[ outdoor noises, birds singing ] [ flute music playing ] [ Cherokee language being spoken ] I'm grateful to be here with you guys I realize that this is kind of
an informal formal way of doing things, but that's okay.
We're here at the Cherokee Heritage Center based in Tahlequah, Oklahoma,
and my name is JP Johnson. People often times call me [ Cherokee name ]
or [ Cherokee name ], one or the other. Those are both
more or less nicknames in in our language. But today we're here
to talk a little bit about or a lot about our clan system.
This location that we're at is what people referred to a long time
ago as "the ancient village", and nowadays they referred to it as "the
trade era village". In other words it was a little bit later in time, so
it's not ancient culture and traditions, it's after we began to intermingle
and trade with Europeans. So we had cloth, we had all of
those kinds of things. But this structure that we're inside
of right now, this big building, this big building was the home
of every public thing that occurred within our
communities a long time ago. They would, they had a ceremonial
fire inside of this giant council house-- this seven-sided council house. And the
community as a whole would gather inside of here for dances,
celebrations, for to just to decide, make decisions back on behalf of the
community, whether they were going to war, whether
they were sealing peace with someone, whatever. Generally it took place in here,
the meetings that took place in here were overseen by
elder women and elder men. And those families, those
folks that came inside of here all belonged
to a specific clan. They belonged to a specific family within their community.
Cherokees and Kituwas, UKBs, we're all the same people.
And our clan system is something that that still exists in our communities,
but it's not as it once was. At one time when our clan system was
at its fullest potential, when it was in his heyday,
before European contact, these buildings were used
just in the same way I described before. They would gather together and each one
of these clan beds, that you see in here
represents an entire family. And whenever they came in they would
come in and treat this place as a holy place, as a sacred place, as a spiritual
place. But also very much social, also very much
about that camaraderie and interaction that people get
from fellowship inside a church, or something along those lines.
When you walk in to this particular council house
at the Heritage Center, you'll see behind each one of these clan
beds, there's something representing each one
of these clans. Starting out with Red Paint,
Deer, Wolf, Long Hair, Bird Clan,
Blue Clan, and also Wild Potato. Each one of these clans were given down, or passed down within
families from mother to child. We were a
matrilineal society, not a patriarchal society but
matrilineal. And not matriarchal as well. Matriarchal
and matrilineal are two different things. Matrilineal means that you get your
bloodline and your family from your mother's side. Yes you are
directly related to your father's family as well,
but they are your relatives, but they're not your blood relatives.
Your father's side of the family was important, and
all of those things but your true kin, your closest family members were
on your mother's side of the family. This clan system was in
and of itself a foolproof system, for taking care of
people within our communities. It was a way to designate who you
were, but also a way to ensure that everyone was taken
care of. Ensure that each family was taking care
of their children, and taking care of their elders at the
same time, doing it together. So the clan system is probably one
of the single most important things that has deteriorated
as far as our culture is concerned. Yes our language is important too,
and you can't have one without the other necessarily. You need all of those things
together, but our clan system is really really important.
When, before European contact, before the the onslaught of
of culturalization, and all of those things,
and genocide, and all the things that happened to our people down through the
history, things were really good. And the way that
it worked was let's say that there's a young woman
from the Wolf Clan over here, whose family is Wolf Clan etc etc etc. She would specifically steer clear of
Wolf Clan folks and marry from all of the other clans.
That's where she would seek spouses, that's where spouses would seek her
because they were looking for someone that they were not blood related to,
right? So when they did that, it wasn't
that the father abandoned his family.
He oftentimes had dual roles within two different families at that
point. He was in charge of taking care
of his spouse and her children, sort of financially speaking, if that
makes sense. Monetarily speaking, the Cherokee man
was expected to hunt, he was expected to hunt, and he was
expected to provide for him and his spouse
and their children--to contribute to the household.
The household that they lived in would have been
her mother's. So let's say I marry a Cherokee woman,
she's from a specific clan, and I move in with the entirety of my
in-laws all in one fell swoop. If that's not the School of Hard
Knocks, I don't know what else is. Imagine being, oh by the way the age
during this time period is about 17 and 14, so a woman would be about 14 years
old and a man would be about 17. And that's the time that they would
generally get married. We didn't have big ceremonies for
weddings. We didn't have anything majorly special,
there was no big celebration, they didn't have
you know fancy dress or a big ring for their fingers, or any of
those kinds of things. All of that stuff didn't really exist.
What generally might have happened is they might have gone to water together,
and had that sort of ceremony, but other than that they just moved in together.
Just like Cherokees now, you know, we shack up.
So I move in with the entirety of my in-laws all in one fell swoop.
Imagine any dumb little 17-year-old you know,
at 17 you think you know everything. And then you move in
with the entirety of your in-laws, and you suddenly discover that you
no longer know everything. In fact, you don't know enough at this point.
But you move in, and my job is to hunt for, and
contribute to the household of this family. Let's say I'm another
clan, but I move in with this family. My job is to contribute to their
household, but it's not my job to raise our kids. Me
and my wife, let's say we have two kids together.
Those kids don't belong to me. They don't belong to me
in the sense that they do nowadays. They belong to her, and they belong to
her family. Those children have her clan, not mine.
