Religious conflict and cultural survival in Cherokee history

Native American Culture

Intolerance of native religion is a theme that pervades Native American studies, as the conditions that many Indian nations suffered were guised with a highly religiously motivated idea of manifest destiny. The Cherokee nation was no exception, as many members sought to live a life that was chosen for them, rather than made by choice. One hundred and fifty years of Cherokee history is peppered first with the ideal manifest destiny of taming the uncultured "barbarian" spirit by faith. Early in the Cherokee history there was struggles with conversion, indoctrination and intolerance of traditional ways. The modern Cherokee movement has been to meld Christianity (forced upon them by white society, with the spirit of the old knowledge and religion, which like many other native nations was a core aspect of life.

McLoughlin 156)

Leone 21) Despite early attempts by the Cherokee to become "civilized" and live within the traditional lands left to them, which had originally stretched the whole of the Eastern and Southeastern U.S., and even the designation as one of five "civilized" tribes they were forcibly moved from their homelands to the Ozark Plateau in the 1830s. ("Cherokee" NP) "Around 1650 the Cherokee sparsely inhabited some 40,000 square miles of eastern Tennessee and the western Carolinas."

Carmody, and Carmody 255)

The Cherokee refer to themselves as the Tsa-la-gi (jaw la gee) or a-ni-yv-wi-ya (ah knee yuh wee yah) which means the principled people. In the mid 17th century the Powhatan leader referred to his people as the Rickahockan. The word Cherokee is believed to derive from the Choctaw trade language "Cha-la-kee" which trhanslates to "those who live in the mountains, or "Chi-luk-ik-bi" which means "those who live in the caves." Other tribes also had names for the people, the Delaware peoples called then the "Alligewi" and the Iroquois called them "Oyata'ge'ronon" translated to "inhabitants of cave country." ("Cherokee" NP) the group therefore had many names and likely adopted one that the whites could pronounce and it stuck.

The Cherokee spoke a distinctive derived Iroquoian language that leads many scholars despite recorded history to be persuaded that they immigrated from the great lakes region long before the 16th century, when they are first recorded as this language is different from all the other Southwest Indian nations. The frequently cited Keetoowah settlement on the Tuckasegee River in North Carolina is often cited as the original Cherokee City among many settlements that were described by the European settlers they came into contact with. ("Cherokee" NP)

The Cherokee had a structured egalitarian society and in many ways were very "civilized" from the start with structured towns, rather than nomadic villages that moved with the seasons, a credit given to many other nations and part of the reason they were designated as one of five civilized tribes. The Cherokee were divided into seven clans, as seven was a sacred number to them and they had a war chief and a peace chief (Red Chief and White Chief) with a head medicine man that decided quarrels between the two chiefs who really worked in cooperation to rule the nation. ("Cherokee Society" NP) Lineage was patrilinial and matrilineal with the father than the maternal grandmother sharing lineal duties such as naming children and such. ("Cherokee Society" NP) the nation also had a subsistence economy where commodity was currency and there was little need for cash, the nation in fact resisted labor employment even into the beginning of the 20th century.

Finger 7)

Living stories of conflict for Cherokee identity in the modern sense is reflective of the dichotomy of a faith based on living close tot the land and a faith based on the Christian tenets of acting right and presenting yourself as an acceptable member of any society.

Duncan 106) in many ways the Cherokee were definitively good subjects for conversion to Christianity because many of their stoic personal standards were reflected in the Christian ideal. The difficulty for most them becomes the idea that there is inherent hypocrisy in the treatment of the Indian nations as it clearly does not reflect Christian ideals but land and wealth greed. (Wyss 63) the Cherokee creation story is similar to the Iroquoi and follows the line of reasoning that humans are latecomers and odd men out in a world that is filled with familiar and simple animals.

The earth,' they say, 'is a great island floating in a sea, and suspended at each of the four cardinal points by a cord hanging down from the sky vault, which is of solid rock. When the world grows old and worn out, the people will die and the cords will break and let the earth sink down into the ocean, and all will be water again.' Originally the animals were crowded into the sky world; everything was flood below. The Water-Beetle was sent on an exploration, and after darting about on the surface of the waters and finding no rest, it dived to the depths, where it brought up a bit of mud, from which the Earth developed by accretion."

Spack 23)

The circumstances of indoctrination of the Cherokee from their own belief systems to those of the whites was done through a series of boarding schools, where children were taken from their homes and subjected to English only learning environments, where they were barred from speaking in their native languages and barred for the most part from participating in Native American cultural expressions.

Spack 23) There was no allowable expression of culture and there was active suppression of native religion, especially as a whole generation of children where separated from their parents and taught how to live in the white world.

Wright, Hirlinger, and England 24) This movement was in fact so effective that the resurgence of Native American religion today is a revival attempting to make sure that the traditions do not die and that the oldest of the generations has the opportunity to build and spread the faith and language of the elders.