Native American Cherokee Indian Symbols

The Cherokees.

The old home of the Cherokees was in the beautiful mountain region of the South—in Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, but especially in Georgia. They were Indians of great strength of character, and ready for improvement []and progress. When Oglethorpe settled Georgia, the Cherokees were his friends and allies. But after our government was established, the tribe, which had been so friendly to the whites, began to suffer from our encroachments. Treaties were made with them only to be broken. Little by little, the Indians were crowded back: sacred promises made by our government were not fulfilled.

Finally they refused to cede any more of their land to the greedy white settlers, and demanded that the United States protect them in their rights. The quarrel was now one between the United States and Georgia, and the central government found itself unable to keep its pledges. So orders were given that the Cherokees should be removed, even against their wish, to a new home.

At this time the Cherokees were most happy and prosperous. Their country was one of the most lovely portions of our land. A writer says: “The climate is delicious and healthy; the winters are mild; the spring clothes the ground with the richest scenery; flowers of exquisite beauty and variegated hues meet and fascinate the eye in every direction. In the plains and valleys the soil is generally rich, producing Indian corn, wheat, oats, indigo, and sweet and Irish potatoes. The natives carry on considerable trade with the adjoining states; some of them export cotton in boats down the Tennessee to the Mississippi, and down []that river to New Orleans. Apple and peach orchards are quite common, and gardens are cultivated, and much attention paid to them. Butter and cheese are seen on Cherokee tables. There are many public roads in the nation, and houses of entertainment kept by natives. Numerous and flourishing villages are seen in every section of the country. Cotton and woolen cloths are manufactured; blankets of various dimensions, manufactured by Cherokee hands, are very common. Almost every family in the nation grows cotton for its own consumption. Industry and commercial enterprise are extending themselves in every part. Nearly all the merchants in the nation are native Cherokees. Agricultural pursuits engage the chief attention of the people. Different branches of mechanics are pursued. The population is rapidly increasing.”

This was written in 1825. Only about ten years later, this happy, industrious, and prosperous people were removed by force from their so greatly loved home. Two years were allowed in which they must vacate lands that belonged to them, and which the United States had pledged should be always theirs. Few of them were gone when the two years had ended. In May, 1838, General Winfield Scott was sent with an army to remove them. He issued a proclamation which began as follows:—

“Cherokees,—The President of the United States has sent me with a powerful army to cause ]you, in accordance with the treaty of 1835, to join that part of your people who are already established on the other side of the Mississippi. Unhappily, the two years which were allowed for the purpose you have allowed to pass away without following, and without making any preparations to follow; and now, or by the time that this solemn address reaches your distant settlements, the emigration must be commenced in haste, but I hope without disorder. I have no power, by granting a further delay, to correct the error you have committed. The full moon of May is already on the wane, and before another shall have passed away, every Cherokee man, woman, and child in these states1 must be in motion to join their brethren in the West.”

And so this harmless, helpless people left for their long journey. Their only offense was that they owned land which the whites wanted. There are still old Indians who remember the“great removal.” Most of them were little children then, but the sad leaving their beloved mountains and the sorrow and hardship of the long journey is remembered after sixty years.

A few years since, we visited the Eastern Cherokees. Perhaps two thousand of them now live in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. Some of these are persons who never went to the Indian Territory, but hid themselves 
in rocks and caves until the soldiers were gone; some ran away from the great company as it moved westward, trudging back a long and toilsome journey; some are the children and grandchildren of such refugees; some are persons who drifted back in later years to the hills and forests, the springs and brooks, which their fathers had known and loved. They are mostly poor,—unlike their relatives in the West,—but they are industrious and happy. Their log houses are scattered over the mountain slopes or perched upon the tops of ridges or clustered together in little villages in the pretty valleys. Their fields are fenced and well cultivated. They work them in companies of ten or twelve persons; such companies are formed to work the fields of each member in order. They dress like white people, and most of the old Indian life is gone.

