Living Stories of the Cherokee Read online

  The stories of Freeman Owle end this collection. One of the younger generation whose first language is English, Freeman tells many of the classic myths of the Cherokee. A former schoolteacher, he now speaks to many groups about Cherokee culture and has continued his own historical and cultural researches. When performing in the southern Appalachians, he often weaves historical fact and stories about the particular location of the storytelling event into his evening's discourse, taking listeners to another world once located where they are now sitting.

  Animal stories, creation myths, legends, ghost stories, stories about places, and stories about family members are included in the repertoires. Some will easily be recognized as myths ("How the World Was Made") and legends ("The Legend of the Pileated Woodpecker"). Others are specific to families and individuals; these are included because they are part of family folklore and because they have been told for a very long time, although they may vary from generation to generation. Stories about healing, about supernatural experiences, about grandfathers and grandmothers, about particular places in the mountains—these are all traditional stories just as much as is "How the Possum Lost His Tail."

  Most books of Cherokee stories on the market today are literary retellings from Mooney's collection, which is still a classic, monumental work. A few scholars have collected stories and other cultural materials on the Qualla Boundary, the 57,000 acres owned by the Eastern Band and held in trust by the federal government, located sixty miles west of Asheville in the rugged Smoky Mountains of western North Carolina. Frans Olbrechts collected in Big Cove in 1926—27 and finished Mooney's Swimmer Manuscript for the Bureau of American Ethnology (1932). Jack and Anna Kilpatrick published some Cherokee stories from Olbrechts's notes in the Bureau of American Ethnology's annual reports in 1966. Friends of Thunder, their collection of stories from the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, has been published by the University of Oklahoma Press. And retired schoolteacher Mary Ulmer Chiltoskey a white woman from Alabama who married Cherokee woodcarver Going Back Chiltoskey, has actively collected and retold many stories in western North Carolina, publishing a number of them in pamphlet form.

  By focusing, as this book does, on storytellers and stories alive in oral tradition today, we learn that Cherokee storytelling is a living, vital tradition hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years old, valued both within the community and by outsiders. Tales collected by James Mooney more than a hundred years ago still exist in oral tradition, though at the time Mooney feared that the traditions were dying out. Many traditional stories circulate in addition to those that were documented by Mooney. Cherokee storytelling grows and changes as new tales are added and old ones are changed or forgotten. New stories about recent events and family histories form an important part of oral tradition along with the animal stories, creation myths, and legends. For example, Freeman Owle tells a story about his great-great-grandfather and the Trail of Tears, and many families on the Qualla Boundary still tell stories about what happened to their ancestors during the Removal.

  Cherokee storytelling, at least in its public forms, has changed from being presented mainly in the Cherokee language to being mainly in English, but it is still distinctly Cherokee. Traditional stories and values have survived changes in language and in the outward form of the culture. Cherokee people drive cars and live in modern houses, but the use of modern technology doesn't necessarily mean the loss of traditional culture. Values, stories, and ideas have a reality of their own.

  »Hístory of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indíans

  The Eastern Band includes about ten thousand people, most of whom live on a small part of the ancestral Cherokee homelands in the mountains of western North Carolina. Their present home, the Qualla Boundary, includes 57,000 acres of mountains, streams, and coves owned by the Eastern Band and held in trust by the federal government. The Eastern Band legally has "deferred sovereignty status," meaning that the people live and govern themselves as a sovereign nation within the United States. They have the power to make and enforce their own laws, providing these do not conflict with certain federal laws, such as those concerning homicide.

  The Eastern Band was once part of the much larger Cherokee nation, which in the early 1700s spread over 140,000 square miles, with seventy-two major towns. The Cherokee sited their villages on bottomlands along the rivers and hunted through the heights, covering territory in Georgia, North Carolina, east Tennessee, upper South Carolina, and parts of Alabama, Virginia, Kentucky, and West Virginia—the area we know today as the southern Appalachians and foothills.

