Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees
Posted by queenbee on September 27, 2010 at 6:29pm
http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/cher/sfoc/index.htm
The Cherokee Nation, largest of the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast,
is a people of Iroquoian lineage.
The Cherokee, who called themselves
"Ani'-Yun' wiya" or "Principal People", migrated to the Southeast from the Great
Lakes Region.
They commanded more than 40,000 square miles in the
southern Appalachians by 1650 with a population estimated at
22,500.
Similar to other Native Americans of the Southeast, their nation
was a confederacy of towns, each subordinate to supreme chiefs.
When
encountered by Europeans, they were an agrarian people who lived in log homes
(not tee pees) and observed sacred religious practices.
During the
American Revolution the Cherokees, as well as the Creek and Choctaw, supported
the British and made several attacks on forts and settlements in the
frontier.
After 1800 the Cherokees profoundly assimilated White
culture.
They adopted a government patterned after the United States,
wore European-style dress, and followed the white man's farming and
home-building methods.
Ironically, the Cherokees fought with Andrew
Jackson in the Creek War (1813-14).
Cherokee culture continued to
flourish with the invention of the Cherokee syllabary by Sequoyah in
1821.
This system, in which each character represents a syllable,
produced rapid literacy.
It made possible their written constitution, the
spread of Christianity, and the printing of the only Native American
newspaper,
The Cherokee Phoenix, begun in 1828. A seat of government was
built at New Echota.
However, that same year gold was discovered in north
Georgia's Cherokee territory.
Within a decade the Principal People's
native home, their "Enchanted Land", would be theirs no more.