Still there are some bits of it left. The women are basket-makers, and make baskets of wide splints of cane, plain or dyed black or red, which are interwoven to make striking patterns. Some old women weave artistically shaped baskets from slender splints of oak. Old Catolsta, more than ninety years old, still shapes pottery vessels and marks them with ornamental patterns which are cut upon a little paddle of wood, and stamped on the soft clay by beating it with the paddle. They still sometimes use the bow and arrow, though more in sport than in earnest, as most of them have white men's guns. The arrow race is still  sometimes run. Several young men start out together, each with his bow and arrows. The arrows are shot out over the course; they run as fast as possible to where these fall and picking them up shoot them on at once. And so they go on over the whole course, each trying to get through first. Ball is largely a thing of the past, and great games are not common. Still there are rackets at many houses. One day we got a “scratcher” from old Hoyoneta, once a great medicine man for ball-players. This scratcher consisted of seven splinters of bone, sharpened at one end and inserted into a quill frame which held them firmly, separated from one another by about a quarter of an inch or less. When a young man was about to play his first great game of ball, he went to Hoyoneta, or some other medicine man, to be scratched.

Cherokee Indian Photo Gallery

He had already fasted and otherwise prepared himself for the ordeal. The old man, after muttering charms and incantations, drew the scratcher four times the length of the young man's body, burying the points each time deeply in the flesh.  Each time the instrument made seven scratches. One set of these ran from the base of the left thumb, up the arm, diagonally across the chest, down the right leg to the right great toe; another, from the base of the right thumb to the left great toe; another, from the base of the left little finger, up the back of the arm, across the back, down the right leg to the base of the little toe; the other, from the base of the right little finger, to the left little toe. The young man then plunged, with all these bleeding gashes, into a cold running brook. He was then ready for the morrow's ball play, for, had he not been scratched twenty-eight times with the bones of swift running creatures, and been prayed over by a great medicine man?

Every one should know of Sequoyah or George Guess or Guest, as he was called in English. He was a Cherokee who loved to work at machinery and invent handy devices. He determined to invent a system of writing his language. He saw that the writing of the white men consisted in the use of characters to represent sounds. At first he thought of using one character for each word; this was not convenient because there are so many words. He finally concluded that there were eighty-six syllables in Cherokee, and he formed a series of eighty-six characters to represent them. Some of these characters were borrowed from the white man's alphabet; the rest were specially invented. It took some little time 
for the Cherokees to accept Sequoyah's great invention, but by 1827 it was in use throughout the nation. Types were made, and soon books and papers were printed in the Cherokee language in Sequoyah's characters. These are still in use, and to-day in the Indian Territory, a newspaper is regularly printed by the Cherokee Nation, part of which is in English, part in the Cherokee character. This newspaper is, by the way, supplied free to each family by the Cherokee government.

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Native Americans: Cherokee Indian Symbolism

Native American's Graves and Burials Illustrated

Native American Picture Writing

Native American Sioux; Plains Indians Sign Language

Native American Canoes

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Native Americans Clothing and Moccasins

Native American Houses Illustrated

Native American Navaho Customs and Religion

Native Americans: The Complete Guide to the Apache's Customs and Religion Illustrated

About American Indiana Symbols and Picture Writing.

About American Indiana Symbols and Picture Writing.

    The Indians did not know how to write words by means of letters. There were, however, many things which they wished to remember, and they had found out several ways in which to record these.

Thus among the Sacs and Foxes there is a long legend with songs telling about their great teacher, the good, wise, and kind Wisuka. It is difficult to remember exactly such long narratives, but with objects to remind the reciter of each part, it is not so hard. So the persons who are to repeat the legend have a micäm. This is a wooden box, usually kept carefully wrapped up in a piece of buckskin and tied with a leathern thong; in it are a variety of curious objects, each one of which reminds the singer or reciter of one part of the narrative. Thus he is sure not to leave out any part. In the same way mystery men among other Algonkin tribes have pieces of birch bark upon which they scratch rude pictures, each of which reminds them of the first words of the different verses in their songs. Such reminders are great helps to the memory. Among the Iroquois and some eastern Algonkins, they used, as we shall see, wampum belts to help remember the details of treaties or of important events.

Among many tribes pictures were used for recording matters of importance. Many Sioux chiefs have written the story of their life in pictures. They took several large sheets of paper and gummed the edges together so as to make one long strip. Upon this they made pictures representing the important incidents in their lives. Thus in one picture was shown where, as a boy, the artist shot his first deer; in another was represented his first hunting party; in another, how he went on the war-path to gain the name of brave; in another, where he danced the sun dance; again, how he went to Washington to see the white men's officers, on business.

