Silent heart of the Cherokee country

Chief Barker on his mustang

The chiefs present themselves magnificently on their mustangs. The first mustang blue, riding it is the principal chief of the Cherokees Bill Barker with his wife. They sit in the back quite high, waving to the crowds that gathered on both sides of the road. The second mustang grey, the deputy chief John Critteden with his wife on it. The third mustang is ridden by a visitor from the neighbouring tribe, James Floyd, chief of the Muscogee. Following them on floats are the Cherokee Council and representatives of various Cherokee organisations: Cherokee police, Cherokee judges, youngsters from Cherokee schools, descendants of Cherokee freedmen. There even are Cherokee brass bands. All are parts of the great parade along the main street of Tahlequah, right in front of the old Cherokee Capitol.

Later chief Baker gives the "State of the Nation" speech on a square in front of the Capitol. The ceremony is opened by rising colours of both the U.S. and Cherokee Nation. Immediately after that a choir of girls in flowery dresses sing the U.S. anthem in the Cherokee language. Their flowery attire looks a bit like that of a 19th century housewifes but clearly the Cherokees consider it their national dress. After the anthem the Cherokee spiritual leader speaks:

"You see that bird printed on the leaflets? This is a crane, the symbol of our celebration today. The crane was worshipped by the Cherokees. Great warriors wore its feathers when they went to meditate. The crane feathers were used only for meditation, never for decoration. They were obtained from live birds that were caught and later released. Cranes live near water and this is the connection with today's ceremony: WATER IS SACRED. And now the blessing: in the name of God the Father, Goddess the Mother, God the child and the Holy Spirit..."

Official part of the Cherokee feast 

Chief Baker also speaks about the sacredness of water. "Water is sacred", he says, "and we are here to make sure that our descendants in the 7th generation drink the same good water we drink here today. This is why some Cherokees went to support the water guardians at the Standing Rock reservation in the north." But most of his speech is about the tribe's budget and how well it is managed. The group of youngsters who retraced the Trail of Tears on bicycled had some financial support. The cabin of Sequoia, which is now a museum, has been bought out from a private owner, who wanted to close the place because of the insufficient number of visitors. Descendants of black freedmen, whom the Cherokees had to free after the ivil War, were accepted to the tribe. The black descendants did not have the tribal citizenship but recently the U.S. Supreme Court decided that they are entitled to it and the Cherokee Supreme Court admitted they can be citizens.

Wait a minute. Some Black Americans demand that they be accepted as members of an Indian tribe? That would suggest that the budget is well managed indeed! Apparently being an Indian brings some advantages. But what are they?

* * *

In the historical centre of Tahlequah stands the capitol building. It is an impressive edifice of red brick, built on a square plan, with huge windows. In the years 1869-1907 it housed the government of the Cherokee Republic.

Here I have to insert this irritating interlude because most of my readers would expect chiefs of an Indian tribe in the 19th century to meet in a tipi made of bison hides, not in a capitol built of red brick. After all this is Oklahoma, the Indian Territory. Indians in the 19th century were supposed to chase bison in the prairies and wear feather bonnets. I have to insert this interlude to disperse the myth created by Buffalo Bill and his circus and kept alive by books like "Bury my heart at Wounded Knee". This book pretends to be sympathetic to Indians but in fact perpetuates the mythical image of a primitive man of the prairies. It is an image based on very selective information and therefore false.

