappeared but today, an aggressive initiative to revitalize the Cherokee language, culture, and heritage is being kept alive through the efforts of the Tribal Government.
Leaders of the Five Civilized Tribes of the Indian Nations
(from museum murals)
I am proud to state that both Choctaw and Cherokee blood runs in my veins, and I believe I descend from the survivors of the Cherokees who were forced on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma.
To see and learn more and obtain the latest, most up-to-date information about the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, click here to visit the website at www.cherokee-nc.com.
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