The most important record made by the Sioux is the Dakota Calendar. More than a century ago a Sioux Indian determined to keep a count of the years and of their happenings. So he began a record which was called a “winter count,” where the events of the different years were shown by pictures. His idea became popular, and a number of these winter counts were begun by other Indians. The most important of these is one which has been called the Dakota Calendar. It belonged for a long time to an Indian named Lone Dog. The one he had was a copy on cloth from a still older one, which had been made upon a buffalo skin. This count appears to have begun about the year 1800.

The Dakota Calendar. (After Mallery.)

Each year its maker selected some important event, by which the year was to be remembered, and made a picture for it. The first five or six pictures run in a nearly straight line to the left; the line of pictures then coils around and around this, the last picture always being added to the end of the coiled line. The pictures are in black and red, and while rudely drawn, most of them can be easily recognized. In 1801 the Sioux had a terrible attack of smallpox, and many of them died; the picture for the year is a man covered with red spots. Whooping-cough is a disease of which white people have little fear, but it is sometimes very destructive to Indians; in 1813 it was among the Sioux, and the picture for that year was a man coughing, as shown by lines diverging from in front of his mouth. In 1840 the Sioux made a treaty of peace with the Cheyennes; the picture shows two hands extended for a friendly grasp. In 1869 there was a total eclipse of the sun, which is represented by a blackened sun and two stars in red: “The stars were seen in the daytime.” In 1833 was the famous display of meteors or falling stars, which was witnessed in all parts of the United States, causing great excitement; many white people believed that it portended the destruction of the world. This star shower was noticed by the Sioux keeper of the winter count, and is represented by a black moon and a lot of red stars represented as falling. You can pick out these different figures in the picture, which represents Lone Dog's winter count, or the Dakota Calendar as it would look on a buffalo hide.

Indian Letter on Birch Bark. (From Schoolcraft.)

Probably you have all seen pictures of a birch-bark letter written many years ago by an Ojibwa Indian. It was written by one of Schoolcraft's guides. Mr. Schoolcraft, with a party of assistants and soldiers, was on a journey of exploration in the Northwest. One morning as they were leaving camp, Schoolcraft saw an Indian putting a bit of birch bark, upon which he had drawn some pictures in black, into a cleft at the end of a pole. This pole was then stuck slantingly into the ground and three notches were cut in it. When Mr. Schoolcraft asked his guide for an explanation, he said this letter would inform any Ojibwa Indians who might pass, about their party. The eagle in the upper corner showed that they were from Washington—government people. The other pictures showed that there were eight common soldiers each with a gun; that there were six officers, the duty of each being indicated by something carried in the hand,—the captain by his sword, the secretary by his book, the geologist by his hammer, etc.; that soldiers and officers were white men, as shown by their wearing hats; that there were two guides, Indians, as shown by their having no hats and carrying spears; that the night before there were three fires in the camp, soldiers, officers, and guides, camping separately; that during the day there had been secured a prairie hen and a turtle, both of which had been taken by the officers for supper. But other facts were shown besides those told in the pictures. The pole stuck into the ground pointed the direction in which the party would journey; the three notches on the pole told that they would journey in that direction three days.

Of all American Indians those who went farthest in the direction of developing writing were some of those living in Mexico and Central America. The Aztecs had an extensive system of picture writing. By means of pictures they recorded their traditional history and gave full directions regarding the worship of the gods. They had real books written with these pictures. These books were written sometimes on skin, sometimes on paper. The Aztecs made two kinds of paper, one of the soft inner bark of a tree, the other from the maguey plant. The latter sort was beaten out of the mass of leaf fibres after they had been soaked in water. The maguey plant is much like the century plant which you have seen in parks and greenhouses. The paper or dressed skin was made into long narrow strips many feet in length. These strips were folded back and forth like a screen, and the ends were fastened to two thin boards which served as covers for the book. Sometimes bits of polished green stone were inlaid into these covers to make them pretty. Some of these old books are still in existence, though most of them have long been destroyed. We cannot read any of them very well because pictures are uncertain means of conveying information. Still we can tell something about their meaning.

Page of Aztec Book. (From Photograph.)

