Are the Cherokee Still There?

We find their beautiful spear heads and points as well as fragments of stone tools in our fields, just as we find remnants of those who supplanted them.

There is no record of permanent Cherokee settlements in our county but we were certainly a part of their hunting ground. The big bottom field at the lower part of our farm is where most of these artifacts came from and the presence in one small area of numerous half-finished points and flakes of flint leads us to believe that this field between two streams must have been a summer encampment and this one area must have been where a flint knapper worked.

When I mentioned the Cherokees in my Saturday post, Reader Wil (who is in the Netherlands) asked if they were still around and I promised to blog about the Indian Removal, also called The Long Walk or, more poetically still, The Trail of Tears. It's a shameful story, which I've already talked about in my book OLD WOUNDS and which I use again in the forthcoming THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS.

Briefly, the story is this. White settlers wanted Native American land and in 1838 the Indian Removal Act meant that all Native Americans in the southeastern US were driven from their land, houses and orchards destroyed. They were rounded up, impounded in stockades, and forcibly marched west to Oklahoma. 1,200 miles they traveled -- a six month journey. Men, women, and children, the very old and the very young were forced along the Trail of Tears--most walking -- in the bitter winter weather. One in four of the some 17,000 Native Americans died on the march.

There were some Cherokees who avoided the removal by hiding and some who came back later. Eventually, the Cherokees were 'given' land here in the North Carolina mountains -- a tiny fraction of what had been theirs. This is the Qualla Boundary -- Cherokee, NC, a few hours drive from our farm.

The Trail of Tears is our country's shame. I've put a link below to a much fuller account.

Go here to read about some modern day Cherokees --a Cherokee flute player and a woman who is trying to keep the Cherokee language alive. And here for a visit to the Qualla Boundary -- the home of the Eastern Band of Cherokee. And here for the story of the Trail of Tears.

This is such an iconic event -- it's hard to be a writer in western North Carolina and not feel compelled to write about it. Many have and many will. I'm sure I will again.

Cherokee

Yesterday I went to Cherokee and the Qualla Boundary for the Southeast Tribes Cultural Celebration. What a wonderful experience! It felt more like a family gathering than an event for tourists.

Of course, it all comes under research -- quite a few people have wanted Elizabeth to go back to Cherokee -- and quite a few would like to see more of that good-looking guy Driver Blackfox.

Here's a link to a web album with pictures from the stomp dancing and the stickball game. For more info on Cherokee, go here . And this is another good one.

Carolina Mountains Literary Festival . . . and a Surprise

I'm back -- and what a weekend!!!

I couldn't make it to Burnsville in time for the opening of the three hour session on the Cherokee Removal -- aka the Long Walk or the Trail of Tears -- but managed to slide in for the last hour. Such a sad story but one that, like that of the Holocaust, should never be forgotten.

There was time for a quick lunch with Sallie Bissell and Rose Senehi, the other two members of the panel I moderated yesterday, and then on to attend an incredible session with the multi-talented John Grant Jr, who played the Native American wooden flute and told Cherokee folk tales.

John was followed by Myrtle Driver ( this picture doesn't do her justice) a native Cherokee speaker who has translated Charles Frazer's Thirteen Moons into Cherokee. Barbara Duncan, Education Director for the Museum of the Cherokee Indian (in Cherokee, NC and well worth a visit!) read a scene in English and then Myrtle gave a very dramatic reading in Cherokee -- a lovely sound that I guess reminds me (in my limited experience with different languages) a bit of Japanese but somehow more musical.

When the reading was over, I approached these folks to tell them how very much I'd enjoyed the whole session and was thrilled when Barbara Duncan said she loved my books.

"You do?" I stammered. "Have you read Old Wounds? Did I get the Cherokee stuff right?"

When she said that I had, I felt like I'd just won a prize -- I did research, of course, but I didn't have anyone to check on my assumptions. So I have, ever since the books came out, hoped that I hadn't made some really dumb mistake or, even worse, said something offensive.

Whew! A load lifted!

That was Friday. On Saturday morning I led a three hour workshop of writing fools -- they wrote and wrote and wrote! It's amazing what interesting and accomplished stuff came out of a very quick workshop. They were given pictures (torn from magazines) of people and places and asked to construct a dialogue between two people in their pictures in a setting based on the picture they'd chosen. They all rose to the challenge, constructing little vignettes that left us all saying "And then what happened?" A great class!

That afternoon I did a solo presentation with a slide show -- you all have seen all the pictures -- going on behind me while I read selections from all four Elizabeth books. And then the panel, where all three of us talked about using the mystery to address social and environmental issues.

The festival ended with a banquet where I sat with another mystery writer, the charming Suzanne Adair. Fred Chappell, former NC poet laureate, spoke and read a poem created for the occasion -- actually, a poem within a poem. Another wow! moment.

I was up early this morning, on the road before 7 AM and arrived home in time for breakfast with John. Unpacking, laundry, email, bills to be paid, lunch (incredible leftover pizza by our own Papa John), and I was just settling down to post on this blog when the phone rang.

"Hi, Vicki? It's Tony Earley. We're in Mars Hill , on our way to Tennessee, and thought we'd come by."

I posted a while back about my admiration of Tony so all I'll say is I can't think of a better close to a literary weekend than to sit and rock on the front porch with the Earleys and their beautiful little girl.

The Little People

This gorgeous boulder lies at the edge of our orchard and things live under it. Possibly a groundhog or two, maybe some rabbits or there could be snakes. But whenever I see that long dark opening, I think of Little People -- not the Munchkins of Oz but the really little people - Shakespeare's English fairies small enough to use a shed snake-skin as a wrap and his elves who make jackets of bats' wings. Or maybe the Yunwi Tsundi.

It was the Cherokees who once hunted in this area that told of the Yunwi Tsunsdi - a race of Little People living in caves of rock here in the mountains. Handsome and well-formed, with flowing hair reaching almost to the ground, they were reckoned to be kind, helping lost people and especially children to find the way home. But, the old legends warn, the Little People value their privacy and if any traveler attempts to follow the sounds of their drumming to their dwelling-place, the Little People will cast a spell that will send the wanderer even further astray, turning him around and around and bewildering him forever.