Cherokee Nation News Release (918) 453-5378 FAX (918) 458-6181 Cherokee Nation Director of Communications@cherokee.org © Cherokee Nation - All Rights Reserved June 24, 2007

Cherokee Nation General Election Results

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. — Cherokee voters re-elected Principal Chief Chad Smith, elected 17 Council members and passed a referendum affirming a Constitutional amendment during the June 23 general election.

Smith received 7,974 votes, or 59% of the vote, beating challenger Stacy Leeds, who received 5,593 votes, or 41%.

The race for Deputy Chief saw incumbent Joe Grayson, Jr. defeating Raymond Vann. Grayson received 8,230 votes, 61% of the total cast. Vann finished with 5,205 votes, or 39%.

The following results for Council seats were decided at the polls on June 23:

District One - Cherokee District (Cherokee County - 2 Seats):

In Seat 1, incumbent Bill John Baker with 1576 votes (63%) defeated Barbara Dawes Martin who brought in 911 votes (37%). In Seat 2, incumbent Audra Smoke Connor will face-off against Tina Glory Jordan for the Seat 2 spot. Smoke Connor received 583 votes (24%) and Glory Jordan received 1083 votes (44%). David Walkingstick and Amon A. Baker, also vying for Seat 2, received 360 (15%) and 455 (18%) votes respectively.

District Two – Trail of Tears District (Adair County - 2 Seats)

In Seat 1, S. Joe Crittenden received 905 votes (57%) and defeated Rita Bunch, who garnered 690 votes (43%). In the race for Seat 2, incumbent Jackie Bob Martin who received 538 votes (33%) will face off with Jody Fishinghawk, who received 484 votes (30%). Other hopefuls in the Seat 2 race included Bob G. Leach with 286 votes (18%), Jack L. Christie with 281 votes (17.3%) and Ronnie Joe Hale with 34 votes (2%).

District Three – Sequoyah District (Sequoyah County - 2 Seats)

In the race for Seat 1, incumbent David W. Thornton with 612 votes narrowly defeated Sam Ed Bush, Jr. who received 610 votes. In Seat 2, challenger Janelle Lattimore Fullbright defeated incumbent Phyllis Yargee by a vote of 729 (58%) to 535 (42%).

District Four – Three Rivers District (Muskogee, Wagoner and McIntosh Counties – 1 Seat)

Incumbent Don Garvin will retain his seat, defeating challenger Micky Igert by a vote of 732 votes (69%) to 326 votes (31%).

District Five – Delaware District (Delaware and part of Ottawa Counties - 2 Seats)

In Seat 1, challenger Harley L. Buzzard with 610 votes (53%) won over incumbent Melvina Shotpouch who received 455 votes (40%) and Susan Lamb Reed with 87 votes (8%). In Seat 2, challenger Curtis G. Snell received 699 votes (67%) to defeat incumbent Linda Hughes O’Leary, who received 349 votes (33%).

District Six – Mayes District (Mayes County - 2 Seats)

In Seat 1, Chris Soap, 403 votes (56%) defeated Sue Fine, 250 votes (35%) and Jerry D. Troglin, 62 votes (9%). Meredith Frailey, who ran unopposed, will retain her position in Seat 2, with 615 votes.

District Seven – Will Rogers District (Rogers County - 1 Seat)

Incumbent Cara Cowan Watts will retain her seat with 716 votes (76%), defeating challenger Thelda Rucker Boen, who had 225 votes (24%).

District Eight – Oolagah District (Washington County & part of Tulsa County- 2 Seats)

For Seat 1, incumbent Buel Anglen, with 745 votes (75%), won over challenger Roy Herman, who had 250 votes (25%). For Seat 2, Bradley Cobb with 681 votes (69%) defeated Stephen D. Earley who received 304 votes (31%).

District Nine – Craig District (Nowata and Craig counties - 1 Seat)

Charles “Chuck” Hoskin, Jr., who received 490 votes (69%), defeated Rodney Lay who had 224 votes (31%).

At-Large District (outside the 14-county Cherokee Nation boundary - 2 Seats)

In Seat 1, Julia Coates, with 1,935 votes (74%) defeated Taylor Keen, who received 676 votes (26%). In Seat 2, Jack D. Baker, who had 1,952 votes (75%) will retain his seat, defeating challenger Sean R. Nordwall, who received 650 votes (25%).

In addition to the races held for elected officials, the resolution affirming the 2003 Constitutional amendment which removed the federal approval requirement from the Cherokee Nation Constitution, passed by a vote of 7,912 to 3,896 (67% to 33%).

Although results are not official until certified by the Cherokee Nation Election Commission, it is not expected that results will change significantly.

The run-off election for the two Council seats is scheduled for July 28, 2007.

