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It is sad commentary, but all too true, that a great many Cherokees have learned their "culture" from books written by white men about Cherokees. (myself included) Perhaps the most common resource for most of us who've learned this way has been James Mooney, however, rarely have any of us observed Mooney's work with the scrutiny that it indeed deserves.
First, while Mooney was a well-meaning white liberal of the day, he sincerely believed, as did nearly all of the ethnologists of the American Bureau of Ethnology, that Indians would be entirely extinct within the next few decades. Not only did they believe it, they didn't particularly care, for they believed it was simply "the way it was". If these Indigenous peoples beliefs and culture had any relevance to the modern world they would've been preserved in greater detail and been far stronger than they were at the time the legends were collected. It was "inevitable" that true "civilization" as the European and Euroderivative States defined it, would replace all that had come before it. The only reason these legends were being recorded for posterity was so that future generations of well meaning white liberals could look upon them and think "Oh, how quaint."
This inherent lack of respect that was masked by the veneer of respect that men like Mooney had for Indigenous culture should most definitely be taken into consideration when one studies Cherokee history and culture through the eyes of this author. (It should also be quite revealing that Mooney was a virulent racist and possessed a total disdain for Black People evident in much of what he wrote.)
It was in Mooney's "Myths of the Cherokee" that we first encounter the belief that the term "Cherokee" as it came to be known in English was a "borrowed term" a term that the Cherokees borrowed from another people, perhaps an adaptation of the Deleware "Talligewi" or an adaptation of a Muskogean word, written variously as "Tcilok ki" "Chiluk ki" "Cholok ki" etc. And supposedly meaning "cave dwellers".
However, one must first take into consideration that Mooney was not a linguist, and modern Iroquoian linguists have pointed out numerous mistakes Mooney did indeed make in his presentation of the Cherokee, as well as the Mohawk and other Iroquoian languages in his work. I personally believe his argument that "Cherokee" is a borrowed term is one of these mistakes.
His argument was that the term "Ayvwiya" and the plural "Aniyvwiya" was the "proper" name by which Cherokees called themselves. However, Cherokee speakers today know full well that this word means anybody who is Indian, of any given Indian Nation. It might interest many of you that it is directly related to other Iroquoian words such as the Mohawk "Ongwe Honwe" and the Tuscarora "Ekwe Hewe" all of the three meaning essentially "Original Beings" indicating the fact that Indian people are the only ones who truly originate from the American continents. However, determining the origin of "Cherokee" and in Cherokee "Tsalagi" becomes extraordinarily problematic.
I spoke once, a long time ago with a man who claimed that he still spoke the "middle dialect" of Cherokee, the only to have retained the "R" sound after the beginning of the fifteenth century, both of the other dialects dropped the sound and replaced it with "L", as did several other Iroquoian languages during the same period, to the north. It was the natural evolution of language. Were one to compare say "Middle English" of the Canterburry Tales to modern American English, it would be impossible for most people to guess that the "Middle English" phrases were English at all.
In any event, the designation "Middle Dialect" becomes increasingly problematic as well. James Adair was the first to classify the Cherokee dialects according to three "regions". His regions were "Upper Cherokee" and "Lower Cherokee" and then "Middle Cherokee" between those two, the Middle Cherokee being the one to retain the "R" sound.
Mooney rejected his idea, (I would have to argue that, because of the ammount of time Adair lived among the Cherokee one could make an argument that his knowledge of the Cherokee language in the period in which he lived with them was far greater than Mooney's knowledge of the Cherokee language who spent nowhere near as much time among them as Adair had in the previous century) Mooney claimed his designation of the three dialects was imperfect.
Mooney classified them as "Western" "Middle" and "Eastern". From this classification stemmed endless confusion and today the arguments over the designation of names describing the regional dialects of the Cherokee language are far too numerous to consider here.
It is generally accepted today that the two "main" dialects are the "Eastern" and "Western". The Eastern is also called the North Caorlina, Qualla, or "Kituhwa" (Giduwa) dialect. Whereas the Western is also called the Oklahoma dialect, I've heard some also say "overhill" and then others argue that this is a misnomer, etc. etc. etc.
The middle dialect however, is thought by many to be extinct and yet by others to be remembered by the most orthodox traditional element of the Cherokee people. That small traditional core of the nation that never truly accepted Christianity and from whom stem the knowledge and protection of pre-Christian Cherokee traditions. It is argued that a few of these still know the middle dialect and argued by others that this ancient tongue is used by some as a "sacred language".