The Capitol building at Tahlequah

The Cherokees are the biggest tribe in the U.S. but its history does not fit at all the "Bury My Heart..." stereotype. It was one of the "Five Civilized Tribes" named so because its members accepted the white man's ways of agriculture. They weren't stupid and quickly noticed that a field ploughed with oxen and manured with what oxen produce after eating grass gives a better yield than a field on freshly cleared forest with soil moved only with a deer antler. They also noticed that it is much easier to obtain beef from a herd of cattle grazing on a meadow behind the village than venison which has to be chased in the forest. Moreover, they noticed that their white neighbours send black slaves to till the land and that the slaves could be purchased with money earned selling deer hides. What's more, in the beginning of 19th century the Cherokees formed a republic with a written constitution, a parliament ("a tribal council" only in name) and a president ("a chief" only in name). The constitution, accepted in 1827, states clearly that selling land to anybody outside the tribe is a capital offence. This was because in the 18th century the whites bought land from village chiefs and the tribal territory shrank dangerously. This was at the time when the Cherokees lived in the mountains of Georgia and North Carolina. The Capital of the Cherokee country was a town called New Echota in what today is north-western Georgia. The president of the Cherokee Republic at the time was John Ross. Chief John Ross does not fit the stereotype of an Indian chief any more than a capitol built of red brick fits a stereotype of a place where Indian tribal elders meet. Instead of a feathered bonnet and fringed leggings he wore a suit and a top hat and instead of fighting the U.S. cavalry with bows and arrows he sued the state of Georgia in court. Incredibly - he won! Chief Justice Marshall ruled that an Indian tribe is a separate political entity from which the U.S. government can buy land but it cannot force the tribe to sell it. He ruled also that a tribe is a separate political entity, therefore tribal law applies on its territory and not state law. However, president Andrew Jackson, whose policy was to resettle all Indians beyond Mississippi, ignored this ruling. Chief John Ross, who at the time was the president of the Cherokee Republic, did not want to sell him land, but is this a problem? President Jackson found someone who was willing to sign a document which exchanged the Cherokee lands in Georgia for some lands in Oklahoma (which the U.S. government bought from Napoleon just a few years earlier). The document was signed by Major Ridge, who was very influential among the Cherokees but had no authority to sign any such thing. Another signatory was Elias Boudinot, the chief editor of a Cherokee newspaper, who as such was also very influential but had no authority to sign a document of this kind either.

Yes, the Cherokees had their own newspaper then. I know, it doesn't fit the stereotype of an Indian tribe, but what can I do? It had the title "Cherokee Phoenix" and was published in two languages. The English half was addressed to a friendly reader in American cities. The Cherokee half was for those Cherokees who did not know English but could read in their own language. The Cherokees in the 19th century had their own script, not invented by a missionary but by an Indian named Sequoia.

Major Ridge and other signatories packed their things and moved to Oklahoma on their own volition. John Ross and the majority of the tribe decided on passive resistance. Possibly this was the first, albeit not successful, such protest in history of America. The U.S. army sent for the purpose had to literally carry Indians out of their houses. The operation was supposedly logistically planned but either it was not very well planned or some of the supplies were stolen, either way many people died of malnutrition. This was the famous Cherokee "Trail of Tears".

In theory - a defeat. However, it is the ruling of chief justice Marshall that is the basis of the law that Indian reservations are exterritorial, state law does not apply there and for example casinos can be built on their territories. And the Cherokee Republic did not cease to exist! It was rebuilt in the new place, newly established town of Tahlequah became its capital and the capitol of red brick was erected. The tribal council decided (against the advice of chief John Ross) that those who sold the whole country to Americans deserve to die. They all were killed on the night of 22 June 1839. Only Stand Watie, Major Ridge's son, has been warned and managed to escape.

The Cherokees came to Oklahoma together with their slaves. It is possible that the slaves of the Cherokees had a better life than the slaves of white people. Sometimes it even happened that the black runaways joined the "Trail of Tears" and reached Oklahoma. Nevertheless the Cherokees had slaves and wanted to keep them. When the Civil War broke out chief John Ross tried to stay neutral but many Cherokees sided with the South and joined their army. Stand Watie even became a general. However, it turned out that the Cherokees sided with the losers and after the lost war had to free their slaves.