Charles V, to know about them, and ordered three skilled painters of the Aztecs to prepare a book to be sent to the Emperor. Each artist took a different subject, so the book ]consists of three parts. The first gives a picture-written story of the Aztecs from the time when they began their wanderings; the second gives a list of the towns that paid tribute to the city of Mexico and a statement of the kind and amount of tribute each paid; the third shows how children were trained, how they were punished when they were naughty, and what kind of work they were taught. Of course the Emperor would not understand the meaning of all these queer pictures, far different from anything he had ever seen; so Mendoza had an explanation or translation written with all the pictures. This is as fortunate for us as it was for the Emperor: in this way we can learn something about the use and meaning of these characters.

Aztec Picture Writing

Aztec Picture Writing

Of all American Indians those who went farthest in the direction of developing writing were some of those living in Mexico and Central America. The Aztecs had an extensive system of picture writing. By means of pictures they recorded their traditional history and gave full directions regarding the worship of the gods. They had real books written with these pictures. These books were written sometimes on skin, sometimes on paper. The Aztecs made two kinds of paper, one of the soft inner bark of a tree, the other from the maguey plant. The latter sort was beaten out of the mass of leaf fibres after they had been soaked in water. The maguey plant is much like the century plant which you have seen in parks and greenhouses. The paper or dressed skin was made into long narrow strips many feet in length. These strips were folded back and forth like a screen, and the ends were fastened to two thin boards which served as covers for the book. Sometimes bits of polished green stone were inlaid into these covers to make them pretty. Some of these old books are still in existence, though most of them have long been destroyed. We cannot read any of them very well because pictures are uncertain means of conveying information. Still we can tell something about their meaning.

Charles V, to know about them, and ordered three skilled painters of the Aztecs to prepare a book to be sent to the Emperor. Each artist took a different subject, so the book

consists of three parts. The first gives a picture-written story of the Aztecs from the time when they began their wanderings; the second gives a list of the towns that paid tribute to the city of Mexico and a statement of the kind and amount of tribute each paid; the third shows how children were trained, how they were punished when they were naughty, and what kind of work they were taught. Of course the Emperor would not understand the meaning of all these queer pictures, far different from anything he had ever seen; so Mendoza had an explanation or translation written with all the pictures. This is as fortunate for us as it was for the Emperor: in this way we can learn something about the use and meaning of these characters.

Ancient Cultures of South America: The Peruvian Inca Civilization's writing, Pottery and Arts

THE PERUVIAN CIVILIZATION.

The development of civilization in Peru was very different from that in Mexico and Central America. In both regions the people were sun-worshipers, but their religious organizations, as well as their methods of building temples, were unlike. Neither of these peoples seems to have borrowed from the other. It may be that all the old American civilizations had a common origin in South America, and that all the ancient Americans whose civilization can be traced in remains found north of the Isthmus came originally from that part of the continent. This hypothesis appears to me more probable than any other I have heard suggested. But, assuming this to be true, the first migration of civilized people from South America must have taken place at a very distant period in the past, for it preceded not only the history indicated by the existing antiquities, but also an earlier history, during which the Peruvians and Central Americans grew to be as different from their ancestors as from each other. In each case, the development of civilization represented by existing monuments, so far as we can study it, appears to have been original.

[247]In some respects the Peruvian civilization was developed to such a degree as challenged admiration. The Peruvians were highly skilled in agriculture and in some kinds of manufactures. No people ever had a more efficient system of industry. This created their wealth and made possible their great public works. All accounts of the country at the time of the Conquest agree in the statement that they cultivated the soil in a very admirable way and with remarkable success, using aqueducts for irrigation, and employing guano as one of their most important fertilizers. Europeans learned from them the value of this fertilizer, and its name, guano, is Peruvian. The remains of their works show what they were as builders. Their skill in cutting stone and their wonderful masonry can be seen and admired by modern builders in what is left of their aqueducts, their roads, their temples, and their other great edifices.

