Cherokee Nation
Diet and Agriculture
The Cherokee had one large garden where they grew beans, corn, squash, pumpkins, and sunflowers. They also had small individual gardens. The women tended the gardens after the men cleared the fields and helped plant the crops. The men provided meat for their families using traps, bows and arrows, blowguns, and darts to hunt game. Deer were the most important animal they hunted, but they also hunted bears.
Cultural Practices
Five Civilized Tribes
The Cherokee were among the “Five Civilized Tribes,” along with the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. This group included approximately 20,000 people in at least fifty Alabama, Georgia, and Florida towns.
Corn Festivals
The Cherokee people had great respect for nature. They asked the spirits of the sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and elements to help them. Several festivals were held each year to celebrate planting and harvesting corn. During these festivals, the people painted their faces white to represent happiness.
Lacrosse Painting
Lacrosse
Lacrosse was a sport played by the Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Creek tribes. The game was played in two teams, with 60 players on each team. Each player held two sticks to catch and throw a ball, with a small thong basket at one end. No player was allowed to touch the ball except with the stick or basket. The object of the game was to score points by scooping up the ball in the basket and sending it through a pair of goalposts. The first team to score twenty goals was the winner.
Tools, Weapons, and Utensils
The Cherokee women wove mats and baskets, planted, tended, and harvested crops, cooked, made clothing and pottery, and gathered nuts. The men made tools and weapons, including tomahawks and blowguns, and built canoes, house frames, and roofs. Hunters used blowguns for small game and birds.
Art and Craftsmanship
The Cherokee people made drums and rattles. The women made pottery and baskets.
The Trail of Tears
President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830. This act required all Native Americans to move west of the Mississippi. At this time, the Cherokee Nation had an advanced culture with cities and a written constitution. They even had their own newspapers in the Cherokee language.
The reason for this act was that white settlers in Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Alabama desired the lands of the Cherokee. The military came into Cherokee lands and forced them to move to Oklahoma. This forced relocation became known as the “Trail of Tears.” During this move, many Cherokee died from disease, harsh weather, starvation, and attacks. Over 4,000 Cherokee died on the trail to Oklahoma.