Eastern Band Cherokee: Culture, History, and Tourism

Introduction

The Cherokee Tribe in North Carolina is part of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, a federally recognized independent Native American tribe whose home base is in Cherokee, North Carolina, south of the Smoky Mountains. The Eastern Band is comprised of the descendants of approximately 800 Cherokee who did not join the Trail of Tears—the forced migration of Native American nations from the Southern United States to the western region designated by the U.S. government as Indian Territory following the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This relatively small number of Cherokee (compared to the roughly 16,000 who were relocated) avoided removal by living on privately owned land rather than communal land.

For example, some 400 Cherokee lived on acreage owned by William Holland Thomas in the Smoky Mountains. Thomas had been taken in by the Cherokee in his youth and returned the favor in adulthood by allowing hundreds to live on his property and escape the hardships of forced migration. Another several hundred Cherokee were permitted to stay in the Qualla Boundary of North Carolina in return for their assistance in capturing a Cherokee leader named Tsali, who was wanted by the U.S. government (Kutsche, 1963). This paper describes the community and culture of the North Carolina Cherokee, their history, and the issues they currently face.

The People, Community, and Culture

The majority of the Eastern Band was able to remain in North Carolina thanks to William Holland Thomas, a European-American who had been adopted in his youth by Chief Yonaguska of the Cherokee. Thomas had also served as a state legislator and was determined to assist the Cherokee. Because the terms of forced migration required Native Americans who did not live on private land to relocate, not all Cherokee accepted those terms—Tsali was one such leader. Unlike Yonaguska, who had access to private land and could thus avoid migration, Tsali opposed the terms on principle and led a resistance force against the U.S. Army. This resistance was the primary reason those Cherokee who assisted in his capture were rewarded with recognized independence and permission to remain in North Carolina.

Today's North Carolina Cherokee community is descended from these two main groups. They maintain many of their ancestral tribal customs and, in the nineteenth century, purchased land in the Qualla Boundary. Many members of the Eastern Band converted to Christianity through contact with European communities in the eighteenth century. However, a revival of Cherokee traditionalism has produced a blend of religious views and practices that can be described as a mixture of new age, Christian, and traditional Cherokee elements. The Eastern Band still performs traditional Cherokee dances, and students within the Tribe are required to learn the Cherokee language (Montgomery-Anderson, 2015).

The community has also commemorated the trials of their fellow Native Americans through the outdoor drama Unto These Hills, written by Kermit Hunter in 1950. The play chronicles Cherokee history from the eighteenth to the twentieth century and has been performed in North Carolina since the mid-twentieth century. It continues to be staged today at the Mountainside Theatre (Cherokee North Carolina, 2018).

Location, Environment, and Ecosystem

The base of the Cherokee Tribe in North Carolina is located in the Smoky Mountain region. Originally, the Cherokee were spread throughout the area now known as North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. They mostly populated the Alleghany River area and the Appalachian Mountain chain, enjoying an ecosystem with a surprisingly moderate temperature that never became too hot or too cold year-round. The pine forests offered protection, security, and abundant food and game—from deer and rabbit to fish in the rivers and streams. Coastal regions also provided abundant shellfish. The climate has not changed significantly for the Cherokee (Carr, 2017), though their environment today is more modern in many respects.

In the Qualla Boundary region, the Cherokee reservation encompasses 82,600 acres with a resident population of more than 9,000 Cherokee (United States Census, 2010). The Qualla Boundary is technically a land trust rather than a reservation, as it was never formally reserved for the tribe by the federal government. The land is, however, protected by the federal government because of its ancestral importance to the Cherokee.