Visit to Cherokee in the US state of North Carolina.
The tribes called Cherokee in English are with about 300,000 members the second largest still existing indigenous people in North America. Most live in Oklahoma and in Western North Carolina. There I am told that the “Cherokee” don’t actually exist.
Cherokee is a small town with just over 2,000 people in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Here I meet Juanita Wilson, who wants to show me sacred sites of her tribe.
The 58-year-old sociologist is a petite woman with short, slightly graying hair. She belongs to the Kituwah people. Better known as “Cherokee.” According to tradition, the Kituwah were given this name by a Spanish adventurer in the 15th century.
„Cherokee“ is not even a word in our language. We are Kituwahs. We come from the Mother Town of Kituwah – and that’s what we go by.
Juanita Wilson
At that time, the Kituwah controlled a large area throughout the present-day southeastern United States. Archaeological evidence corroborates their presence there for more than 11,000 years. Around 1820, the Kituwah became one of the “Five Civilized Tribes” who established a system of government modeled on the United States, with a chief, senate, and house of representatives, sometimes even chattel slavery. Because they adapted, they were allowed to remain on much of their original tribal territory.
They had been given the „choice“ to live within a reduced area or to move west to Indian Territory. Or: they could remain on their lands outside of the reserve but had to give up tribal membership and become US citizen. Juanita Wilson’s “Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians” are descended from these “citizen Cherokees.” Because of their distinct legal status, they were able to stay in North Carolina when, in 1838, more than 17,000 other Kituwahs were marched to Oklahoma on the deadly “Trail of Tears”. Later, the Eastern Band reorganized as a federally recognized tribe. Their reservation was formally placed into federal trust in 1924.
In the distance, I see the forested green hillsides of Smoky Mountain National Park. Out of sight is the 469-mile-long scenic Blue Ridge Parkway, whose southern terminus crosses Kituwah lands. Once all this was tribal land, says Juanita Wilson. Now tens of thousands of tourists are drawn here every year, hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter – and to the Cherokee casino year-round. All the Kituwah share in the revenue.
My tour guide steers the car down to the river, the Oconaluftee. The Kituwah had once called it “Long Person.” But again, a white man is said to have interfered. “He renamed the river ‘Long Man’ according to the patriarchal ideas of the whites at that time,” says Juanita Wilson. The Kituwah, however, are a matrilineal people, where affiliation and ownership are passed down through the maternal line. At marriage, for example, a man marries into his wife’s clan.
Juanita Wilson was born and raised in Cherokee. Her mother was a Kituwah, her father was a Navajo. She herself has been married to a non-native for 38 years. He’s even acclimated to Kituwah humor, she says, laughing. “Native humor is very specific. The more we pick on you and give you nicknames, the more we like you.”
We get off at a bridge. The gently flowing river symbolizes the Kituwah’s traditional understanding of living in unity with nature. Like other indigenous nations Kituwahs believe they belong to the land, not vice-versa. They believe their ancestors came to be on this Earth through “Unehlvnvi,” oo-nay-hlu-nuh-ee (God) and that there was already a living ecosystem of plants, animals, insects, etc. And they were given “natural laws,” to co-exist in peace and respect.
But this philosophy of life is fading with the generations, as is knowledge of the tribal language. That’s why Juanita Wilson organized a cleanup in the river a year ago. The result: they even fished clothes and shoes out of the water. “Actually, we shouldn’t even spit in the river because it’s a living being.” The tribal elders revere him like a family member. They say, “His head is in the mountains and his feet are in the sea.” Accordingly, the Kituwah see everything along the river’s course as “Long Man,” says Juanita Wilson.
Anything downstream of you is going to be impacted by what you do and don’t do. That’s the principle, you take care of it and you respect it.
Juanita Wilson
We leave the city limits behind us, swinging the car along a dirt road. I hear crows and see a snake scurrying by. This is the site of Kituwah Mound. According to legend, the mound was once the center of the settlement. The Kituwah call it “Our Mother Town.” The sacred place was originally up to four meters high. The medicine men of the tribe kept the “eternal flame” of life burning here. But that was a long time ago.
“This is Kituwah – this little rise.” Juanita Wilson points to an inconspicuous elevation in the middle of a grassy plain. Sometimes, she says, we gather here to “build the mound.” Then, like their ancestors, we bring soil from home, in a basket or a turtle shell, and we place it on the mound. “This reconnects us to the earth from which we live.” At these ritual gatherings, the Kituwah also symbolically rekindle an “eternal fire.”
On this day, smoke does indeed rise from behind the mound. This is a group of young people, Juanita Wilson explains to me, who come here with the permission of the tribal elders every last Friday of the month – for a ceremony. “During this, they dance and also light a fire.” Juanita Wilson, in turn, is involved with a nonprofit organization to restore more sacred mounds, following the example of Kituwah Mound.
Will there ever be reconciliation with the white America that once took the land and, in part, their culture from the American Indians? Juanita Wilson is skeptical. She wonders, she says, how the United States could ever be respectable, with blood on its hands from day one.
You can’t apologize for other people from the past. We are just saying: “Make sure it doesn’t happen again. Make sure that the truth comes out”. And that’s it.
Juanita Wilson