They had great proficiency in the arts of spinning, weaving, and dyeing. For their cloth they used cotton and the wool of four varieties of the llama, that of the vicuña being the finest. Some of their cloth had interwoven designs and ornaments very skillfully executed. Many of their fabrics had rare excellence in the eyes of the Spaniards. Garcilasso says, “The coverings of the beds were blankets and friezes of the wool of the vicuña, which is so fine and so much prized that, among other precious things from that land, they have been brought for the bed of Don Philip II.” Of their dyes, this account is given in the work of Rivero and Von Tschudi:

“They possessed the secret of fixing the dye of all colors, flesh-color, yellow, gray, blue, green, black, etc., so firmly in the thread, or in the cloth already woven, that they never faded during the lapse of ages, even when exposed to the air or buried (in tombs) under ground. Only the cotton became slightly discolored, while the woolen fabrics preserved their primitive lustre. It is a circumstance worth remarking that chemical analyses made of pieces of cloth of all the different dyes prove that the Peruvians extracted all their colors from the vegetable and none from the mineral kingdom. In fact, the natives of the Peruvian mountains now use plants unknown to Europeans, producing from them bright and lasting colors.”

They had great skill in the art of working metals, especially gold and silver. Besides these precious metals, they had copper, tin, lead, and quicksilver. Figures show some of the implements used by the Peruvians. Iron was unknown to them in the time of the Incas, although some maintain that they had it in the previous ages, to which belong the ruins at Lake Titicaca. Iron ore was and still is very abundant in Peru. It is impossible to conceive how the Peruvians were able to cut and work stone in such a masterly way, or to construct their great roads and aqueducts without the use of iron tools. Some of the languages of the country, and perhaps all, had names for iron; in official Peruvian it was calledquillay, and in the old Chilian tongue panilic. “It is remarkable,” observes Molina, “that iron, which has been thought unknown to the ancient Americans, has particular names in some of their tongues.” It is not easy to understand why they had names for this metal, if they never at any time had knowledge of the metal itself. In the Mercurio Peruano, tome i., p. 201, 1791, it is stated that, anciently, the Peruvian sovereigns “worked magnificent iron mines at Ancoriames, on the west shore of Lake Titicaca;” but I can not give the evidence used in support of this statement.

Fig. 65.—Copper Knives.

Fig. 66.—Copper Tweezers.

Their goldsmiths and silversmiths had attained very great proficiency. They could melt the metals in furnaces, cast them in moulds made of clay and gypsum, hammer their work with remarkable dexterity, inlay it, and solder it with great perfection. The gold and silver work of these artists was extremely abundant in the country at the time of the Conquest, but Spanish greed had it all melted for coinage. It was with articles of this gold-work that the Inca Atahuallpa filled a room in[250] his vain endeavor to purchase release from captivity. One of the old chroniclers mentions “statuary, jars, vases, and every species of vessels, all of fine gold.” Describing one of the palaces, he said: “They had an artificial garden, the soil of which was made of small pieces of fine gold, and this was artificially sowed with different kinds of maize which were of gold, their stems, leaves, and ears. Besides this, they had more than twenty sheep (llamas), with their lambs, attended by shepherds, all made of gold.” This may be the same artificial garden which was mentioned by Francisco Lopez de Gomara, who places it on “an island near Puna.” Similar gardens of gold are mentioned by others. It is believed that a large quantity of Peruvian gold-work was thrown into Lake Titicaca to keep it from the Spanish robbers. In a description of one lot of golden articles sent to Spain in 1534 by Pizarro, there is mention of “four llamas, ten statues of women of full size, and a cistern of gold so curious that it incited the wonder of all.”

Nothing is more constantly mentioned by the old Spanish chroniclers than the vast abundance of gold in Peru. It was more common than any other metal. Temples and palaces were covered with it, and it was very beautifully wrought into ornaments, temple furniture, articles for household use, and imitations of almost every object in nature. In the course of twenty-five years after the Conquest, the Spaniards sent from Peru to Spain more than four hundred million ducats (800,000,000 dollars) worth of gold, all or nearly all of[] it having been taken from the subjugated Peruvians as “booty.”

 all these illustrations are copies from articles taken from old Peruvian tombs.

Fig. 67.—Golden Vase.

Fig. 68.—Silver Vase.

The most perfectly manufactured articles of Peruvian pottery were used in the tombs. Some of those made for other uses were very curious. A considerable number of articles made for common use have been preserved. Mariano Rivero, a Peruvian, says: “At this day there exist in many houses pitchers, large jars, and earthen pots of this manufacture, which are preferred for their solidity to those manufactured by our own potters.” The ancient Peruvians were inferior to the Central Americans in the arts of ornamentation and sculpture.