The Cherokees had their republic, built a capitol and kept black slaves but in one respect they were very different from their white neighbours: in their republic there was no private ownership of land. Every citizen could cultivate any available plot of land but when he ceased to cultivate it, he had no rights to it. This state of affairs was incomprehensible to the white neighbours who thought that there was too much unused land in the Cherokee Republic. It was suggested that the land that Indians actually cultivated would be given to individuals as private property and the "surplus" distributed to white farmers. The Cherokees would become citizens of the state of Oklahoma and the separate republic would be discontinued. The suggestion became reality in 1907. One can say that this was the end of Cherokees as a separate nation.

This at least was what I knew (having read about it in books) when I came to Tahlequah to see the capitol building. The capitol that definitely does not look like a tipi where elders of the tribe meet.

I came to see the building and I saw things that I didn't really expect. What is this parade about? If the history of the tribe has finished, then who are those chiefs on their colourful mustangs? Who are all those tribal judges, tribal police? What is that principal chief talking about giving his state-of-the-nation speech?

* * *

Cherokee girl choir

"Traditional women dance, dancers please come to the circle," the master of ceremonies announces through all the speakers. "Southern Thunder, take it off."

Boys with microphones on long poles run to the group of drummers thus named. A group of men sitting around a big drum start drumming. At first gently, then more and more loud, in the end they start singing. They don't sing with high falsettos as the Sioux in the north do but the melodic line seems to be quite similar. Women in the circle dance with grace. They move in small steps and bend their knees with each step so a shawl hanging from a forearm swings like a pendulum. Most women have dresses similar to the ones of the Sioux but there is a group of women in flowery dresses, the national Cherokee outfit. The pow wow here is quite similar to the ones I have seen in the north, on reservations of the Sioux and Ojibway, although there are some differences. In the north the Grand Entry is always at noon whereas here it is at six in the afternoon, when the sun is setting. Most of the dances are in the artificial, football-pitch style light. Among the Sioux the women dance in the direction opposite to that of men whereas here all the dancers move clockwise (as the Ojibway do). On the other hand among the Ojibway drum groups are always in the middle whereas here the drums are around the circle of the dancers (as among the Sioux). In the north the men drummers sing in high falsettos and the accompanying women even an octave higher, whereas here the singers sing in their normal, much lower voices. The melody line seems to be quite similar, though, sometimes sung without any meaningful words, just meaningless syllables. It is unmistakeably pow wow music, very different from anything a white man's ear is used to.

At a nearby football pitch there is something I have never seen in the north: a stickball match. It is a sport called so because the ball can only be touched by a racket on a long stick. Each player has two rackets, one in each hand. A goal is just a single pole. There are many players, maybe a hundred, a crowd moves quickly following the little ball. The players can tackle each other like in rugby, only the ball can be touched only with a racket.

Watching the match I sit on a bench next to a black man who is quite talkative and speaks with a Mississippian accent, similar to that of Muddy Waters. He says that he is not a descendant of a Cherokee freedman but came from Mississippi with his Choctaw wife. There is a Choctaw reservation near the place where he lives and there he found his wife. The Choctaws had their own trail of tears and the majority moved to Oklahoma, but clearly some stayed behind and today they have a reservation there. Clearly also they play stickball and it is so popular among them that a non-Indian husband comes all the way to Tahlequah to watch a match.

* * *

The "Heritage Centre" is an open air museum, a reconstruction of a Cherokee village of the 18th century. During the Cherokee national holiday there is a fair in front of it, crowds of people, some of whom come to see the village. One cannot walk around alone, only with a group and a guide. Normally I don't like the guide prattle but this time I am in luck: my guide is a born storyteller. He wears a n18th century Cherokee attire including a "Mohican", which was a hairstyle then in fashion among Indians, not only Mohicans.

Stickball

He says quite interesting things. For example explains the rules of stickball. There are two versions of this game, one when only boys play it, the other one when boys play against girls. If only boys play, they can touch the ball only with a racket but they can push and trip each other as they like. There is no set number of players, there could be a hundred or more, the only rule is that there has to be an equal number in each team. If only the boys play the goals are just single posts at each ent of the pitch. However, if boys play against girls, then the goal is only one: a wooden fish atop a tall post. Boys can touch the ball only with rackets but girls can grab it with their hands. Girls can push and trip boys but boys cannot do the same to girls. The guide demonstrates how to use the rackets. The are similar to lacrosse rackets but smaller and one player holds one in each hand.