For detailed election results, visit the Cherokee Nation web site at www.cherokee.org

Kanuchi

Kanuchi is considered to be a real delicacy. The nuts are gathered in the fall and allowed to dry for a few weeks before the kanuchi making begins. It is a simple process, but that does not necessarily mean that is easy. The hickory nuts are cracked and the largest pieces of shell removed either by shaking the pieces through a loosely woven basket, or picking them out by hand.

Traditionally, a log was hollowed out on one end into a bowl like shape. The shelled hickory nuts are placed in the hollowed log and pounded with a long heavy stick with the end rounded to have the same contour, more or less, as the cavity in the log. The nuts are pounded until they are of a consistency that can be formed into a ball that will hold its shape. Kanuchi balls are usually about three inches in diameter and must be stored in a cold place. Today kanuchi is usually preserved by freezing.

To prepare kanuchi for the table, place a kanuchi ball in a saucepan with about a quart of water and bring it to a boil to dissolve the ball. Allow the kanuchi to simmer about ten minutes and then poor it through a fine sieve. (A colander lined with cheese cloth works very well for this.) All the remaining shells are left in the sieve. If you have the time and patience you can pick the larger bits of nut meat from the shells in the sieve and add them to the liquid kanuchi. The kanuchi should be about as thick as light cream. Most traditional cooks will add about two cups of homemade hominy to a quart of kanuchi. Some cooks prefer hominy grits, which are prepared according to package directions and added to the kanuchi. Others add cooked rice. Such things as consistency and how much hominy or hominy grits to add are, of course a matter of taste, as is the addition of salt or sugar.

Serve kanuchi hot as soup.

The John Howard Payne papers, a document from 1835 where elders were interviewed for their knowledge, states that a thick drink was made from hickory nuts which had been pounded, but it was made with cold water and allowed to thicken without the addition of hominy or rice.

Info provided by various sources.

Native American Lands Sold under the Dawes Act

By 1871, the federal government stopped signing treaties with Native Americans and replaced the treaty system with a law giving individual Indians ownership of land that had been tribal property. This "Indian Homestead Act," official known as the Dawes Act, was a way for some Indians to become U.S. citizens. There were two reasons why the treaty system was abondoned. First, white settlers needed more and more land, and the fact that tribes were treated as separate nations with separate citizens made it more difficult to take land from them and "assimilate" them into the general population. Assimilation had become the new ideal. The goal was to absorb the tribes into the European-American culture and make native people more like mainstream Americans. Second, the House of Representatives was angry that they did not have a voice in these policies. Under the constitution, treaties are ratified by the U.S. Senate, not the House, even though the House has to appropriate the money to pay for them. So the Congress passed a compromise bill in 1871 that, in effect, brought an end to the treaty system. The bill contained the following language buried in an appropriations law for the Yankton Indians -- "Provided, That hereafter no Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe , or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty..." The end of the treaties meant the end of treating tribes as sovereign nations. Attempts were made to undermine the power of the tribal leaders and the tribal justice systems. Tribal bonds were viewed as an obstacle to federal attempts to assimilate the Indian into white society. Assimilation of the American Indians would become the basis for much of the government policy toward the Native American from the 1880s to the 1930s. "It has become the settled policy of the Government to break up reservations, destroy tribal relations, settle Indians upon their own homesteads, incorporate them into the national life, and deal with them not as nations or tribes or bands, but as individual citizens." -- Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas J. Morgan, 1890. This set the stage for the passage by Congress of the General Allotment Act (the Dawes Severalty Act) of 1887. Congressman Henry Dawes had great faith in the civilizing power of private property. He said that to be civilized was to "wear civilized clothes ... cultivate the ground, live in houses, ride in Studebaker wagons, send children to school, drink whiskey [and] own property." This act was designed to turn Indians into farmers, in the hopes they would become more like mainstream America. The federal government divided communal tribal lands into 160-acre parcels -- known as allotments -- and gave them to individual tribal members. The U.S. Government would then hold the land allotted to individual Indians in trust for a period of 25 years, so that the Indian would not sell the land and return to the reservation and/or be swindled out of it by scheming white men. The Act went on to offer Indians the benefits of U.S. citizenship -- if they took an allotment, lived separate form the tribe and became "civilized." "And every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States to whom allotments shall have been made under the provisions of this act, or under any law or treaty, and every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States who has voluntarily taken up, within said limits, his residence separate and apart from any tribe of Indians therein, and has adopted the habits of civilized life, is hereby declared to be a citizen of the United States, and is entitled to all the rights, privileges and immunities of such citizens..." -- Language from the Dawes Act. The Dawes Act would be the most important method of acquiring citizenship for the Indians prior to 1924. The Dawes Act tied Indian citizenship to the ultimate proof of civilization -- individual ownership of property. The American Indian became an American citizen as soon as he received his allotment. The Act also declared that Indians could become citizens if they had separated from their tribes and adopted the ways of civilized life, without ending their rights to tribal or other property. In a sense, the American Indian could maintain dual citizenship -- tribal and American. President Theodore Roosevelt described this important law in his message to Congress of December 3, 1901 as "a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass." The supporters of the Dawes Act not only wanted to destroy the Indian tribal loyalties and the reservation system but also to open up the reservation lands to white settlement. Hundreds of thousands of acres of land remained after the individual 160-acre allotments had been made. These parcels were then sold at bargain prices to land-hungry whites. Funds from the sale of so-called surplus land were used to establish Indian schools. The idea was that Indian children could be educated and taught the social habits of white Americans, thus completing the process of assimilation. The allotment system turned out to be a monumental disaster for the Indians. In addition to losing their "surplus" tribal land, many Native American families also lost their allotted land despite the government's 24-year period of trusteeship. The poorest of the poor were landless and the majority of Indians still resisted assimilation. Native Americans reached their lowest population numbers shortly after the turn of the 20th Century. By 1932, the sale of unclaimed land and allotted land resulted in the loss of two-thirds of the more than 100-million acres Native Americans had held prior to the Dawes Act. Because special treaties guaranteed them self-government, the tribes in the Indian Territory had been excluded from the Dawes Act. But, the pressures of white settlers and railroads wanting to acquire Indian land soon resulted in President Harrison declaring in 1889 that lands in the Oklahoma area were open to settlement. The various tribes in the Indian Territory were pressured into signing agreements to allot their lands. By 1901, the Native Americans of the Indian Territory were declared U.S. citizens. In 1907, Oklahoma became a State in the Union, and the tribes of Oklahoma had lost their sovereignty and their lands.