So it's my responsibility to contribute to the household, but otherwise I'm never
there. I killed a deer, "how you doing?", I'm out. I
am never there. My job is to hunt, and try to make more
kids with my wife, and that's it. Aside from that, I'm spending all of my
other free time with my family. Maybe my family's Bird.
I'm over here with these kids, with these children,
with these women, and these elders, and these young folks.
And these kids over here are my responsibility.
They belong to me. I'm supposed to take care of them.
I'm supposed to teach them. I'm supposed to raise them.
As their uncle, I am more connected to them than I am to my own children.
Because "uncle" in Cherokee on the mother's side of the family,
only on the mother's side, is [ Cherokee name ] or [ Cherokee name ], I'm sorry. Which just means "second dad". The same goes for women on that side
of the on in within one family. The Cherokee word
for "aunt" is [ Cherokee word ].
The Cherokee word for "uncle" on the mother's side of the family, both on the
mother's side, is [ Cherokee word ], "second dad" and "second mom".
We have a word for "aunt" and "uncle" that's on the father's side of the
family, and that's what people are commonly using nowadays.
But truth be told, that original word was actually
in reference to those that you were not closely related to. [ Cherokee word ] means "aunt".
[ Cherokee word ] means "uncle". So on the father's side of the family
you've got mother, father, children. On the father's
side of the family, they're just your aunt and uncle. But on
your mother's side of the family, that's your second mom and your second
dad. That means that this whole family is
full of fathers, of
mothers, etc etc. The importance that lies there
is overwhelmingly profound. And the reason being, is because you've heard that saying you know "it
takes a village to raise a child". This is legit exactly what they're
talking about. This is what that saying is referencing.
It's referencing the idea that an entire family was
responsible for those children. If I'm Bird Clan, and my relatives are all right here.
Then I'm responsible for raising them, and teaching them,
and they belong to me. I'm to treat them as if they belong to me.
I don't know anything about that clan, or that clan, or whatever. I know about what
exists within my family, and that's what I teach those kids,
that's what I give those kids. If that's my clan,
then that's my responsibility to pass those things down.
So if you've got a mother and a father that are both
raising children, they're raising children but they're raising kids that
only belong to them. So my kids, specifically
my kids, their family is actually all Bird Clan. My children,
my actual children, are all Bird Clan. That's not my clan. Technically those kids don't belong to
me, they belong to them. And it's them that are responsible for raising them. I can't stress how important that is, how
important that system is and the way that it was a long time ago.
Let's say I married some girl and my responsibility is
not with them. My responsibility is only to contribute to the household, and
only to help out monetarily speaking. It isn't to
to teach those children anything. It isn't to be necessarily
responsible for them. So it was those aunts and uncles
on the mother's side of the family that were so much more important.
When our people began to to interact with Europeans, when
Europeans first came into the picture, and they saw this system in place,
that to them it was a an insult to their manhood.
It was an insult that your biological children
weren't your responsibility, and didn't belong to you,
your wife didn't belong to you, none of those things belonged to you. That a very
patriarchal ideal was being pushed in this direction. When they came
amongst our people they didn't want to talk to
the women, they wanted to talk to the men. When Europeans came amongst us, and began
trading with us, they wanted to deal with the men,
and not the women. But what they really didn't realize, was that these women were
the ones who owned the homes. These women were the ones that owned the
land. These women were the ones that were
responsible and owned the children. They didn't realize that they were
talking to the wrong people, because they were so focused on dealing
only with men. And that was a major mistake in our
history, because they didn't get all of the
information that they could have got had they spoken with the women. So these Europeans are
flooding our shores and they're coming to
initially trade with us, and we're interacting with them quite
heavily. When they're amongst us, they begin to
intermarry with us. And when they begin to intermarry,
the men that married Cherokee women ended up doing whatever
those Cherokee women wanted them to do--which was participate
fully in the ceremonial life, and
all of those kinds of things. But if a man
that was Cherokee, married a white woman, it was that point right then and there
when the clan system began to break down. And the reason that it began to break
down is not because those women were not
clan members, it was because they didn't accept the ceremonial
spiritual life ways that we had. You see, Cherokees and other southeastern tribes
and other woodlands tribes have been marrying, and intermingling with each
other since forever. Since absolutely the
beginning of time. That means that if we go back in our
genealogy just a little bit, with anybody in Oklahoma, anybody that's
enrolled Cherokee, or UKB, or Muscogee Creek, or Shawnee, or
Euchee, or any of these tribes that exist within Oklahoma. If you go back a little
bit in just about everybody's genealogy, you're
going to start seeing names on your genealogy list that are your
ancestors that came from different tribes.
Muscogee Creek, there's lots of Cherokees mixed with Creek,
Naiche, Ani Notsi-- the pine people,
was another southeastern tribe. We were mixing with each other for forever.
When we were mixing with each other, all of these tribes, they all had a clan
system-- all of them. All of the tribes that we
interacted with had a version, or a clan system, a
sub-system that existed within their communities,
within their tribe, within their people as a whole. When they came amongst
us and we married with them, they fell right in to what we were doing.
They didn't always add up, right? Let's see, the Seneca people, we mixed
with the Seneca quite a bit. We used to fight with them quite a bit too.
They have clans that don't match up with our clans.
They have some that do, but they have some clans that don't exist
within the the boundaries of a Cherokee clan. So let's say
I'm leading a war party, and we go out and
we're fighting with the Seneca. And we have a battle with them,
or we we attack them, or whatever. And we take
some captives from the Seneca, and we bring them back
to our community which would look just like this.