The guide demonstrates also the use of reed blowguns that boys used to use to shoot small birds. It was the task of small boys to watch the fields so birds wouldn't eat the planted corn. The darts weren't poisoned but for small birds they were lethal anyway. These birds were then brought and left at the entrance to the council house and if anyone in the village wanted to cook them they were free to take. Travellers who visited the Cherokees in those days mention that all those birds were shot through the eye, which would suggest that the boys were quite skilful.

I wrote "council house" because the Cherokees never lived in tipis or wigwams. In the 18th century they lived in villages consisting of solid houses. Each family had two houses, one used in summer, the other in winter. The summer house had a roof but no walls whereas the winter house had walls and a fireplace. Normal houses were rectangular but the council house, which stood in a village centre, had seven walls and a conical roof. The Cherokees had seven clans and members of each clan had a place under one of these walls. Each Cherokee was a member of a clan and the membership was matrilinear. Whoever had a Cherokee mother belonged to a clan and thus was a Cherokee, it didn't matter who the father was. In the 18th century whites sometimes settled in the Cherokee country and married Indian girls, their children were considered Cherokees by the Indians. If a daughter of a white man and a Cherokee mother married a white man again, the children were fully Cherokees anyway. They say that the great chief John Ross was only 1/8 Indian but no Cherokees ever questioned the fact that he was a Cherokee.

* * *

Facing the Capitol stands the Arsenal - a building of nicely dressed stones. There is an art exhibition there during the national holiday, Cherokee artists of course but nothing specifically Cherokee there, just modern art as everywhere else. Not my cup of tea. There is also a lady selling CD's with music, choirs of girls wearing flowery frocks. Could I listen to the music before I buy? The lady has no equipement to listen to CD's but finds the choirs on youtube and shows me on the phone. They sound a bit like the choir that sang the U.S. anthem in Cherokee. Not my cup of tea either. But at least a conversation gets started.

A very interesting conversation. I've found at last somebody who can tell how it is that there is no reservation but there are the police, judges and a chief. Where do they have their jurisdiction?

"The plots of land that the Indians received in 1907 are treated as Indian land", said my interlocutor. "There we can run a business and not pay taxes on it. The casino at the entry to town and the tax-free tobacco shops are on this land. This is so called 'restricted land'. It cannot be sold to just anybody, it could only be sold to another tribe member. You cannot take a mortgage to buy this land because the bank could not repossess it in case on non-payment. If you want to take a mortgage, you have to apply to the tribe to take off the restriction.

The restricted land has its advantages as well. For example the tribe provides running water supply. Just recently my house had the running water installed. Before we had an electric pump from a well but it had problems, for example you couldn't take a shower and use a washing machine at the same time because when the well was emptied we had to wait another hour or two before it filled again. Now we have water from the pipe and there are no problems.

Cherokee freedmen

The tribe has also its own health care. It is not on the same level as in private hospitals but a Cherokee hospital can sent a patient to another hospital for a particular operation. Most Cherokees have a private insurance anyway. On the other hand we don't have to pay for Obama-care. We have to prove that we are members of the tribe, though. This is why we have the tribal ID-cards.

The descendants of freedmen would like to have all these amenities but I don't think they should be admitted to the tribe. They are not Indians. They don't know our traditions. I have seen them on a telly, they pretend to be Indians, they put some feathers on, but this is not our tradition. They are not Cherokees. The whole problem came up because the U.S. government wants to punish us for taking the wrong side in the Civil War.

A powwow is not our tradition either. We organise just one powwow in a year, it is an inter-tribal event, representatives of other tribes of Oklahoma come here as well. This is not our tradition, though. Our tradition is stomp dance. During that dance women have rattles made of turtle shells tied to their thighs so we have to dance with our legs far apart. Men dance with rattles in their hands. Yesterday there was a stomp dance in a special place next to the Heritage Centre. I don't know if they dance today as well.