peggy sanders brennan
Keeping the Old Baskets Alive

Peggy Sanders Brennan, one of the leaders of Midwestern and Southeastern Native basketry, credits her art and connection to Cherokee culture for leading her away from overwhelming grief. “My knowledge of Cherokee basketry was my way of connecting to my past after the death of my father, Buck Sanders,” says Brennan. “After my father died, I needed a connection to him; his mother, Myrtle Monroe; and to my other Cherokee grandmothers.”

In the late 1980s, Brennan, 59, searched out her ancestry at the Cherokee Nation’s capitol in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and at the Oklahoma Historical Society with the help of her mother and oldest sister. Through the guidance of Cherokee artist Betty (Queti) Bondy, Brennan, a member of the Wolf Clan, studied ancient Cherokee beliefs for many years. “It was during this time that I began an interest in basket weaving,” Brennan says.

After failing to locate any local Cherokee weavers, patterns or techniques, “I bought any books about basket weaving I could find,” Brennan says. She examined Southeastern Indian baskets in private and museum collections to learn how her ancestors wove Cherokee twill baskets from maple, ash and honeysuckle. And she learned how to use plants, minerals and insects to dye her basket splints.

Then one day Brennan met master Cherokee basket weaver Mavis Doering, who taught her how to weave the Cherokee wicker plaited double-wall basket. Brennan learned how to gather and process river cane from artists Robin McBride Scott of Indiana and Roger and Shawna Cain of Oklahoma. And Michigan weaver Jackie Carlson, author of Flowing Water, which details the Cherokee double-weave technique, helped Brennan master the river cane double-weave basket.

Brennan says that the significance of the various symbols on Cherokee baskets relates to her people’s spirituality. “The clan symbols woven into mats and baskets identified who we were,” she says. ”When we attended a council meeting, our mat with the clan symbols hung above us and we sat on a mat with our symbols.” These symbols, which derive from both natural objects and religious worship, form the basketry, beadwork and finger-weaving patterns that journeyed to Oklahoma along the Trail of Tears with their creators. “By keeping the designs alive in our baskets,” she says, “we are remembering our past.”

Brennan’s desire to preserve the ancients’ patterns was bolstered by a First Place ribbon in the 1993 exhibit The Fire Takers: A Cherokee Homecoming Art Show at the Cherokee National Museum in Tahlequah for a traditionally woven and dyed oak plaited twill basket. Among her other awards, Brennan treasures her Judges’ Choice ribbon at the 2000 Heard Museum Indian Market for a basket tray.

Two of Brennan’s baskets were included in the traveling exhibit By Their Works You Shall Know Them, running from 1994 to 1996. This exhibit depicted the effects on Southeastern Indian basketry of the forced removal of Natives to Oklahoma. She was also an artist in residence at the Eiteljorg Museum in connection with the Philbrook Museum of Art’s world-renowned Clark Field Collection in 1999.

The lady who once taught herself weaving now shares her hard-won skill with others, including many family members. “I hope to continue to honor my teachers by passing on the art of Cherokee basketry,” Brennan says. “Teaching Native basketry is now more important to me than actually weaving baskets.” In 2001, Brennan started a small basketweaving circle to teach Native basketry, which grew into the Oklahoma Native American Basketweavers Association, with the assistance of former California Indian Basketweavers Association director Sara Greensfelder.