  By the early nineteenth century, the federal government, seeking land in the Southeast for expansion, began planning to remove the Cherokee and the other four "civilized tribes"—the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole—from the Southeast. These plans were controversial and were hotly debated throughout the country. The Cherokee nation sent to Washington, D.C., a petition opposing Removal and signed by more than sixteen thousand tribal members; Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a personal letter to President Martin Van Buren decrying the concept; Congressman and American legend David Crockett of Tennessee voted against Removal. However, the bill for Removal narrowly passed Congress by one vote in 1830.

  At the time of Removal, the Cherokee nation numbered more than twenty thousand men, women, and children. It had a constitutional government, its own language, and a bilingual newspaper (in Cherokee and English), the Cherokee Phoenix. The Cherokee were farmers and plantation owners whose children were educated in mission schools, who owned slaves on some plantations in north Georgia, and who were, in terms of using technology, as "civilized" as their white neighbors. Many were Christians. Although in 1832 the Supreme Court had upheld the status of the Cherokee as a nation within the state of Georgia, the decision was disregarded by then-President Andrew Jackson, and plans went forward. The removal of the Cherokee began in May 1838.

  The Cherokee were rounded up at gunpoint, held in stockades for several months, and then marched to Oklahoma on what became known as the Trail of Tears. Estimates of casualties for the whole process—removal, imprisonment, march, and the first year in Oklahoma—range as high as eight to ten thousand. Scholars agree that at least four thousand perished on the trail itself.

  Some Cherokee were able to remain in North Carolina, however, and from that circumstance comes both a legend and some information of historical interest. The legend says that Tsali, a Cherokee man, was taken at gunpoint from his home along with his wife and older sons. On the way to the stockade, an incident involving Tsali's wife caused Tsali and his sons to react violently; they killed two soldiers and then fled into the woods. They eluded capture but were finally approached by William Holland Thomas, a white man raised by Yonaguska (Drowning Bear), with a bargain: If Tsali and his sons would turn themselves in for execution, the soldiers would allow the rest of the Cherokee people who were hiding the mountains to remain there. Tsali agreed, he and his sons came in and were shot (except for the youngest, who was spared because of his age), and the Cherokee hiding in the mountains were allowed to remain in western North Carolina, forming the nucleus of today's Eastern Band.

  This story is known to many Cherokee people and has been performed for millions of visitors in the outdoor drama Unto These Hills. Along with family stories about Removal, this is an important tale for the Cherokee people, one that exemplifies the importance of putting the good of the whole ahead of personal good. It is a story of sacrifice and survival that sums up the heartbreak of the Removal. And, in historical fact, when Tsali and his sons were executed, the U.S. Army ceased to hunt any more Cherokee "fugitives."

  For the sake of historical accuracy, it is important to note that in addition to the Cherokee people who hid in the mountains during Removal and those who went to Oklahoma and then simply turned around and came back, there were a number of Cherokees who neither hid nor were removed: the Oconaluftee Citizen Indians. About sixty Cherokee families had been granted 640 acres of land each under the provisions of the f
ederal treaties of 1817 and 1819. North Carolina was the only state to honor these provisions, upholding them in court in 1824 in a case brought by Euchella. As a result, about 30,000 acres were held by this group, which lived in the present-day counties of Cherokee, Graham, Macon, and Swain.

  One of the leaders of the Oconaluftee group was Yonaguska, who in 1820 had a vision telling him to teach the people to avoid alcohol and to remain in their homeland. The Oconaluftee Cherokee heeded this advice and by the time of the Removal had gained a reputation for being temperate and hardworking; several North Carolina legislators even testified to that effect in the state general assembly, in support of the Oconaluftees' request to remain in North Carolina at the time of Removal. Their request was approved by the state of North Carolina.

  The Oconaluftee Citizen Indians, as they were known, along with those Cherokee who hid in the mountains and those who returned almost immediately from Oklahoma, became the grandfathers and grandmothers of today's Eastern Band. The land owned by the Oconaluftee Indians, augmented by purchases of land through Will Thomas, became part of today's 57,000-acre Qualla Boundary.