Once we've brought them back to this community,
oftentimes, generally the majority of the women of the
community, especially the elder women, would make the decisions on what we were
to do with these these captives that we had taken.
And most often than not, those people were then taken into families,
and they replaced dead loved ones. If there were particularly atrocious
individuals that have done really awful things or something along those lines to
us, you know, the Cherokee women of the community
might decide to torture them to death. So, you know, you got one or two
options. But generally they were absorbed into
the community. So let's say we've taken these
Seneca women and Seneca men as captive, we have five or six of each.
And we take them inside of here and we're deciding their fate. After we've done that and they've been
basically accepted and absorbed by the community, "man I think
that Seneca woman's kind of keen." I'm gonna, you know, I might marry one of
those Seneca women. But wait a minute, she's Eel Clan,
we don't have no Eel Clan. how is she even
a part of this community? How is she even a part of any family here?
How can our children have a Cherokee clan?
The truth is, is before that would have happened they would have been taken
directly into a clan and taken in as family.
The systems that they had in place, the ceremonial fires, the dances, the songs,
the medicine, the ceremonies, all of that stuff that we have
in Cherokee communitiesC they had them in other communities
as well. And they were very similar, if not almost identical.
And if that's the case, they had no problem stepping into a clan becoming a
part of a family, and then marrying within that community,
and then passing down that clan that they were
taken into. What I'm telling you is that originally,
we had a system for dealing with the lack of
a clan. A system that functioned very well we
intermarried with all of the tribes that were around us.
But when the Europeans came amongst us, we would have done the same thing with
those women. If there was a white or a European woman
that wanted to marry a Cherokee man, and she wanted to be a
part of this family and a part of this community, and so on and so forth,
she would have been absorbed into a clan just as well. But they didn't want to do
that. they didn't want to participate in these
things they didn't want to be considered indian in any way shape or form and in
fact probably liked the idea of hiding the fact or the
fact that they would marry folks who were already mixed so that
they could pretend that they weren't actually native people they were
something else and so it was that point
that it stopped. That it didn't stop,
the system began to break down. So ,the Europeans are then bringing in
slaves. They're bringing in people from all over the world sometimes,
and bringing them in as slaves. Those folks
were generally indigenous people in some way, shape, or form.
They were either indigenous Africans, or they were from Panama,
or some island in the South or something along those lines but those
people that they were bringing in, they accepted the idea of tribal
identity. They took to communal life
in Cherokee communities. So those folks, when they came amongst us,
they began to adopt it, but it was just the
the mothers, white female mothers, of our communities during this time period
that began to say, "Oh you're not Indian. You don't
even have a clan now. See because I'm white and I don't have a clan, and you
don't have a clan. That means that you don't have any relatives over
there." That's a lie. That's a lie down through time
as our clan system continued to deteriorate
and its functionality was less potent. Then
you begin to see that people are trying to reach and figure out who they
are. So when they begin documenting things
about Cherokees, when scientists, and
anthropologists, and all of the -ologists of the world
began to investigate our culture, and our
belief systems, and so on, and so on. When they began to do that, it was that
time period that someone started asking the question.
They started asking this specific question,
"I'm Cherokee, and my mom is white. What clan am I?" And
when they began saying that, asking these questions,
there were sometimes some people that had answers for them.
The majority of the time they just said, "Well you're not Cherokee anymore."
They don't consider you Cherokee anymore. A lot of people espoused
to that particular idea. A lot of people believe that if you
have a mother who's black, and a father who's Cherokee,
that you no longer have a clan. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reason that they they didn't see
them as being Cherokee, was because they were not
participating in anything. They didn't have a clan, they
weren't participating. So as that clan system,
people began to grow up thinking, "Oh, well they say it's been written, it's
documented that Cherokees will go directly into the
the Long Hair Clan." And that's the automatic clan that everybody that
doesn't have a clan, that's where they go. If they're orphaned,
they go with the Long Hair. The reason being is
the word for "long hair" [ speaking Cherokee ] is the way that you say "long hair"
in Cherokee. But if you say [ speaking Cherokee ] "someone has just come." It's not, "you don't
know who it is"-- strangers.
It's connected. So they said they saw that, and they thought that that was
the only clan in which Cherokees could be placed if they did not have a
clan. That was what, that's what you'll read in
history books. You'll read that and stuff that Cherokee Nation even puts out.
You'll read that stuff because that was what was written
at the time period. But truth be told, if this were a Cherokee tribal town
and we were attacked by the British, and they wiped out a half of the
population of the community. What they would do is they would
literally and intentionally take members from
other clans and plant them in these other seats,
and fill that clan system back up. So from the very beginning
stages of our world, very beginning stages of documented
history, or whatever you want to call it. Our people had a system of dealing with
lack of. So you've got these seven clans and these
seven families, and then you've got people that are
growing up without them, right? Growing up without participating
in ceremonial life, without participating in their communities and so on and so
forth. And for all intents and purposes, they're
just as much a part of the colonial oppression as
anybody else, because they're out there being European, being
something else, but not being Cherokee. You go down through there, and back down
through history again, and you'll see that the truth is is that those
families should have been taken into a clan regardless. They should have been
taken into and given a family within a
Cherokee community. And that would have strengthened our clan system
right now today. It would have made it much stronger than what it is.