Brennan says of her students, “What I hope they remember is that their past is as important as their future and what they do now affects seven generations to come.”

Brennan’s work can be found on her Web site and at many Indian museum gift shops, including White River Trader at the Eiteljorg Museum and the Cherokee Heritage Center in Tahlequah. She also sells at shows, including the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market.

GOING TO THE WATER

Purification does not come from the a'si, the hothouse, but from the Yunwi Gunahita (Long Man), the River, for our people. They would wade out, facing the rising sun, and dip seven times under the water, while reciting prayers. This was/is done every morning (no matter how cold), this is known as "Going To Water".

Ama (water) has the power to cleanse the body and the soul. Water is a sacred
messenger to Unequa. There are two forms of "Going To Water."

One form is called Amayi Ditatiyi (Taking them to water), in which the water
was simply dipped up the hand and spread it over the person's head and body.

The second form is called Atawastiyi, in which the person plunged or went entirely under the surface of the water. The person "going to water" faced east and dipped himself under, or dipped water over himself, seven times.

The A'si, is sometimes mistaken for the Plains "Sweat Lodge", but the a'si was used mainly for the purpose of healing. When someone was sick or ill, they would strip and enter the a'si. Heated rocks would be placed in the center and then a concoction made of the beaten root of the wild parsnip would be poured over the rocks. Today, it is water that is used, as I have heard of no one using the wild parsnip anymore. There, the ill person would remain until they were in a profuse sweat and choking on the fumes. They would then leave the a'si and go to a nearby stream where they would jump in the water.

Chief Calls Special Meeting to Add Constitutional Amendment to June 23 Ballot

TAHLEQUAH, Okla.— Principal Chief Chad Smith has called a special Council meeting for June 6 to add a Constitutional amendment vote to the June 23 general election ballot. Smith proposes the Cherokee people vote again on an amendment that removed federal approval from the Constitutional amendment process, and that was the subject of BIA concerns earlier this week. Cherokee voters removed federal approval in 2003 and the amendment was declared effective by the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court last year.

“The Cherokee people have spoken clearly in the past that we want to remove federal approval over our constitutional process, and we will reaffirm our dedication to sovereignty and self-governance in the upcoming election," Smith said. "We must take a strong stance against the BIA or anyone else endangering the right of Indians to be able to decide, through the exercise of our cherished democratic freedoms, the content of our own Constitutions.”

The Cherokee Nation has abided by a Cherokee Nation Supreme Court ruling that said the tribe could revoke the federal government’s role in approving the tribe’s constitutional amendments. BIA officials have requested another vote on the amendment, and have indicated a willingness to approve the amendment under current election rules.

In its letter to the Cherokee Nation, the BIA was concerned that non-Indians whose citizenship status had been under review would not be allowed to vote in the election. However, based on a May 14 tribal court temporary order that was agreed to and approved by the Nation, these non-Indians have been temporarily reinstated to full citizenship and will now have the right to vote in the upcoming election. If passed by the Tribal Council, this amendment will be on that ballot, laying the groundwork for expected BIA approval.

The Cherokee Nation is a great Indian nation that embraces its mixed-race citizens. The tribe is proud of its thousands of citizens who share African-American, Latino, Asian, white and other ancestry, including 1,900 citizens who are Freedmen descendants.

“The Cherokee people can, should and do control their own government through their power at the polls,” Smith said. “The BIA has said it respects the principle of Indian self-governance, and has upheld that principle for decades. A second vote will make clear our determination to move forward with the will of the Cherokee people and the decisions of our tribal courts.”

Sunshine for Women Book Summaries | Home

The Untold Story of the Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists
Sally Roesch Wagner
Sky Carrier Press, 1996

• "I had been haunted by a question to the past, a mystery of feminist history: How did the radical suffragists come to their vision, a vision not of a Band-Aid reform but of a reconstituted world completely transformed?" p. 1

• "In the United States, until women's rights advocates began the painstaking task of changing state laws, a husband had the legal right to batter his wife (to interfere would "upset the domestic tranquillity of the home," one state supreme court held). But suffragists lived as neighbors to men of other nations whose religious, legal, social, and economic concept of women made such behavior unthinkable. Haudenosaunee spiritual practices were spelled out in an oral tradition called the Code of Handsome Lake, which told this cautionary tale (as reported by a white woman who was a contemporary of Stanton and Gage) of what would befall batterers in the afterlife:

  [A man] who was in the habit of beating his wife, was led to the red-hot statue of a female, and requested to treat it as he had done his wife. He commenced beating it, and the sparks flew out and were continual burning him. thus would it be done to all who beat their wives." page 3

• ". . . . shortly after Matilda Joslyn Gage was arrested in 1893 at her home in New York for the "crime" of trying to vote in a school board election, she was adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk nation and given the name Karonienhawi (Sky Carrier). In the Mohawk nation, women alone had the authority to nominate the chief, after counseling with all the people of the clan. What it must have meant to Gage to know of such real-life political power?" page 5

