Cherokee Indians: From Uncivilized to Civilize

Cherokee Indians: From Uncivilized to Civilize

"The Cherokee people were indigenous people who lived in valleys of rivers that drained the southern Appalachians" (Perdue, 1). Today, their homeland extends from North Carolina into South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. Their claims also extended into Kentucky and Virginia. There they built their own towns, cleared their fields, planted crops and buried their dead. The Cherokees' uncivilized way of life before Europeans arrived was the only way they knew how to live, but after years of changes and government intervention, they had no choice but to change from being uncivilized to civilize.

For many generations, Cherokee women farmed and men hunted. Although the Cherokees divided tasks on the basis of gender, men helped clear fields, plant the crops and women helped dress and tan deerskins hunted by the men. The Cherokees depended on the deer, turkeys, bears, rabbits and other game animals the men killed and on the corn, beans, squash and other crops raised by women. Farming as well as hunting was essential Cherokee way of life which was an adopted long before Europeans arrived.

The Cherokee homestead consisted of building large rectangular houses with wooden sides and roofs which provided shelter during the summer and in the winter, they added thick mud-plastered walls to provide refuge from winter winds. All these houses were clustered around a small plaza. "Several generations of Cherokee family lived together. The Cherokees were matrilineal; this was their way of tracing kinship solely through women. The usual residents of a household were a woman, her husband, her daughters and their husbands, her daughter's children and any unmarried sons" (Perdue, 2).

The focal point of the Cherokee village was the town house or council house, structured with thick mud walls. Town houses had to be large enough to seat members of the village, sometimes several hundred people, because the entire town met here to conduct ceremonies and debate important issues. Cherokees arrived at decisions by consensus. They discussed issues until everyone could agree. Debate could last for weeks or months. Even women had a say in these debates even though the men's opinions were considered more valuable.

War was often a big concern for the Cherokees. Due to them sharing hunting grounds with many other Native peoples, the encounters in the hunting grounds often resulted in casualties. The Cherokees believed that they had a sacred duty to avenge deaths of their fallen comrades and so war parties formed quickly after a following a death. The nature of Native warfare often struck Europeans as brutal encounters, but the Cherokees' view of the world and their place in it left them with little alternatives. Cherokees believed in order for the world to be set right, anyone of the guilty party involved had to die.

Cherokees tried to keep their world in harmony. They did not separate religious observance from ordinary tasks of daily life. Such routine things as bathing, farming, hunting and eating all had religious implementations. Cherokees strongly believe you are what you eat, therefore they take in consideration what they eat based on their current situations. "The greatest challenge to the Cherokee world and belief system came with the arrival of the Europeans" (Perdue, 5).

"In 1783, British and American diplomats signed the Peace of Paris, ending the American Revolution" (Perdue, 7). This became important because United States had challenges to define its authority and determine a set of policies for dealing with the tribes. "By the end of the 1780's two things had happened to change the relations between the United States and Native Americans that had important implications for the Cherokees. In the first instance, the United States abandoned its assertion that the tribes were conquered enemies that had forfeited their rights to their lands. The second event of importance was the reorganization of the United States government under the Constitution"(Perdue, 9). Henry Knox's Indian policy which recognizes the federal government moral obligations to preserve and protect the Native Americans from their "uncivilized" ways of living, which began to take shape within the first few months of George Washington's administration.

This new culture change included in the Indian policy was the Cherokee's people way of assimilating into a white society. "The Cherokee embraced the government's program with enthusiasm, but they also decided to adapt "civilization" to Cherokee needs and goals" (Perdue, 12). This new adaptation started with a school system. The new school system emphasizes education to help change Cherokee & Anglo-American societies. The next change was that men could no longer hunt and fight but culturally farm and raise live stocks. "Farming was exactly what the "civilization" program prescribed for men" (Perdue, 13). Other significant transformation: Cherokees began to imitate an Anglo-American way of life. "Cherokee planters bought African American slaves, raised cotton and other crops for sale in the regional markets, and accumulated capital" (Perdue, 13). The wealthiest Cherokees invested in taverns