If you are interested in all this you should go to John Ross Museum. My son works there, he will tell you more. Of course you should also go to Sequoia's Cabin.

* * *

Sequoia's Cabin is quite far beyond the town. Of course there is no public transport there, one has to drive to get to it. It is not so much a tourist attraction as a national treasure recently purchased from private hands, as chief Baker mentioned in his speech. Sequoia was an incredible genius, an illiterate Indian who decided to create a writing system for his people and succeeded. He lived in a simple log cabin which still exist, now a museum and a national treasure of the Cherokees.

A genius who created a script for his language. In his time the Cherokee elite sent their children to English schools but Sequoia was not part of this elite. He couldn't speak English. The story goes that he was once chatting to a group of other Cherokees, who said that the Creator gave a script to the white people and didn't give it to Indians. Sequoia hearing this shouted: "What do you mean - the Creator didn't give? I will invent a script for Indians. He worked on it for years, people thought he was kind of strange, writing strange signs on leather. He had a daughter who played with him often and learned those signs. One day somebody accused Sequoia of black magic and he decided to prove that this was no magic but a logical system that even a child can learn. He told a group of men to say a word each, wrote those words down and asked to show what he wrote to his daughter, who was not present. She read the words correctly, upon which somebody decided that not only this is not magic, but the invention can actually be useful.

Sequoia belonged to a group of Cherokees who early on were persuaded to leave their homes in Georgia and move to Oklahoma. These two places are half the continent apart and it is difficult to just drop in to visit a relative. However, with such a fantastic invention one can write letters! If a child can learn to read, surely an adult can, too! Suddenly it became fashionable among the Cherokees to write letters. White traders with astonishment noticed demand for ink and paper among the Indians.

Inside Sequoia's cabin

When Sequoia worked on his alphabet, some Cherokees decided to go for a shortcut and sent their children to English schools. So did chief Mountain Ridge (also known as Major Ridge) who sent his son John Ridge and a nephew Elias Boudinot to a school in Conneticut. When in 1828 the tribal council decided to publish their own periodical, Elias Boudinot became its chief editor. The periodical had a title "Cherokee Phoenix" and was published in two languages, the Cherokee part printed in Sequoia's alphabet. A year earlier the Cherokee Constitution was written using the same alphabet. One of the laws of this constitution read: "Selling tribal land to anybody outside the tribe is punishable by death."

1836 was for the Cherokees a year of national tragedy. Chief Major Ridge as well as his son and nephew, thinking there was no other way, signed the treaty of New Echota which stated that the Cherokees give up all their lands in Georgia and in exchange will receive new land in Oklahoma. They had no authority to sign such document. According to the Cherokee Constitution the only person authorised to sign a document of this kind was chief John Ross, the president of the Cherokee Republic, who categorically refused to give up any Cherokee land. This was the year of the Trail of Tears, when the majority of the tribe had to leave their own cuntry against their own will. Their arrival in Oklahoma caused new problems as those Cherokees who settled there earlier considered it their own land and didn't see any reason why the new arrivals (a huge majority) should now decide about their affairs. They say that Sequoia, who by now was considered a great sage, was doing all he could to reconcile the parties. In the end in 1839 a new constitution was written, which was accepted by both sides.

Later in life Sequoia travelled to Texas to find a group of Cherokees who originally settled there. Eventually they were driven away to Mexico. Sequoia travelled to Mexico to find them, never to return.

All that is left now is his cabin, a national treasure. It stands far from cities, between fields and forests of east Oklahoma, in a park. At the entry to the park there is a mosaic with a word "welcome" written in the Cherokee script. Apparently it has been decided that the cabin itself is too precious to stand exposed to elements, it is now housed in a bigger building that covers it entirely. Inside there are boards with information who Sequoia was. I guess they are for an overage American who might visit but who has his stereotype of an Indian chasing bison on the prairies. Sequoia? Who is that? An Indian who invented a script for his Indian language? No, it doesn't fit the stereotype. Neither do other things exhibited there: a few iron object forged by Sequoia, who was a blacksmith by trade.