So they didn't do that, that didn't happen.
They just basically pushed their own beliefs
into Cherokee households, and pushed their own beliefs
into Cherokee communities. Now that doesn't mean that Cherokees didn't
maintain their own identity, because we did. That didn't mean that the
the majority of the Cherokees that married into these families,
married into European families did not maintain their identity in their
community, and still have a place there. But
as time went on, and their descendants had their chance to participate, they did
not. So their descendants were the ones who
who chose to go to a private school in
Boston as opposed to being raised in a Cherokee community in the southeast.
You know, it was their descendants that chose to
become plantation owners, and so on and so forth,
and participate fully in the economy and the world of
of the southeastern part of the United States. Which was predominantly,
you know, slave owners. They participated in that.
All of these things that continued, if the clan system would
have been still in place within those families,
they probably wouldn't have done those things. They wouldn't have participated
in in modern life for the time period.
They would have espoused to their own spiritual ideals, and kept
those things. Not saying that they abandoned them
completely. At least within themselves, they
maintained it but they didn't pass that to their children.
They didn't give that to their kids. So we've got
the clan system which is one of the best
familial tie systems, familial makeups in the world. I promise you that this
this way of looking at things is so much stronger than what it is today.
And it was important, and it would have made our lives
much better. So you have those people that believe that if you don't have a clan, you either just go
into Long Hair and that's automatically where you're seated,
or you don't have a clan altogether. There's a lot of
Cherokees, a lot of UKB, U. Keetoowah people,
that believe that without that clan you don't exist as a community member.
They don't see you or at least acknowledge that you're
a legitimate Cherokee, a legitimate Keetoowah person, you know. They don't
acknowledge that. They see that as being
a loss. And while people believe those ideas, they don't
talk about it. They don't go around telling everybody, "Oh well you don't have
a clan, so you're not really Cherokee", or
something along those lines. But that was the kind of a gold standard that existed
for a little while, when people began to research about our
people, when they began to study the information of all of those folks that
came before, and and documented communities as they were,
and so on and so forth. All of that stuff they began to filter
through all of that, and look and see what really happened and what
really what the real deal was. Now in Oklahoma,
about the time of statehood, there was about
26 to 30 Cherokee ceremonial grounds. That means 20 to 26 to 30
different communities that had a ceremonial fire,
that participated in our ceremonial dances,
that acknowledged that clan system,
that utilized the clan system as far as
ceremonies were concerned--all of those things
that existed. But then you had these elders that live within those
communities that helped ran these ceremonial places, and
those folks were looking around and going, "Oh,
well you know we're becoming more and more mixed
with other people. We're becoming more and more
not biologically Cherokee." Whatever you want to call it,
"mixed bloods", you know all of that kind of stuff. So
our clan system is going away, it's not
growing, it's going away. What do we do about that? And the truth
is, that the trail of tears happened in what 1838,
1839, that time period. The ceremonial grounds
actually were already here. The ceremonial fires were carried by
specific community members a long time ago before statehood ever
was even a thought. And they brought these fires and then they
spread them in all the communities and all of these communities had them.
But the clan system was still in the midst of its breakdown, it's still in the
midst of its turmoil, or whatever you want to call it.
And these ceremonial grounds, the ones that still exist
today, up until the 1980s, so in the 1980s here in eastern Oklahoma,
the majority of the Cherokee ceremonial grounds that existed here
had a system in place to deal with this
problem of lack of claim. So if you go to a Muscogee Creek
ceremonial ground, almost always it is Muscogee Creek ceremonial ground,
or Seminole ceremonial ground. Those folks will almost always
seat a child that does not have a Muscogee Creek mother directly in the
clan of the father's mother. They would essentially adopt
them into that particular clan. That family and that's where they would
sit, and that's where they would be expected to participate in ceremonies
and so on and so forth, and identify as
you know that clan, and within that tribe. So Cherokee ceremonial grounds are
actually, have a decent amount of Muscogee
influence. In fact, they influenced each other. And
then the Shawnee grounds influenced us, and the Seneca grounds
influenced us, and we influenced, and we shared things, and so on and so
forth. And so there are Cherokee ceremonial grounds
that have much more of a Muscogee or
Muscogee Creek influence at that ceremonial
ground, and they follow that system generally.
They follow that system. So they actually put people in the clans of their
father's mother. Then there are Cherokee ceremonial
grounds that actually place them in a specific clan, and some of those
ceremonial grounds are different.
There's one ceremonial ground that automatically seats
people in Wolf whether they have, you know, have a mother that's Cherokee or not. If they do not know their clan, if
they do not know what clan they are, then they're
automatically seated in Wolf. There are some that do the the Long Lair
thing still yet. There are some that allow two people to
develop such a close relationship they begin
to consider each other family, and they use those two folks as a bridge
to put someone in a clan and seat them there.
They also do go about it ceremonially. Sometimes
they'll use medicine, Cherokee ceremonial medicine to check
and see what clan a person is if they don't know what clan they are,
and seat them in that clan accordingly. So we have all of these different
ways of dealing with the lack of clan, but we don't necessarily
acknowledge that in every community. There are
some communities they do, and some communities they don't.