• "A Tuscarora chief, Elias Johnson, writing about the absence of rape among Iroquois men in his popular 1881 book, Legends, Traditions and Laws, of the Iroquois, or Six Nations. . . , commented wryly that European men had held the same respect for women "until they became civilized. A Cayuga chief, Dr. Peter Wilson, addressing the New York Historical Society in 1866, encouraged white men to use the occasion of Southern reconstruction to establish universal suffrage, "even of the women, as in his nation." " page 8

• "In her important work, The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine In American Indian Traditions, Paula Gunn Allen writes:

  Beliefs, attitudes, and laws such as these [the Iroquois Confederation] became part of the vision of American feminists and of other human liberation movements around the world. Yet feminists too often believe that no one has ever experienced the kind of society that empowered women and made that empowerment the basis of its rules and civilization. The price the feminist community must pay because it is not aware of the recent presence of gynarchical societies on this continent is necessary confusion, division, and much lost time." page 12

• "It was not simply the absence of rights that was the problem, they came to believe. It was the fact that, as Stanton said:

  Society is based on this four-fold bondage of woman- Church, State, Capital, and Society - making liberty and equality for her antagonistic to every organized institution." page 17

• From pages 22-38: Among rights which women held among the Native American tribes:
  1) Children belonged to the mother's tribe, not the father's tribe.
  2) If a marriage proves to be an unhappy one, each is at liberty to marry again. What each person brought into the marriage, each take out of the marriage. Women get custody of children.
  3) When a man brought the products of the hunt home and gave it to his wife, it was hers to dispose of as she saw fit. Her decisions were absolute, even to the sale of skins.
  4) A woman retains control of her possessions at all time, even after marriage. They are hers to sell, give away, or bequeath as she sees fit.
  5) Women ruled the house, stores were held in common.
  6) Rape and wife-battering were almost unknown.
  7) Women had the right to vote.
  8) Treaties had to be ratified by 3/4 of all voters and 3/4 of all mothers.
  9) Women had the power to impeach a chief (they "removed his horns," the deer's antlers he wore which signified his position.)
  10) Women spoke in council meetings.
  11) Women could forbid braves from going to war.
  

• Again, the situation was very different for Indian women, as Alice Fletcher explained:

  . . . the wife never becomes entirely under the control of her husband. Her kindred have a prior right, and can use that right to separate her from him or to protect her from him, should he maltreat her. The brother who would not rally to the help of his sister would become a by-word among his clan. Not only will he protect her at the risk of his life from insult and injury, but he will seek help for her when she is sick and suffering. . . " page 30

• "Fletcher was concerned about what would happen to the Indian women when they became citizens and lost their rights, and were treated with the same legal disrespect as white women, she told the International Council of Women in 1888:

  Not only does the woman under our [US] laws lose her independent hold on her property and herself, but there are offenses and injuries which can befall a woman which would be avenged and punished by the relatives under tribal law, but which have no penalty or recognition under our laws. If the Indian brother should, as of old, defend his sister, he would himself become liable to the law and suffer for his championship.

• She was referring, of course, to sexual and physical violence against women. Indian men's intolerance of rape was commented upon by many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Indian and non-Indian reporters alike, many of whom contended that rape didn't exist among Indian nations pervious to white contact." page 31

• "Minnie Myrtle wrote in 1855 about the Seneca:

  The legislative powers of the nation are vested in a Council of eighteen, chosen by the universal suffrages of the nation; but no treaty is to be binding, until it is ratified by three-fourths of all the voters, and three-fourths of all the mothers of the nation! So there was peace instead of war, as there would often be if the voice could be heard! And though the Senecas, in revising their laws and customs, have in a measure acceded to the civilized barbarism of treating the opinions of women with contempt, where their interest is equal, they still cannot sign a treaty without the consent of two-thirds of the mothers!" pages 33- 34

• "The India women with whom [ethnologist Alice] Fletcher had contact were well aware of their superior rights:

  As I have tried to explain our statutes to Indian women, I have met with but one response. They have said: "As an Indian woman I was free. I owned my home, my person, the work of my own hands, and my children could never forget me. I was better as an Indian woman than under white law." pages 37-38

• A nineteenth-century contemporary of Stanton and Gage, Arthur Parker, a Seneca, supported women's rights in part by writing newspaper stories which can be found in the Harriet Maxwell Converse collection, State Museum, Albany, NY.

  Return to Booknotes Menu

  Thanks for visiting Sunshine for Women at http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/main.html
  
  e-mail sunshine@pinn.net

  Sunshine for Women encourages you to support our feminist sisters by purchasing their books, reading them, disseminating the ideas they contain, but most especially, by making their book available to our sisters, our daughters, and the community at large by requesting your school library, your public library, and area bookstores to carry their books. Remember it is not enough to write literature, history, and theology, we must pass these works on to future generations. Help us to preserve these works for a new generation by putting them on library bookshelves.
  