What? An Indian blacksmith? Almost as hard to believe as an Indian inventor of a script.

One can enter the cabin and see a table, a quill, an ink pot and a buckskin with a few letters of the Cherokee alphabet written on it. It is a treasure but kind of sad. These days hardly anybody uses this alphabet. The youngsters nowadays go to English schools and speak English. Nobody needs this alphabet today. The Cherokee language as well as its script are slowly being forgotten.

* * *

In the outskirts of Tahlequah there is a cemetery with a tomb of John Ross, the great chief. He died in Washington D.C. but the tribe decided to bring his remains and bury him in Tahlequah. Next to the cemetery stands the John Ross Museum. It doesn't show him as a person but rather his political achievements. There are documents written in his hand and comments about history of the tribe. There is also information about tribal history after his death. Generally hardly a tourist attraction, probably aimed more at the Cherokee youth, so they know who they are.

Bruce Ross

At the entry to the museum I meet a man with a white beard who happily initiates a conversation. He introduces himself as Bruce Ross, a descendant of the great chief. He is a gifted storyteller and in fact this is exactly why he is here. I ask him whether one can see a stomp dance in Tahlequah.

"Stomp dance in Tahlequah is just entertainment. The only true stomp dance is at the Redbird Smith Stomp Grounds. You need a sacred flame for this ceremony and it is kept only there. The Sacred Fire was brought here during the Trail of Tears in seven parts, each clan carried one part, and after the arrival the parts were reunited. Redbird Smith Stomp Grounds are on the ground that was allotted to Redbird Smith when the Cherokee reservation was carved up in 1906. Redbird refused to accept an allotment and only signed the document when he was brought in handcuffs to court. Today the Keetowah Society has its ceremonies there. The Keetowah Society is a kind of a church of the Cherokee tradition. There is no contradiction between our religion and Christianity. I myself have been in a seminary and was on the way to become a Catholic priest, although I never became one. Redbird Smith was very friendly with Christians. His son was not, he was against Christianity, wanted to establish his own stomp ground and stole some sacred fire. Or so he thought but you cannot steal sacred fire. I have been to his place once. My spiritual guide Hickory Starr went there once and took me with him. I didn't feel well there and after I came back I had to take a bath. Others had the same reaction.

Once I had a brush with the law and was arrested but in the morning the sheriff released me without charge. I went home and wanted to take a bath to wash off the smell of prison but my wife told me to phone Hickory immediately. I phoned him and Hickory asked where I was. I said at home and he told me to go to the verandah. I did and he asked what I see. I told him that I see an owl on a tree. He asked if there was only one. I looked more closely and I saw another one. He said he was just checking whether they arrived. Ever since if I plan something and want to be sure if it is a right thing, I look for an owl outside my window.

One day at the stomp ground I met an old man whom I didn't remember having ever met but he told me that he did meet me before. When I looked surprised he told me that he saw me when my father brought me when I was a baby.

You can go to Redbird Smith stomp ground. It is not far from Tenkiller State Park. Maybe there you will meet somebody who will tell you more.

* * *

Redbird Smith Stomp Ground is not a tourist attraction. There are no road signs showing the way. The last bit one has to drive on a dirt road.

I went there as Bruce Ross told me. The grounds consist of a big well kept lawn surrounded by trees. In the middle there is a place for a bonfire with four big log ends resting as if the fire was just extinguished. Around the fireplace there are seven enches with roofs above. Nearby there is a tall post with a wooden fish on the top. There was nobody when I arrived. Motorways and cities are far, there was complete silence.

Here was the silent heart of the Cherokee country.

Redbird Smith ceremonial grounds

You will find this text, 
and many more on the subject, 
in my book "DO THEY STILL LIVE IN WIGWAMS?":