But the truth be told, as I told you earlier, that
our clans, our clan system as they were,
was were the most important thing. And we had, I don't remember how many, I could named off at least four or five
that have existed up until now, in the 1980s. So we had ways of dealing
with that lack of clan. And that helped to
strengthen our ceremonial grounds. It helps to be inclusive. It
helps us to get away from the idea that
our ceremonial grounds are some sort of country club, and
there's exclusivity and if you don't belong there then you don't
belong there, that kind of thing. None of that stuff is really true. If
we're following our teachings and our traditions the way that we
we once did, we're supposed to be doing these dances, and having these
ceremonies, and doing all of these things on behalf of the entire world.
And if we're doing that then we're including
the entire world. And we should be including them,
in that in our ceremonial life. But the lack of clan should
not be a factor, and at most ceremonial grounds it is not.
They find a way around it. So we know this,
we intermarried with other Cherokee, with other southeastern tribes, and
northeast woodlands tribes heavily since the beginning of time.
During that time period we had a system in place to deal with the lack of
clans, because our clans didn't match up. And
then on top of that, whenever we took the big hit
of, basically, female Europeans marrying into Cherokee
families-- that was the big hit, but we found a way
to deal with that too. We found a way around it. And if you talk
to some of our oldest speakers, some of our elders, some
of them have passed away. I often times reference elders, and sometimes
I don't explain that that person is already gone.
But there's one elder that I'm thinking of in particular right now, and
his name was Benny Smith [ speaking Cherokee ]. You say [ speaking Cherokee ] behind somebody's
name whenever they've passed away, because what it
means is "they used to be". So Benny Smith [ speaking Cherokee ]
was an elder who grew up at one of most prominent ceremonial
grounds here in eastern Oklahoma. And he was a traditionalist,
and a ceremonial and spiritual leader, as well as
a medicine person, and he was raised that way. He was raised in
that environment. And if you were to speak to him or be
able to speak to him today, he would tell you that everybody in the
world has a Cherokee clan. He would say that
your Mexican friend who lives down the street
fits into our clan system. He would say your cousin who married a black
woman or a black man, he would say, "They have clans." He would
say that our people, the human race,
they all have clans and they all fit into this system.
They just don't remember. They just don't know what their clan is,
but they have one. So if that's the case, and we have all of these other ways of
dealing with the lack of clan, and everyone we know that everyone has a
clan based upon what Mr. Benny Smith [ speaking Cherokee ] said, then we
know that it is not wrong to bring in
people into your community and seat them where they're supposed to be, and accept
them as clan members from that particular clan.
Our clan system if it goes away completely,
then we lose the fire. If we lose the fire,
we lose the language. If we lose the language, we lose the fire. If we lose the,
you know it all fits on top of each other. It all
connects, and it's very much you know, so ingrained in our
identities that if we lose one thing then the rest
of the structure will fall just like in this building if I was to chop this one
beam down, the rest of this building is going to collapse down on top of us
because it's all holding us together the same way that this
is all leaning on top of each other. It's all taken care of
by itself. It's self governing, okay. It's self
strengthening. It's all of those things. And so,
we have to maintain those things. We have to maintain our clan system.
We have to ensure that for future
generations, that
Cherokee identity, whether it be clan, whether it be your language, whether it
be a community, a family you belong to. All of those
things have to be reinvigorated. Reinvigorated
so much that it's overflowing. My job as an educator for Cherokee
Nations Education Services simply means that I'm out in the
communities pushing our language culture and traditions like a drug dealer.
I'm trying to get people hooked on their own identity.
Especially young people. If young people are
like little sponges, as they say, then everything that I say to them
whenever I go out into their communities, and I tell them about these things, I tell them about our language, I
demonstrate our ceremonial games, and ball games, and so on and so forth--all of these things, then that may be just that right
moment that they get hooked on the idea of their own identity being rooted
in a world that looks like this. And that's really important.
I think it would be good to talk about the clan names, and a little bit about
some of the the traits that are expected, or the
behaviors that are oftentimes associated with specific clans.
If we start with the very first clan that I'm
looking at, Paint Clan. People often times refer to
Paint Clan as [ speaks Cherokee ]. [ Speaks Cherokee ] by itself,
that word by itself [ speaks Cherokee ], it just means "paint".
People will sometimes call it "Red Paint Clan."
But the reason that they call it that is because
of the linguistic relationship to red paint specifically.
Red paint is medicine. Red paint that we utilized
to paint our bodies in the times of war, and in times of ball games,
we would sometimes paint ourselves entirely red.
And that color red represents a lot of different things.
[ Speaks Cherokee ] by itself is just "paint", but [ speaks Cherokee ]
if you say that word [ speaks Cherokee ], that means medicine.
So those two words are connected to each other.
The color red is associated with blood, with life, with
power, and strength, all of those things. It was used to intimidate our
adversaries. It was a way to to make yourself look
strong and powerful. But that paint that they put on,
that they're talking about in reference to the clan and in general,
is generally in English referred to as iron oxide or
red ochre. And that red ochre, when you paint yourself with it, you
don't even have to mix it with oil, or animal fat, or
anything. You can take just that mineral by itself and rub it
on yourself, and it will paint you much in the same way that a woman puts
on makeup. It's very very similar. And you become
a color of red that actually is somewhere in between the color of
dirt, and somewhere in between the color of blood
mixed together. The word for "mud" and "Cherokee", [ speaks Cherokee ], it's also related. So the word "mud"
is related to that. So you've got medicine,
paint, mud, and one more. And this other one is the word, [ speaks Cherokee ]-- "beautiful", it's the word for beautiful.