  Copyrighted, created and maintained by Sunshine, 1996, 1997, 1998. You have Sunshine's permission to copy and disseminate this document only for not-for-profit uses as long Sunshine's URL appears on the document and notification that the excerpts are copyright to Sally Roesch Wagner 1996 appears on the document.

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The First Fire

---

In the beginning of the world, there was no fire. The animal people were often cold. Only the Thunders, who lived in the world beyond the sky arch, had fire. At last they sent Lightning down to an island. Lightning put fire into the bottom of a hollow sycamore tree.

The animal people knew that the fire was there, because they could see smoke rising from the top of the tree. But they could not get to it on account of the water. So they held a council to decide what to do.

Everyone that could fly or could swim was eager to go after the fire. Raven said, "Let me go. I am large and strong."

At that time Raven was white. He flew high and far across the water and reached the top of the sycamore tree. While he sat there wondering what to do, the heat scorched all his feathers black. The frightened Raven flew home without the fire, and his feathers have been black ever since.

Then the council sent Screech Owl. He flew to the island. But while he was looking down into the hollow tree, a blast of hot air came up and nearly burned out his eyes. He flew home and to this day, Screech Owl's eyes are red.

Then Hooting Owl and Horned Owl were sent to the island together. But the smoke nearly blinded them, and the ashes carried up by the wind made white rings about their eyes. They had to come home, and were never able to get rid of the white rings.

Then Little Snake swam across to the island, crawled through the grass to the tree, and entered it through a small hole at the bottom. But the smoke and the heat were too much for him, too. He escaped alive, but his body had been scorched black. And it was so twisted that he doubled on his track as if always trying to escape from a small space.

Big Snake, the climber, offered to go for fire, but he fell into the burning stump and became as black as Little Snake. He has been the great blacksnake ever since.

At last Water Spider said that she would go. Water Spider has black downy hair and red stripes on her body. She could run on top of water and she could dive to the bottom. She would have no trouble in getting to the island.

"But you are so little, how will you carry enough fire?" the council asked.

"I'll manage all right," answered Water Spider. "I can spin a web." so she spun a thread from her body and wove it into a little bowl and fastened the little bowl on her back. Then she crossed over to the island and through the grass. She put one little coal of fire into her bowl and brought it across to the people.

Every since, we have had fire. And the Water Spider still has her little bowl on her back.

My daughter recently asked about this blog and wondered why I don't write the stories that you see. I'm not much of a writer but I do enjoy stories about The Real People and other Native American people. So I try to find stories and articles that I find interesting and share them with you folks out there. Some are modern stories of people and places. Others are the stories handed down though many generations. I hope that you enjoy them as much as I do.

The Warriors of AniKituhwa



This dance group brings to life the Cherokee War Dance and Eagle Tail Dance as described by Lt. Henry Timberlake in 1762. Designated as official cultural ambassadors by the Tribal Council of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, they have performed at Colonial Williamsburg, the National Museum of the American Indian, and throughout the Southeast.

The War Dance was used when men went to war, but also when meeting with other nations for diplomacy and peace, and within the Cherokee nation was also used to raise money for people in need. It conveys the strength of the Cherokee nation.

The Warriors of AniKituhwa also perform Cherokee social dances including the Bear Dance, Beaver Hunting Dance, and Friendship Dance. They talk about the significance of the dances, their clothing, and Cherokee history and culture, and can provide other programs as well.

For more information contact Barbara Duncan at bduncan@cherokeemuseum.org or use the links below.

Accomplished Cherokee artist, and a Founding Member of the Cherokee Artists Association, Gunter Anderson poses with a variety of her creations.

Born in Salina, Oklahoma, 1920, Gunter began weaving at the age of 76. Though mostly self-taught by way of studying completed baskets, research and museum visits, she credits Bill Phelps and Bernice Kappel as her initial teachers.

"A good basket," Gunter states, "is closely woven. It should have a level base. The form should be symmetrical or concentrical in size to form a pleasing balance. Pleasing to the eye, useful as well as decorative. "

"Weaving has been important to humanity throughout history and the art of weaving should be taught to future generations of Native Americans, so that it will not be completely lost, and so they can enjoy it as well. Many of the designs have been lost, but perhaps with the help of museums and willing weavers, the existing designs can be crafted and taught."

Story: Long ago when there were few stars, an old Cherokee woman and her husband worked diligently to make meal from their corn. They traded meal to others in the village for things necessary. Someone started stealing the meal in the middle of the night. After watching a large dog fly down from the sky to eat the meal, the villagers decided to gather all the noise makers, rattles, drums, etc.. They all hid and waited one night. When the dog again came down for his feast, they all jumped out and startled him away ... as he was flying into the sky, the meal was streaming out of his large mouth ... this is "How the Milky Way Came to Be".

