"According to Cherokee tradition, Kituwah is located at the center of the world and is home to the most sacred and oldest of all beloved, or mother, towns. Just by entering Kituwah, or indeed any village site, Cherokees reexperience the creation of the world, when the water beetle first surfaced with a piece of mud that later became the island on which they lived. People of Kituwah is a comprehensive account of the spiritual worldview and lifeways of the Eastern Cherokee people, from that beginning to today. Building on vast primary and secondary materials, native and non-native, John D. Loftin and Benjamin E. Frey show how Cherokee religious life evolved both before and after the calamitous coming of colonialism. This book offers an in-depth understanding of Cherokee culture and society"--Page 4 of cover.

Information about Sacred Place in North Carolina.

Few writers portray Native American life and history as richly, authentically, and insightfully as Robert J. Conley. Conley represents an important voice of the Cherokee past. The novels in his Real People series combine powerful characters, gripping plots, and vivid descriptions of tradition and mythology to preserve Cherokee culture and history. In Cherokee Dragon, the tenth novel in the series, Robert Conley explores the life if Dragging Canoe, the last great war chief of the united Cherokee tribe. In the late eighteenth century, as the English settlers begin steadily encroaching upon the Cherokee lands, the Nation divided among several towns and many chiefs?unites in a series of battles. But the united front is not one that lasts: Dragging Canoe’s belief that they must fight the settlers to preserve their lands and their culture is far from universal.

Includes treaties, genealogy of the tribe, and brief biographical sketches of individuals.

It is a feature of the twenty-first century that world languages are displacing local languages at an alarming rate, transforming social relations and complicating cultural transmission in the process. This language shift—the gradual abandonment of minority languages in favor of national or international languages—is often in response to inequalities in power, signaling a pressure to conform to the political and economic structures represented by the newly dominant languages. In its most extreme form, language shift can result in language death and thus the permanent loss of traditional knowledge and lifeways. To combat this, indigenous and scholarly communities around the world have undertaken various efforts, from archiving and lexicography to the creation of educational and cultural programs. What works in one community, however, may not work in another. Indeed, while the causes of language endangerment may be familiar, the responses to it depend on “highly specific local conditions and opportunities.” In keeping with this premise, the editors of this volume insist that to understand language endangerment, “researchers and communities must come to understand what is happening to the speakers, not just what is happening to the language.” The eleven case studies assembled here strive to fill a gap in the study of endangered languages by providing much-needed sociohistorical and ethnographic context and thus connecting specific language phenomena to larger national and international issues. The goal is to provide theoretical and methodological tools for researchers and organizers to best address the specific needs of communities facing language endangerment. The case studies here span regions as diverse as Kenya, Siberia, Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Venezuela, the United States, and Germany. The volume includes a foreword by linguistic anthropologist Jane Hill and an afterword by poet and linguist Ofelia Zepeda.

The Cherokees, by similarity of language, have been determined to be a branch of the great Iroquoian family of Indians. They are believed to have emigrated to the Southern Appalachians about the Thirteenth Century. They found the country occupied by various branches of the Muscogee or Creek people, who inhabited the Tennessee River valley to upper East Tennessee and North Carolina; and the headwaters of Tugaloo and Chattahoochie Rivers in Georgia and South Carolina.The Muscogee or Creek Indians are believed to have emigrated from Mexico to the mouth of the Mississippi about the year 1200 AD. The word Muscogee means Mexco-ulgae, Mexican People.Intermittent warfare, lasting through several centuries, was waged for possession of the mountainous country. Eventually, the Creeks, Kusatees, and Uchees, all of Muscogee blood, were forced to the southward. The Shawnees, who occupied Middle Tennessee, were forced northward into Ohio. The Cherokees, by right of conquest, claimed all the mountainous section now embraced in East Tennessee, North and South Carolina, and North Georgia. They claimed in addition as their hunting grounds, Middle Tennessee and Kentucky. De Soto, who traversed the Cherokee country in 1540, found them in substantially the same location as during the English period of settlement. The Cherokees had dealings with Virginia as early as 1689. Their principal affairs, however, were handled by the English through the Colony of South Carolina, and it is from the South Carolina records that we get the first mention of Cherokee chiefs. De Soto visited numerous Cherokee towns, but failed in every instance to mention the name of the chief. The original Cherokee settlement was the old town Kituwah, at the junction of Ocona Lufty and Tuckasegee Rivers. The tribe was from the earliest times divided into seven clans, and a few of the town-names indicate that each clan may have originally occupied a separate village. The seven clans were, Ani-gatugewa, Kituwah People; Ani-kawi, Deer People; Ani-waya, Wolf People; Ani-Sahani, Blue Paint People; Ani-wadi, Red Paint People; Ani-Tsiskwa, Bird People; and Ani-Gilahi, Long Hair People.

This work explores the dynamic issues of race and religion within the Cherokee Nation and to look at the role of secret societies in shaping these forces during the nineteenth century.