The root of that word is also related. So if you paint yourself
red, if you're using that medicine they're referring to as far as that
clan is concerned, you're making yourself beautiful. You're
making yourself vibrant, alive. All of those kinds of things.
So when people refer to Red Paint Clan, and Red Paint medicine, or that they're
the keepers of that medicine, they're saying that that particular
tribe, or that particular clan, that particular
family, is the ones who used it more.
It's not saying that any other clan didn't use that paint,
but it's saying that that particular clan is the ones that used it more. Next in here inside of the council house
we have [ speaks Cherokee ] Some people will say [ speaks Cherokee ] , because
the word for "deer" is [ speaks Cherokee ]. But it's really whenever they say
it in Cherokee, usually speakers will oftentimes say [ speaks Cherokee ]. Those folks are Deer Clan. Deer Clan
folks are generally associated with warriors and hunters. They would have
been the people that
was their profession. Their profession was being a warrior, their
profession was hunting. Those folks oftentimes would have come
from that particular clan. Some people say that they're also
messengers, and so there's a little bit of argument about
whether that's the truth or not. But the idea is that they were runners, they
were fast. And if they needed to get a message
somewhere, they probably could. So Deer Clan is
the next on the list. Generally the the folks that are Deer Clan are
oftentimes pretty assertive people. They're
outspoken oftentimes. You know, Cherokees have a unique
social norm, and where we're very careful about the
way that we speak with each other. But sometimes people from Deer Clan
have a tendency to be a little more outspoken than the rest
of us. And I think that comes from
the strength of that particular family,
and the belief that they were providers, and things of that nature. So
they were very not aggressive, but definitely
outspoken, and to some degree in Cherokee communities, that's a little bit
out of the norm to be honest with you. But next on the list, right over here,
is Wolf Clan, [ speaks Cherokee ] People will say [ speaks Cherokee ].
people will say [ speaks Cherokee ], means "they are" or where it's talking about
people, personifies it. Wolf Clan folks, people generally and most often
associate them and believe them to be the
warriors of the community. They were probably the first
to go into battle. They were the ones that were out front
leading a war party. They were the ones who probably sought
to go to war. Inside of this council house a long time
ago, if a member of Wolf Clan decided that
the Muscogee Creek, or the Shawnee, or the British or whomever had done
something that they shouldn't have done and that
we needed to seek retribution, they would come inside of this council
house with the entirety of the community,
and they would seek out individuals that were willing to join their cause. In
other words, they were creating enlistment parties--just like for the
military when someone joins the military, they enlist. In order to enlist in our
communities a long time ago, you first agreed with the things that
were being put forth before you--the things that were being
talked about. And then on top of that, they would end up stepping out here
with whatever leader that was trying to rouse their
spirits and bring them into the fold as far as going to war.
So they would invite those folks to come and dance and if they danced, it was
their way of
basically signing up--joining the military, so to speak.
They say that Wolf Clan folks are the most aggressive of
all of the ceremonial grounds, and the communities,
and the areas around here that generally people that belong to that
particular clan are not only outspoken but even abrasive.
They can be on a regular basis showing their
teeth, if that makes sense. They can be on a regular basis, purposely
showing that they are responsible. And because of that,
if a Wolf Clan aunt or a Wolf Clan uncle exists at a ceremonial ground,
especially over that family, but also over the entirety
of the ground. they oftentimes take a parent role with
everybody, and have a tendency to be bossy,
and pushy, and just all out assertive. And
that's to some degree in Cherokee
communities, especially around elders and influence speakers, if you're
hanging out with them you're very careful on how you speak to
them, and how you deal with them. You do not step on their toes. You do not
say things that would otherwise offend them, or
make them angry with you. You're careful,
super careful. But at the ceremonial grounds those folks
realize that you sit in a certain area, and they allow you to
to express the full range of your clan personality I suppose.
So next on our list, next to Wolf Clan, is [ speaks Cherokee ].
That word is associated with, people will sometimes say,
it's called "Twister Clan" in English. Sometimes they'll say it's called
"Long Hair Clan", and they also say that it's called
"Stranger Clan", and the reason that they say those things is because
linguistically, the word [ speaks Cherokee ] means "someone that you don't know." If I'm
out, if I'm sitting at my house, and I hear a
car pull up, I can tell my son, [ speaks Cherokee ], "somebody is here." I don't know who,
but somebody is here. If they're, [ speaks Cherokee ], then
then it's possible that that is the clan that was comprised of
people who you didn't know. That's where people get the idea that
that's the clan that you're supposed to be
planting people without clans in. That's the clan that will take you in. That's the clan that takes in
orphaned children, and so on and so forth. And because of those beliefs,
and that connection linguistically, that's what they'll say.
But people argue about the one way or the other.
But regardless, it's the majority of Cherokee people
regard it and and refer to it specifically
as "Long Hair", Long Hair Clan. Next on our list is Bird Clan. [ Speaks Cherokee ]. People will shorten it sometimes and say [ speaks Cherokee ]. But it's [ speaks Cherokee ], Bird Clan.
And Bird Clan is often almost always
associated with, for certain even more so than the
Deer Clan, messengers. They were the procurers of eagle feathers. A long time ago, eagle
feathers were considered so sacred that people did not
just carry them around. They didn't just have them in their houses.