  The presence of the Oconaluftee Citizen Indians helps to explain a number of other Cherokee family stories from the time of Removal. Such narratives describe ancestors who traveled on the Trail of Tears but escaped along the way to return to North Carolina, like Kathi Smith Littlejohn's mother-in-law's grandmother. One tells about Junaluska, Edna Chekelelee's great-grandfather's brother, who walked all the way to Oklahoma and then turned around and walked back to North Carolina. He is buried in Robbinsville, where his grave is marked off by an iron fence. Other stories refer to Cherokee people who hid in caves and were helped by white people "until it was safe to come out." Still others describe people like Freeman Owle's great-great-grandparents, who worked for white farmers until they raised enough money so that Will Thomas could buy land for them. While the kindness of white neighbors no doubt helped Cherokee people survive, these stories make more sense in the knowledge that there was a settled community of Cherokee people still in the mountains who would have been able to help returning relatives.

  Ironically, although the members of this community were known as "citizen" Indians, they were citizens of neither the United States nor the state of North Carolina. The treaty provisions allowed them to "apply" for citizenship, a process that required, among other criteria, a petition with the signatures of fifty white men for each Cherokee. The Eastern Cherokee's citizenship remained in limbo until 1924, although they paid taxes and were drafted for military service under federal laws. Despite the efforts of veterans returning after World War I and of women following the adoption of suffrage in 1920, the Eastern Cherokee were not allowed to register to vote until 1946, when veterans of World War I I finally prevailed on local registrars.

  »Storíes and Cultural Identíty

  The Eastern Cherokee have survived physically, living on a portion of their ancient territory. They have survived culturally as well, speaking the Kituwah dialect of the Cherokee language, making traditional pots, baskets, and other crafts, and telling Cherokee stories. Every culture's stories and language make that culture unique. For Europeans, beginning in the nineteenth century, language and folklore became crucial elements in defining national identity. The Grimms' folktales and language studies gave the Germans something to point to while saying: "These stories make us German."

  Davey .Arch mask illustrating "The Strange Husband"

  Likewise, the Cherokee can say, "This language, our syllabary, and these stories make us Cherokee." The Cherokee have had much in common with their southeastern neighbors the Creeks, the Catawbas, and others, but their language, their stories, their stamped pottery, their blowguns, and their winter houses all contributed to their uniqueness. The Cherokee always assumed that language was synonymous with tribal identity. This assumption ran so deep that, during the Revolutionary War, they were perplexed that people who all spoke English would make war against each other.

  »Storíes and the Arts

  Cherokee stories are interwoven not only with Cherokee language but also with history, dances, songs, medicine, and arts and crafts. Freeman Owle tells of his great-great-grandfather's experience during the Removal as though it happened yesterday. Before she dances,

  Davey Arch mask illustrating "The Old Man and the Blowgun"

  Edna Chekelelee tells the story of how the Quail Dance came to be. When she tells stories from the Trail of Tears, holding a basket that was carried on the trail and brought back, she sings the song that the people sang when they first arrived in Oklahoma, "Oh How I Love Jesus." Davey Arch tells the story of his grandfather's treatment by Mink, a famous medicine man at the turn of the century. Animals interact with conjure men and women in Kathi Smith Littlejohn's tales about why the mole lives underground and how the pileated woodpecker came to be. Davey Arch carves masks that illustrate his stories, like the mask with a frog coming out of a man's mouth, illustrating "The Strange Husband." Another of his masks shows a bird flying out of a man's mouth, something that happens in "The Old Man and the Blowgun." Freeman Owle carves stone into animal figures or collections of images that represent his stories. Conversely, stories may also explain the origins of arts and crafts such as pottery, as in "Me-Li and the Mud Dauber."