Check out the art of Rorex Bridges Studio. The artist has some awesome artwork in several mediums. I think this print is my favorite.

http://www.rorex-art.com/catalog1.htm

In the beginning of the world, ga lv la di e hi created First Man and First Woman. Together they built a lodge at the edge of a dense forest. They were very happy together; but like all humans do at times, they began to argue.

Finally First Woman became so angry she said she was leaving and never coming back. At that moment First Man really didn't care. First Woman started walking eastward down the path through the forest. She never looked back.

As the day grew later, First Man began to worry. At last he started down the same path in search of his wife. The Sun looked down on First Man and took pity on him. The Sun asked First Man if he was still angry with First Woman. First Man said he was not angry any more. The Sun asked if he would like to have First Woman back. Fist Man readily agreed he did.

The Sun found First Woman still walking down the path toward the East. So to entice her to stop, the Sun caused to grow beneath her feet lovely blueberries. The blueberries were large and ripe. First Woman paid no attention but kept walking down the path toward the East.

Further down the path the Sun caused to grow some luscious blackberries. The berries were very black and plump. First Woman looked neither left nor right but kept walking down the path toward the East.

At last the Sun caused to grow a plant that had never grown on the earth before. The plant covered the ground in front of First Woman. Suddenly she became aware of a fragrance she had never known. Stopping she looked down at her feet. Growing in the path was a plant with shiny green leaves, lovely white flowers with the largest most luscious red berries she had ever seen. First Woman stopped to pick one. Hmmm…she had never tasted anything quite like it! It was so sweet.

As First Woman ate the berry, the anger she felt began to fade away. She thought again of her husband and how they had parted in anger. She missed him and wanted to return home.

First Woman began to gather some of the berries. When she had all she could carry, she turned toward the West and started back down the path. Soon she met First Man. Together they shared the berries, and then hand in hand, they walked back to their lodge.

The Cherokee word for strawberry is ani. The rich bottomlands of the old Cherokee country were noted for their abundance of strawberries and other wild fruits. Even today, strawberries are often kept in Cherokee homes. They remind us not to argue and are a symbol of good luck.

Legends abound in the Cherokee culture and the existence of the universe has its place in the inventory of stories handed down from generation to generation. Forefathers of the present day Cherokee believed the universe was made up of three separate worlds: the Upper World, the Lower World, and This World.

This World, a round island resting on the surface of the waters, was suspended from the sky by four cords attached to the island at four cardinal points of the compass. Each direction of This World was identified by its own color and hovered somewhere between the perfect order and predictability of the Upper World and the total disorder and instability of the Lower World.

East was associated with the color red because it was the direction of the sun, the greatest deity of all. Red was also the color of sacred fire, believed to be directly connected with the sun, with blood and therefore with life. Red was also the color of success.

North was the direction of cold so its color was blue. It represented trouble and defeat.

South was the direction of warmth and its color white, was associated with peace and happiness.

West was the moon segment. It provided no warmth and unlike the sun was not a giver of life. Black was the color assigned to the West and it stood for the region of the souls of the dead and for death itself.

Mankind's goal, the Cherokee believed, was to find some halfway path or balance between the Upper World and the Lower World while living in This World.

2/07

I don't quite know how many of you are Cherokee, or if you are if you have been following the great controversy over the issue of the Freedmen on the rolls of the Cherokee Nation. It saddens me to see this kind of controversy going on within the Nation as this argument would never have been an issue among our ancestors. To them, if you lived as a Cherokee you were accepted as a Cherokee. While some of the wealthy mixed blood Cherokees had plantations and held slaves , they were never treated like slaves of the neighboring whites. Most of the time they were adopted into the tribe and married Cherokees. So why are some within the tribe today trying to eliminate/bar the decedents of these Freedmen from the enrolling as full citizens of the great Cherokee Nation???? My heart is heavy, and I pray to the Creator that, The People will right this great wrong. dohi (peace)

There was a couple named Kana'ti ("lucky hunter") and his wife, Selu ("maize"). Kana'ti was an excellent hunter and never failed to catch some game. Their son played in the river in which Selu washed the blood off of her husband's catch every day. The boy soon began playing with a creature that sprang from the river and called himself his elder brother, whose mother had thrown him into the river. Kana'ti and Selu knew he had come from the blood. Kana'ti once told his son to start wrestling and pin the spirit boy down so Kana'ti could see him. Kana'ti and Selu took the spirit boy home with them. He was a disobedient and wild child, who quickly developed skills in magic. He was called I'nage-utasvhi ("he who grew up in the wild"). I'nage-utasvhi and the real boy followed Kana'ti on a hunting trip one day, because I'nage-utasvhi wanted to find out where he caught all his game. I'nage-utasvhi turned himself into a bit of down, and floated onto Kana'ti's shoulder without his knowledge. He watched Kana'ti make arrows from the reeds of a swamp, then I'nage-utasvhi left and told Kana'ti's son what he had seen. Neither were certain of the purpose of an arrow.