They didn't just keep them, you know, in a cedar box in their house, like they do
nowadays. And eagle feathers were kept by specific
people, and those people during ceremonies would hand those out,
and allow those people to use those eagle feathers.
And then once the dance was over with, they would then get those eagle feathers
back from them, and take care of them. So they were the
ones that were responsible, they were the only
ones, they're the only tribe that's allowed to
kill an eagle. They don't do it anymore, but a long time ago they did they would
they wouldn't refer to it as an eagle but they but they they would. They would take eagles for specifically, for the use of their feathers.
So they had a major ceremonial role ingrained in just their identity as
being from that clan, from the Bird Clan. Next on our list is
[ speaks Cherokee ], is the long way. [ Speaks Cherokee ],
people refer to it as Blue Clan. Some people will refer to it, they
actually do refer to it as Bear Clan, even though it's not
referencing a bear necessarily. The reason that they do that
is because the word [ speaks Cherokee],
you can use that to talk about a bear's shoulders
when it's walking, and it's lumbering around, and its shoulders are shifting
back and forth. You can use that word, use a part of
that word to talk about that. So people will
sometimes refer to it as Bear Clan,
or a clan that is associated with bears. Some people will call it Panther Clan and say that
[ speaks Cherokee] is talking about, is in reference to
panthers that existed in the mountains of
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and all of those
good places over there in the east to southeast. But people also will refer to it as "blue
holly". But the word for "blue"
in Cherokee, the color blue, [ speaks Cherokee ] means "blue".
[ Speaks Cherokee ], you see where it's close, right?
So it's likely that it's in reference to that color
specifically these folks are what some people refer to as the burden bearers of
the community. They carry
the weight of their people. They're the ones who
who find the way, to lift us up in times when we are on
the ground. They're the ones that take care of children
specifically. People say it's Long Hair, people say it's Blue Clan,
I say it's both. I say that it's both. But that particular clan is
associated with certain types of medicine as well,
quite heavily to be honest with you.
And then we have last but not least, and that's
Wild Potato. I guess I'm saying that like a country
Cherokee guy, you know, Wild Potato. Wild Potato. The Wild Potato Clan
is oftentimes referred to as [ speaks Cherokee ]. The wild potato is an actual
plant. You can find wild potatoes growing
that have vines on them. But in the old stories that they
talk about our clan system, and and what these sort of things represent, they talk about how that clan
came to be. So it's heavily associated with
herbal medicine, plant lif,e of course, and oftentimes
a lot of people believe that the chiefs would come from that particular clan. Truth is, that we had chiefs that
came from all of them. But some people say that that particular
clan was most often the clan that
usually produced a chief of a community. Our old system
was a two-part system, not a two-party system.
It was a two-part system, and what what I mean by that is that there was a
system in place for times of peace with chiefs and all their assistantsC and all
of the medicine workers, and ceremonial practitioners, and so on and
so forth. And then in times of war we had another
government that would completely change places. These guys
that were all the chiefs that were sitting in these positions would step away, and then these Red chiefs would
step in. And the Red chiefs would come oftentimes from
Wolf or Deer, or something along those lines--usually the more aggressive
warrior-like associated clans I guess.
But that's all of them. There are some old stories that say that we
actually had 14 clans at one tim,e and that we lost
7. There are people that disagree with that, but the old stories are there.
It's possible because if you go to the northeastern part of
the United States, and you hang out with some of the
folks in the Iroquois Confederacy, aka actually their real name is
Haudenosaunee, "The Six Nations". Mohawks, Hurons, Onondagas, Seneca,
Cayugas and those tribes up there, we are heavily
connected to them. In some ways, we're more culturally like
them than we are Muscogee Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaws, and all the
other Muscogee speaking people that are around us in the southeast. So we,
it's very possible that at one time the Iroquois people,
or the Haudenosaunee people, who also speak the same
language family as us, they're a Iroquoian based language, and as are Cherokees. We were
much more connected to them in a lot of ways.
So it's possible that we did leave some clans somewhere. It's possible that we
did lose families. So
let's say this is my clan, Wolf Clan over here.
And I'm, again a 17 year old Cherokee man.
The reason that we married so early during that time period, is because the
average life expectancy of a Cherokee man was about 30 years old.
So during this time period, if you made it past
30 and into your 40s and 50s, you were considered an elder right then
and there. Today that standard has gone up, you know.
We see our elders as being 60 and 70 years old, but
truth be told if you made it past 30 you actually made it past your life expectancy anyway.
So they married very early. They married so early
that it almost seems, you know, a little bit crazy. But let's say I'm this clan, and my prospective
wife or girlfriend is this clan. And I want to get married to her, and we go
and we talk to our families, and we say we're going to do this, we're going to
get married, and our families don't really
tell us what to do one way or the other, they just support us.
But I offer her family some deer meat, and if
her family accepts that deer meat, then they have accepted me,
and then essentially like I said we only just move in together.
That's a Cherokee marriage a long time ago, we moved in together.
Divorce was very common. If people didn't like each other, they just
simply split up, it was just that simple. But I move in with the entirety of my
in-laws, all in this one area of the community. Let's
pretend that this is a bunch of houses, as opposed to just
the the clan beds. But I move into this
particular area of the community and I have clothes there, I have
hunting stuff there, but I'm never there.
