Oconaluftee Indian Village
Sunday, October 2  

In case it makes any difference in trying to find some underlying order in this collection of entries, those that have the "So what did you learn?" tag are posts that I put together at home after the trip when I had more time and opportunity to sort through the material. So, for example, this one was written on Saturday, Nov. 5, but it refers back to Sunday, Oct. 2., back to the beginning of the trip, when we visited the admittedly touristy, Oconaluftee Indian Village of the Cherokee reservation, appropriately located in Cherokee, NC.  On Sunday afternoon, after a stimulating conference and a good worship service, June and I visited this site. The choice was between the model village and the museum.  Among various reasons, you can't talk to the museum exhibits, so we chose the village and definitely felt afterwards that we couldn't have made a better choice.  Even though neither June nor I are social butterflies, we tend to lose any shyness or reticence when it counts. The folks are there to answer questions, and we like to think that an occasional intelligent inquiry or two might just make their day.  That's presupposing that they are prepared to respond to the occasional intelligent inquiry.  I will mention without further detail that not all participants were.  These remarks expand on my earlier comments, which features a slide show that you shouldn't want to miss.

Please recall that the Cherokee of North Carolina are a different branch of the nation(s) that are now housed in Oklahoma, brought their on the infamous "trail of tears." These are Cherokee who secluded themselves in the mountains and remained in hiding until 1868, when they were able to establish their reservation on their own grounds.  In the meantime, they underwent an unavoidable change in culture. The Cherokee, distant relatives of the Iroquois tribes, were effective warriors and woodsmen, but had started to concentrate on an agricultural way economy, and their religion reflected this way of life, according to the books.  However, growing corn was hardly an option when concealing yourself in the forested mountains, and, consequently, none of that supposed heritage was visible, except by inference (see below).  

So, I asked Bruce, the gentleman who was working on a blow gun, a somewhat silly question (in so many words): "To what extent are the local people practicing the religion of the Cherokee as it was observed prior to contact with white people?" It would have been nothing short of a miracle if he had been able to give me a precise answer to this rather academic question, but that wasn't the point. The idea in asking a question like that is to acknowledge that they had a religion prior to the coming of Christianity and that we were interested in listening rather than talking. I guarantee you that what he told us was far removed from the religion of the Cherokee in the 18th century; it was an amalgamation of many "typical" Native American beliefs. But they were his beliefs, not something he put together for my benefit. In sum,

• There is a God, specifically the Creator and Ruler of the universe. All Native Americans believe in him.
• Insofar as people honor him and make presents to him, it is not to persuade him for anything, but out of thanks to him.
• The natural world is alive, given to us to God to use with discretion and gratitude.
• You never just take a natural being without first asking permission. E.g. when he needs to pick a plant for his purposes, he first has to get permission to do so.
• However, if he asks a plant or animal for permission to take it, he doesn't take the one he asked. If he asks a plant for permission to use its kind for his purposes, then he takes the second one of its species.
• Significantly to me, even though there was a clear interrelationship with God, the creator of nature, the spirits in nature, and the human being, who relies on God as he relates to nature, I did not pick up any potential hostility between the human being and nature spirits nor concern with spirits of human origin. The accountability of both nature spirits and the human being went straight up vertically to God.  In other words, if he mistreats plants, his retribution will come from God, not the plants. Presumably, if the plants do not cooperate with him, God will make them behave.  

Remember, I'm recording here what he said, not a factual generalization that represents all Native Americans. Undoubtedly I did not receive the whole story.

The village had the sweat lodge, propagating a practice that has become nearly universal among American Indians.  

I was fascinated by the fact that was chief's headdress was a crow. Why not a hawk or some other aggressive bird of prey? I'm wondering if that practice goes back to the days of an agricultural economy?

The North Carolina band of Cherokee is divided into seven clans.  These are not technically totem groups.  They are exogamous (viz. one has to marry outside of one's own clan), but there are no further taboos, such as prohibition of certain foods.  Below are two clan insignia with their names.  A while ago I wrote about the development of scripts, as depicted in the Museum of the Alphabet in Charlotte, NC. If you look at the alphabet tree, you will see that the Cherokee script is an offshoot of the "Roman" alphabet (ours). It was invented in the 1820's by a man name Sequoia, who was illiterate with respect to English reading and writing, wanted to be able to express the Cherokee language in writing. He used Roman letters as a basis and added a few signs of his own devising.  However, that doesn't mean that we can simply read it, let alone pronounce it or understand it.  For example, the "Dh" on both signs means "clan," and it is pronounced "Ahnee," somewhat nasally. I don't know what the additional marks are; my guess is that they are remanants of a vestigial set of pictograms.

Finally, how can you have American Indian culture without ritual dancing?  I will let the little video clip of the gentleman giving the lesson speak for himself.

The reflections are just beginning.