The boys followed him farther and saw him shoot a deer, and then understood the meaning of the arrows. The boys then made seven arrows of their own, in imitation of Kama'ti and went to the same cave. When they tried to scare out a deer to shoot, the whole cave emptied of deer and they were so surprised that they did nothing. I'nage-utasvhi did shoot a deer in the tail, pushing its tail upwards. The boys decided shooting the deers' tails was fun, and did it to all the deer (this is why deer tails go up, instead of down like most animals). After the deer came raccoons, rabbits and all the other four-footed creatures, then the birds. The birds flapping wings made so much noise that Kana'ti heard what was happening and rushed to the scene. When he saw what was happening, he was furious. So he went up the mountain, and when he came to the place where he kept the game he found the two boys standing by the rock, and all the birds and animals were gone, and without saying a word he went down into the cave and kicked the covers off four jars in one corner. They contained bedbugs, lice, gnats and fleas, which then swarmed all over the boys. When Kana'ti felt they had been sufficiently punished he knocked the insects off the boys who had nearly been bitten to death.

Ever since then, mankind had to hunt to find the animals, who are no longer located in a cave. Now, Selu, the boys' mother, was an excellent cook and kept her foodstuffs in a storeroom. The boys wondered what she did in the storeroom, and they spied on her from a small hole. She leaned over a basket in the middle of the room and rubbed her stomach counterclockwise; the basket filled halfway with corn. She did the same under her armpits and the basket was filled the rest of the way with corn. The boys decided Selu was a witch and that the food was poisonous. She had to be killed, they decided.

Selu read their minds and knew they would kill her. She asked the boys to drag her body around a circle drawn on a cleared spot in front of the house, and watch the circle all night so that they would have maize the next day. They killed her with a club and put her head on the roof of the house facing west. They didn't follow her directions exactly, clearing only seven small spots instead of the one large circle as she said; this is why corn does not grow everywhere, but only in the places where Selu's blood fell as they dragged. They dragged her body only twice, and thus people have to work the crop two times. The next morning (after they watched all night) the corn was full grown.

When Kana'ti came back, he saw Selu's head and was furious. He went to stay with the wolf-people. I'nage-utasvhi once again changed himself into down and accompanied Kana'ti. The wolf people were having a conference, and Kana'ti asked them to challenge his boys to a ballgame, and then kill them. They agreed. I'nage-utasvhi and his brother (under I'nage-utasvhi's direction) made a wide circle all around the house, making a trail all around except in the direction from which the wolf-people would be coming. They made themselves arrows and waited. As soon as the wolf-people passed through the break in the trail, it magically transformed in a high fence, locking them in. I'nage-utasvhi and Kana'ti's son then killed them all with their arrows, as the wolf-people were trapped. A few escaped to a large swamp. The boys ran around the swamp, and fire sprang up in their tracks and only a handful of wolf-people survived, becoming the modern wolves.

The boys were soon approached by a traveler who asked for the secret of the neverending maize (agriculture). They gave him seven grains and told them to plant them every night and watch them until morning. The maize multiplied during the night, they told him. On the last night, they fell asleep and did not keep watch. This is why it is now necessary to grow maize for six months instead of one night.

The boys searched for Kana'ti. They sent a gaming wheel in each direction and, when it didn't come back, that was where they went, towards the Land of the Sun. They headed east and found Kana'ti walked with a dog, which was actually the gaming wheel.

The trio reached a swamp and Kana'ti told the boys it was dangerous and they should wait outside. Of course, they followed him again, stumbling across a panther, which I'nage-utasvhi shot in the head several times, but the panther was unfazed. When Kana'ti returned he asked if the boys had found the panther (knowing they had followed him). They told him they had but that it hadn't hurt them because they were men.

Next, Kana'ti told the boys that they would soon be with a tribe called the Anada'dvtaski ("roasters"), a cannibalistic people.

I'nage-utasvhi took some splinters from a tree that had been struck by lightning. When they arrived at the cannibals' village, they saw a large pot that had been set to boiling for the purpose of eating the boys. I'nage-utasvhi put the splinters into the fire which brought down lightning bolts on the cannibal village, killing the cannibals.

Meeting back up with Kana'ti (who was once again surprised by their survival), the boys soon separated from him again and then made their way to the end of the world, where the sun rises. Kana'ti and Selu were sitting there. Then, the boys stayed with their parents for seven days, and then returned to their homeland and were known as Anisga'ya Tsunsdi ("the little men") and their conversations were thunder.

The people were hungry sometime later, and retrieved the boys. They sang songs and the wind slowly grew. On the seventh song, deer came out from the woods. The villagers then learned the seven songs, but eventually forgot five, which the Cherokee hunters always sang when hunting deer.

Corn Mother, First Woman, Selu.