I'm never there. I am either hunting, going to war,
doing ceremonie,s and raising my sister's kids,
my cousin's kids, my female relative's kids--they're the ones that I'm raising. I'm raising them. Let's say I have
four sisters, and each one of them has four kids. Those kids
all belong to me, and it's my responsibility to
rear them, and teach them everything they need to know about being Wolf Clan.
I'm supposed to teach them how to hunt, and so on and so forth.
I have children over here that are biologically mine,
that I love and care for, and I help provide for them,
sort of financially speaking, by contributing to the household
with what I've hunted, and so on and so forth. But
it's not my job to raise these kids. I love these kids, I'm affectionate with
them when I see them, but most of the time I'm
raising these children over here. Those kids are not suffering from the
lack of a father figure in any way shape, or form. How many
brothers do you think she has? How many cousins, and uncles, and grandpas,
and so on and so forth, all exist in this one little area right here?
A lot of them. There's a ton of them. There's so many
in fact that those kids couldn't get away with nothing if they wanted to.
There's so many adults over here that are assisting her and raising her child,
that they don't have to worry about it. Over here
the two kids that belong to me and this girl.
These folks are relative, and you care about these people and you know who
they are, but these people are the ones that you
grow up with and spend every day of your life with, and you know everything about
them, and they are your blood relatives. The kids that come from
this union, my marriage to a girl in the Bird Clan,
those kids have their own uncles and aunts
that are [ speaks Cherokee ], "second mom" and "second dad".
But my brothers and sisters over here are not [ speaks Cherokee ]. Those are [ speaks Cherokee ], "aunt" and "uncle", but over here it's
"second mom" and "second dad". So
these kids, let's say for for argument's sake,
that she's my sister, right? She's my sister,
and her son, at age 13, accidentally killed someone.
Whether he did it on purpose or on accident, it doesn't really matter.
His negligence, whatever, caused someone's death.
The family of that particular person that died
is going to expect him to forfeit his life,
to make things even again. The entirety of the community would
probably honor that, and when that family came and said, "Hey,
you know, you killed one of our relatives. You forfeited your life."
Even a young man would honor that. Even a young man would honor, would say,
"You're right, I did, and I'm allowing you to go ahead and
take my life." And they would do it. But let's say this
nephew of mine is 13 years old, he's never played a
Cherokee ball game together, he's never gone to war, he's
never been married, he doesn't have any kids, it's like his existence would cease.
I'm an older man. I've got kids. I've got grandkids coming. I've
got, you know, all kinds of relatives. I've been to war a bunch of times, and
and seen life, and done things. And his mistake
doesn't belong to him, it actually belongs to me.
It belongs to me because I'm the one who raised him--
his uncle. I, his uncle, am responsible for his identity, for his
well behaving in the community, and doing right, and thinking right, and following
all of the things that he's supposed to do, and all that kind of stuff,
so the failure really isn't his, it's mine.
So on behalf of my nephew I would step in front of him, and stand
in front of those families that expected payment of death because of their
their loved one that died. And I would say, "You need a life
for the life that you that you lost, and we agree on that.
But today, he's just a young man--a stupid kid that made some mistakes.
And I'm the real one that's responsible for him. So if you'll
you'll accept it, I'll offer my life instead of his." And they would accept it.
I don't do that for my birth clan kids over here that belong to my wife. I don't do that for them. I do that for
my aunt, for my sister's kids, my cousin's kids, my female relative's kids.
I do not do that for this family over here because
they have their own uncles. They have their own mothers and
fathers that are taking care of each one of these kids in that particular
clan. It's not my responsibility to take care.
If something like that were to happen with my son, my son
killed someone or someone lost their life because of him,
it would be one of their family that would step
in and do the same exact thing that I was just talking about for my nephew. That's how important those
uncles were, and that really shows you actually where the
fatherly responsibilities lied. They lied with those
uncles. The motherly responsibilities lied with those aunts.
So your aunts, and your cousins, and your female relatives
were not just your relatives, but also they were
a part of a familial system that ensured that regardless of
what happened, you know--life expectancy for a Cherokee
man is 30. If I die before I'm 30, do you think my
my kids are not going to be taken care of?
It doesn't matter if I die before I'm 30. It doesn't matter if I die after
that, because I know that my brothers, my cousins,
my male relatives are going to be raising my children.
The same goes for women. It's the same thing.
This system, if it was still what it once was,
there would be so much more, our communities would be so much
more strong than they are right now. I'm not saying
they aren't, because we've made it through an awful lot of tough
times, you know--the Trail of Tears, the Civil War,
you know. The Civil War was just as bad, or worse, than the Trail of Tears. So we've been through all of these majorly trying
times, and we've survived. People oftentimes
will say, [ speaks Cherokee ], that means that we're still here. If we're still here, then ,you know, despite it all, then we're faring
pretty well. I'm not saying that things can't
go back to the way they were, because we're working towards that.
We're working towards everybody having a clan,
having representation in their family, having a ceremonial place. We're working
towards giving our culture, and our traditions,
and our language back to our people, who by today's standards for the most part do not participate. So
yeah, we're walking uphill in snow both ways, but we're still
working. We're still fighting, and we're still
keeping our culture, and our traditions, and our languages alive.
[ Speaks Cherokee ] I really appreciate you guys
putting up with me. We're here at the Cherokee Heritage
Center in Tahlequah, Oklahoma on behalf of the Museum of Native
American History in Bentonville, Arkansas. [ Native flute music plays ]
