The Lives of Cherokee Sacred Places and the Struggles to Protect Them

THE PLASTICITY OF PLACE: THE LIVES OF CHEROKEE SACRED PLACES AND THE STRUGGLES TO PROTECT THEM A thesis presented to the faculty of the Graduate School of Western Carolina University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts in History. By Nathaniel Francis Holly Director: Dr. Andrew Denson Associate Professor of History History Department Committee Members: Dr. Alexander Macaulay, History Dr. Anne Rogers, Anthropology March, 2012 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS While the intellectual seed for this thesis was planted many years ago, its blossoming would not have been possible without help from a number of people. I would like to thank to Dr. Todd May at Clemson University for introducing me to the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty whose ideas are scattered throughout this work. I am also intellectually indebted to Edward Casey, David Abram, and Wendell Berry. Of course, this thesis would not have been completed without the sage advice of my thesis committee and a variety of professors here at Western Carolina University. Thanks to Dr. Alexander Macaulay for allowing me to flounder through the proposal in his historiography class and making sure that I payed attention to context when I wanted to retreat to the comfort of categories. Thanks to Dr. Anne Rogers in the Anthropology Department for her seemingly endless collection of archaeological anecdotes, connections, and encouragement. And, of course, thanks to my thesis director, Dr. Andrew Denson, for keeping me pointed in the right direction (or any direction for that matter) and talking me off the proverbial ledge when I wanted to delete an entire chapter. I would also like to thank Dr. Saheed Aderinto and Dr. Jessie Swigger whose classes allowed me to think more broadly about the importance of place. Thanks also to Dr. Gael Graham who read an early draft of the Nikwasi chapter and offered her thoughts. I would also like to thank Western Carolina University for providing funding in the form of the Lucy Ann Nordyke Fellowship and a Graduate School Study Grant. Finally, thanks to my family and fiancé for encouraging me to pursue a graduate degree and supporting me in that pursuit. Who knows where I would be without you. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ……………………………………………………………………… 4 Introduction: Defining “Sacred” ……………………………………………… 5 Chapter One: “The Metropolis of the Country” The Changing Sacredness of Chota ………………………………… 39 Chapter Two: “It is very prettie and set in grass” Appropriating the Sacredness of Nikwasi …………………………… 88 Chapter Three: “The Fire burns yet” Cherokee Identity and the Preservation of Kituwah ………………… 123 Epilogue: Preservation and the Sacredness of Place ………………………… 166 Works Cited …………………………………………………………………… 176 ABSTRACT THE PLASTICITY OF PLACE: THE LIVES OF CHEROKEE SACRED PLACES AND THE STRUGGLES TO PROTECT THEM Nathaniel Francis Holly, M.A. Western Carolina University (Spring 2012) Director: Dr. Andrew Denson Through an analysis of a variety of primary and secondary sources, this thesis outlines the malleability of “sacredness” and the importance of specific places to individual and collective identities. The first section of the thesis introduces the reader to the concept of “sacred” as a means to establish a theoretical foundation for the remainder of the analysis. After defining “sacred,” biographies of three places sacred to Cherokees – Chota, Nikwasi, and Kituwah – are created. Each of the chapters follows a similar formula: after rooting each place in the Cherokee sacred geography and an analyzing each place’s historical importance, the chapters conclude with an examination of the complex struggles to protect each sacred place. The first chapter centers on Chota, an ancient white, or peace, town located near Vonore, Tennessee on the Little Tennessee River. The second chapter focuses on Nikwasi, home to the mythical Nunnehi, located in modern day Franklin, North Carolina along the Little Tennessee River. The final chapter is devoted to Kituwah, the ancient Mother Town of all Cherokee people, located near Bryson City, North Carolina along the Tuckasegee River. In the end, by comparing each of these chapters, this thesis argues that ideas of sacredness are malleable and that certain places are integral to the identity of Cherokees and non-Cherokees alike. 