  Freeman Owle stone carving

  For the Cherokee, culture and traditions create a holistic experience, as they do for all peoples. As another example, in popular American culture a European folktale may be transformed into a Walt Disney film, which in turn generates mass-produced clothing, books, songs, and toys.

  »Storíes and Educatíon

  Cherokee stories were and continue to be used consciously to educate children in cultural values and to reaffirm those values for adults. As Freeman Owle has said, "Each and every story had a real reason for it. The Cherokees did not have schools, so they had to tell stories to teach their children." This teaching included moral values as well as the history of the people. One of the most often-told animal stories, "How the Possum Lost His Tail," has this moral: Do not brag about your abilities or you will get in trouble. This is how the possum lost his tail; it is also how the brave and mighty warrior ended up being killed with his own weapons.

  We also learn that it is bad to be greedy; greed allows the Rabbit to trick the Fox out of his string of fish. We learn that the evil you do will come back against you, as happened in "The Old Man and the Birds" when the thief who stole the old man's food starved to death himself. We learn that those who are different have important to contribute, like the bat who wins "The Birds and Animals Stickball Game." We learn that we are related to all the plants, animals, and spirits, like "Forever Boy" in Kathi Littlejohn's story "The Cherokee Little People." We learn that the Creator, the Little People, and the Nunnehi (the spirit people) can help us if we ask them properly. In learning all these lessons, we also learn the place of a Cherokee person in relationship to the rest of the world. If you are a Cherokee child hearing these stories, you learn all these things, and above all you learn what it means to be Cherokee.

  »Storíes and Hístory

  Some stories tell the history of the people, like those about the Trail of Tears or about events in the "old days." Some are family stories, like Freeman Owle's narrative about what happened to his great-great-grandfather during Removal and how his family was able to continue to live in North Carolina.

  Many families tell stories about how they came to be part of the Eastern Band instead of being taken to Oklahoma in the Removal. Although these events happened in 1838, they are told as though they happened yesterday. Solomon Bird, who lives in Robbinsville, can point to the place in the road in front of his house where soldiers rounded up his grandmother, with her grandparents, when she was a little girl in 1838. The events of more than 150 years ago can pass from a grandmother to her grandson, and from the grandson to his own grandchild, in only two tellings. These two tellings can precisely convey the facts and emotions of events. Stor
ies, the seeds of history and culture and identity, can pass through two tellers over a century and a half and still bear fruit that will grow true to seed, like Cherokee corn.

  »Storíes and Oríǵíns

  No one knows how old these stories are. Some tell about the origin of corn and beans, and archaeologists say that the Cherokee began growing corn sometime before 500 A.D. and beans sometime before 1200 A.D. Perhaps the origin stories could be placed within that timeframe. Walker Calhoun has said his grandmother told a tale about a "giant lizard" that could have referred to the dinosaurs or other ancient creatures. Other stories, collected by James Mooney refer to unknown beasts such as the giant yellow jacket that nested at Standing Indian in Macon County or the giant leech that lived near the conjunction of the Hiawassee and Valley Rivers near present-day Murphy, North Carolina. Although references to unknown animals do not tell us the age of the story, they may suggest a much earlier time when these animals might have roamed the mountains, with stories of them living well beyond their extinction.

  Archaeologists agree that the ancestors of the Cherokee exhibited unique, identifiable cultural characteristics as early as 250 A.D., including the production of stamped pottery and the use of winter houses and blowguns. In the southern Appalachians, where the Cherokee lived and hunted at the time of white contact in 1542 A.D., there are sites that show signs of continuous use dating back to 9000 B.C. These include hunting camps high in the mountains and villages like the one on Williams Island near present-day Chattanooga, Tennessee. Archaeologists cannot say that these people were not Cherokee. Moreover, linguistic evidence suggests that the Cherokee language began to show unique characteristics at least 3,500 years ago. And since all cultures tell stories, we must assume that these people, living in the southern Appalachians in villages along the rivers and hunting camps on the mountaintops near the balds, did the same.