Monday, 19 November 2012

Cherokee Indian Culture

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Cherokee Indian Culture Biography
Cherokee Culture
Cherokee cultural practices vary from clan to clan, location to location, family to family, or even among individual Cherokee people. The following is general cherokee culture information and may not be true of all Cherokee people. Follow the links within this article for more information.

Cherokee Burial Customs

Cherokee traditionally buried their dead in the earth as they believed that the plants fed the animals, the animals and plants fed the people, and the people, at their death, should return to the earth and feed the plants. Burial usually took place the day after the person died.

Cherokee Clothing

Cherokee men once wore only a breechcloth and moccasins in warm weather. In colder weather they added leggings and a fringed hunting jacket. Chiefs and priests wore long, full cloaks made of feathers and feather caps (not the traditional and popular plains Indian headdress) or cloth turbans. The men shaved their heads, leaving a topknot (sometimes called a scalplock), which they allowed to grow long, and often their bodies and faces were tattooed.
In warm weather women wore only a short skirt and added a poncho-like top during the winter. In the early 1800s,the Cherokee Tear Dress became the standard traditional fashion for Cherokee women, and the ribbon shirt is worn by men on special occasions. Both have become the standard "regalia" for Cherokee powwow dancing. Both the Ribbon Shirt and the tear dress are made from cotton calico.
The "tear" dresss is so called because in the old days, most Cherokee women didn't have scissiors, so they would "tear" a rectangle or square from a larger bolt of material. This dress style was in vogue during the Trail of Tears forced march, so the word "tear" can be pronounced either way, as in to "tear" the fabric, or Trail of "Tear" dress.
Women made the clothing, but men made the moccasins.

Cherokee Domestic Animals

Prior to European contact, the Cherokee had domesticated dogs, which they used for food and pack animals. Early on, the Cherokees began raising cattle, hogs, chickens, and other domesticated animals acquired from Europeans. The Cherokee began keeping and breeding horses about 1720, soon developing large herds. Because traders used horses to carry their packs, the Cherokee word for trader was the same as the word for horse, sogwili.

Traditional Cherokee Allies

Allied with Britain in the French and Spanish Wars, Fought on both sides of the Civil War.

Traditional Cherokee Enemies

Catawba, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Iroquois, Delaware, Seneca, Creek, Osage, Seminoles

First Contact with Europeans

The Cherokees' first interaction with Europeans was a brief encounter with Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto in 1540. English colonial traders began to appear among the Cherokees around 1673. The Cherokee first went to war with the colonists in 1711. During the 1700s, three major smallpox epidemics devastated the Cherokee population, each epdemic killing one-third to one-half of the Cherokee population at the time. From an estimated population of thirty-five thousand in 1685, about seven thousand survived in the mid-1760s.

Cherokee Government

Cherokee oral tradition tells of a time when the Cherokees were ruled over by a powerful priesthood called the ani-Kutani. When the priests took away a young man's wife, he organized a revolt and all the priests were killed. Since then, according to the tale, the Cherokees have had a democratic government.
Unified by language, traditions, and its clan system, the Cherokee nation had no centralized government or written laws. Towns governed themselves by democratic consensus, and each had its own priest, war chief, and peace chief.
Today, the three-branch government is composed of a chief executive called the principal chief, a legislature called the Tribal Council, and a judicial branch called a tribunal made up of three tribal justices.

Cherokee Indian Culture