Fig. 69.—Articles of Pottery.

Fig. 70.—Articles of Pottery.

Science among the Peruvians was not very highly developed, but engineering skill of some kind is indicated by the great roads and aqueducts. Their knowledge of the art of preparing colors and certain useful medicines implied a study of plants. Their progress in astronomy was not equal to that found in Central America; nevertheless, they had an accurate measure of the solar year, but, unlike the Central Americans, they divided the year into twelve months, and they used mechanical contrivances successfully to fix the times of the solstices and equinoxes. A class of men called amautas was trained to preserve and teach whatever knowledge existed in the country. It was their business to understand thequippus, keep in memory the historical poems, give attention to the science and practice of medicine, and train their pupils in knowledge. These were not priests; they were the “learned men” of Peru, and the government allowed them every facility for study and for communicating instruction. How much they knew of astronomy it is not easy to say. They had knowledge of some of the planets, and it is claimed that there is some reason to believe they used[ aids to eyesight in studying the heavens, such as some suppose were used by our Mound-Builders. A discovery made in Bolivia a few years since is cited in support of this belief. It is the figure of a man in the act of using a tube to aid vision, which was taken from an ancient tomb. Mr. David Forbes, an English chemist and geologist, obtained it in Bolivia, and carried it to England in 1864. William Bollaert describes it as follows in a paper read to the London Anthropological Society:

“It is a nude figure, of silver, two inches and a half in height, on a flat, pointed pedestal. In the right hand it has the mask of a human face, but in the left a tube over half an inch in length, the narrow part placed to the left eye in a diagonal position, as if observing some celestial object. This is the first specimen of a figure in the act of looking through a hollow tube directed to the heavens that has been found in the New World. We can not suppose the Peruvians had any thing that more nearly resembled a telescope. It was found in a chulpa, or ancient Indian tomb, at Caquingora, near Corocoro (lat. 17° 15' S., and long. 68° 35' W.), in Bolivia.” He forgets the astronomical monument described by Captain Dupaix.

The art of writing in alphabetical characters, so far as appears, was unknown to the Peruvians in the time of the Incas. No Peruvian books existed at that time, and no inscriptions have been found in any of the ruins. They had a method of recording events, keeping accounts, and making reports to the government by means of the quippu. This was made of cords of twisted wool fastened to a base prepared for the purpose. These cords were of various sizes and colors, and every size and color had its meaning. The record was made by means of an elaborate system of knots and artificial intertwinings. The amautas were carefully educated to the business of understanding and using the quippus, and “this science was so much perfected that those skilled in it attained the art of recording historical events, laws, and decrees, so as to transmit to their descendants the most striking events of the empire; thus the quippus could supply the place of documents.” Each quippu was a book full of information for those who could read it.

Among the amautas memory was educated to retain and transmit to posterity songs, historical narratives, and long historical poems. It is said, also, that tragedies and comedies were composed and preserved in this way, and that dramatic performances were among the regular entertainments encouraged and supported by the Incas. Whether the art of writing ever existed in the country can not now be determined. Some of the Peruvian tongues had names for paper; the people knew that a kind of paper or parchment could be made of plantain leaves, and, according to Montesinos, writing and books were common in the older times, that is to say, in ages long previous to the Incas. He explains how the art was lost, as I shall presently show.

It is not improbable that a kind of hieroglyphical writing existed in some of the Peruvian communities, especially among the Aymaraes. Humboldt mentions books of hieroglyphical writing found among the Panoes, on the River Ucayali, which were “bundles of their paper resembling our volumes in quarto.” A Franciscan missionary found an old man sitting at the foot of a palm-tree and reading one of these books to several young persons. The Franciscan was told that the writing “contained hidden things which no stranger ought to know.” It was seen that the pages of the book were “covered with figures of men, animals, and isolated characters, deemed hieroglyphical, and arranged in lines with order and symmetry.” The Panoes said these books “were transmitted to them by their ancestors, and had relation to wanderings and ancient wars.” There is similar writing on a prepared llama skin found among other antiquities on a peninsula in Lake Titicaca, which is now in the museum at La Paz, Bolivia. It appears to be a record of atrocities perpetrated by the Spaniards at the time of the Conquest, and shows that some of the Aymaraes could at that time write hieroglyphics.