5 INTRODUCTION: DEFINING “SACRED” All that we do, and are, is our religion. — Jack D. Forbes Indian tribes combine history and geography so that they have created a “sacred geography,” that is to say, every location within their original homeland has a multitude of stories…that produced the tribe in its current condition. — Vine Deloria, Jr. In a study devoted to the examination of Cherokee sacred places, it is important to define what “sacred” means for Cherokee people generally. Although there cannot be one single definition of “sacred” for all Cherokee people, as this thesis will reveal, by establishing a foundational understanding of traditional Cherokee religion and Cherokee “sacred geography” the non-Cherokee will be better equipped to digest the complexity of Cherokee sacred places and the struggles to protect them. According to historian Joshua Piker, there are two problems with writing this sort of history, “The first…is the one separating a twenty-first-century scholar (particularly one of non-Native descent) from the colonial-era peoples s/he writes about; the second is the one that divided Natives and non-Natives in early America and that continues to segregate our narratives about this period. Ignoring either does a disservice to both the people we write about and the broader project of understanding early American history.”1 In other words, bridging the 1 Joshua Piker, “Crossing Frontiers: Early American and Native American Histories,” Common-Place 5 (April, 2005) http://www.common-place.org/vol-05/no-03/author (accessed September 25, 2010). For further discussion on the issues facing current ethnohistory see Shepherd Krech III, “The State of Ethnohistory,” Annual Review of Anthropology 20 (1991): 345- 375. 6 gulf of misunderstanding between native and non-native peoples is important to any ethnohistorical study. This study will examine the lives of three separate Cherokee sacred places, including the nature of sacredness at those places and the struggles to protect them. The first, Chota, was a town located in the Overhill region that served as a center for diplomatic relations between Cherokee people and Europeans. The second, Nikwasi, was a town located in the Middle Town region that had tremendous importance in the tumultuous eighteenth-century. The last, Kituwah, which was purchased by the Eastern Band in 1996, was and is the most ancient of the Cherokee Mother Towns. Before delving into an in-depth examination of Chota, Nikwasi, and Kituwah, however, we must first answer the question, “What is Sacred?”2 In order to understand sacredness, one must first come to terms with Cherokee conceptions of religion. Again, as with any people over time, Cherokee ideas about religion have changed from the pre-colonial era through the present. That said, certain ideological and practical strands common to traditional Cherokee religion and the particular brand of Christianity many Cherokees continue to practice exist. Two of those threads – the inextricable nature of religion from other aspects of Cherokee life and the importance of myth to the creation and maintenance of sacred places – will be examined at length below. Religion for the Cherokee (especially pre-colonial) and for the European had drastically different manifestations. For the Cherokee there was no separation of church 2 A similar approach is taken in a number of other studies that deal with Native American sacred places. For example, see Winona LaDuke, Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2005) and Peggy V. Beck, Nia Francisco and Anna Lee Walters, The Sacred: Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life (Tsaile, AZ: Navajo Community College Press, 1996). 7 and state. In fact, there was no distinct church or state. There was no separation of religion from economics, or religion from politics. It is important to understand that “the Cherokee had never developed the radical separation between sacred and secular spheres which characterizes Euro-American Christianity.”3 For the traditional Cherokee, there was no religion per se. All actions were simultaneously sacred and secular. As ethnologist James Mooney observed, even well after colonialism had drastically altered Cherokee society, The Indian is essentially religious and contemplative, and it might almost be said that every act of his life is regulated and determined by his religious belief. It matters not that some may call this superstition. The difference is only relative…When we are willing to admit that the Indian has a religion which he holds sacred, even though it be different from our own, we can then admire the consistency of the theory, the particularity of the ceremonial and the beauty of the expression.4 There are two important ideas to take from Mooney’s quote. First, there was a fundamental difference between dominant, western ideas of religion and Native ideas of religion. Secondly, even at the tail end of the nineteenth-century, the religion of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians remained inseparable from their everyday lives. The gulf between Cherokee religious understandings and non-Indian religious understandings has, for centuries, been a virtually constant source of friction between American

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