One person to whom I spoke purporting to have knowledge of the Middle Dialect told me that the word Cherokee comes from "Cherriakitarghe" which was his spelling. He claimed that it meant "people of the central fire" and since the word "atsila" is Cherokee for fire, it is "a cher ra " in the Middle Dialect which has "R" in place of "L". However, I showed the word to Linguists specializing in Iroquoian languages, most particularly Prof. Blair Rudes, author of the Tuscarora Language Dictionary and he said that he knew for a fact that it was an Iroquoian word, but had no idea what it meant, and that "cherriakitarghe" did NOT mean "people of the central fire". Then we got to talking about the Mohawk Res. named "Kahnawake"
There is supposed to be a river somewhere in West Virginia I believe, that the Cherokees called "Ganawagi" which is the exact same pronunciation as the Mohawk Reserve in Quebec called "Kahnwake", both Cherokees and Mohawks have legends that they all used to be one people, and the linguistic and historical evidence is clear that at one time all Iroquoian peoples lived together in one place, mostly likely in the Ohio River Valley in the states of Kentucky, West Va, Va, and Ohio of course. Those that moved north eventually became the St. Lawrence Iroquioans, the Haudenosaunee, the Susquehannock or (Connestoga) in Pennsylvania, and the various Iroquoian peoples such as the Huron, and others that were historically allied to the French during the period of European colonization. Those that remained in the South were the Cherokees.
Mooney's argument that, the Cherokees broke away from the Haudenosaunee in 1300 A.D. and did not "arrive" in the American South until around that time, is false, does not fit with the oral tradition nor with the linguistic evidence. According to current linguistic theory the Cherokee language seperated from the main body of Iroquoian languages as early as 2,500 to 3,000 B.C.E. (before common era) Indicating that the Cherokee had both a unique cultural and linguistic identity for at least the last five thousand years.
Tuscarora broke away from the main body of Northern Iroquoian speakers around 150 B.C.E. and they settled a region of Eastern Virginia and North Carolina that was neither occupied by Eastern Siouans, nor Coastal Algonquians, nor their Cherokee cousins who resided on the other side of the mountains.
Cherokee, is the only language in the southern branch of the Iroquoian language family, all the other Iroquoian languages, included Tuscarora, are designated as being "Northern Iroquoian". The place at which the Northern and Southern Iroquoians divided from one another was always said to have been a river. Most say that it was at the Ohio, but there is a Cherokee legend that this river that many of them called "Ganawagi" in West Virginia was the place at which the seperation occured, thus explaining the reason why the Mohawk Reserve retains the name. When asked what it meant, Prof. Rudes told me that it meant something like "place of the currents" and indicated a River, how ironic.
It also made me think of the Cherokee word "uganowa" (it is warm) as well as "ganvnowa" which I believe is the word for a pipe.
I presented the same word "Cherriakitarghe" to Durbin Feeling, a native Cherokee speaker, linguist, and co-author of the Cherokee-English Dictionary. He said he also had no clue what it might mean, but also affirmed that it was Iroquoian. Mr. Feeling told me that he'd always been taught that the word for the Cherokee people originated in the term "Atsilagi" which means "He Took Fire", this is interesting, because hundreds of years ago James Adair was the first to record that the Cherokee of that time period believed that their name had something to do with their word for "fire" (atsila) spelled variously "a ji la" and in North Carolina pronunciation "a dzi la"
First, while Mooney was a well-meaning white liberal of the day, he sincerely believed, as did nearly all of the ethnologists of the American Bureau of Ethnology, that Indians would be entirely extinct within the next few decades. Not only did they believe it, they didn't particularly care, for they believed it was simply "the way it was". If these Indigenous peoples beliefs and culture had any relevance to the modern world they would've been preserved in greater detail and been far stronger than they were at the time the legends were collected. It was "inevitable" that true "civilization" as the European and Euroderivative States defined it, would replace all that had come before it. The only reason these legends were being recorded for posterity was so that future generations of well meaning white liberals could look upon them and think "Oh, how quaint."
This inherent lack of respect that was masked by the veneer of respect that men like Mooney had for Indigenous culture should most definitely be taken into consideration when one studies Cherokee history and culture through the eyes of this author. (It should also be quite revealing that Mooney was a virulent racist and possessed a total disdain for Black People evident in much of what he wrote.)
It was in Mooney's "Myths of the Cherokee" that we first encounter the belief that the term "Cherokee" as it came to be known in English was a "borrowed term" a term that the Cherokees borrowed from another people, perhaps an adaptation of the Deleware "Talligewi" or an adaptation of a Muskogean word, written variously as "Tcilok ki" "Chiluk ki" "Cholok ki" etc. And supposedly meaning "cave dwellers".
However, one must first take into consideration that Mooney was not a linguist, and modern Iroquoian linguists have pointed out numerous mistakes Mooney did indeed make in his presentation of the Cherokee, as well as the Mohawk and other Iroquoian languages in his work. I personally believe his argument that "Cherokee" is a borrowed term is one of these mistakes.
His argument was that the term "Ayvwiya" and the plural "Aniyvwiya" was the "proper" name by which Cherokees called themselves. However, Cherokee speakers today know full well that this word means anybody who is Indian, of any given Indian Nation. It might interest many of you that it is directly related to other Iroquoian words such as the Mohawk "Ongwe Honwe" and the Tuscarora "Ekwe Hewe" all of the three meaning essentially "Original Beings" indicating the fact that Indian people are the only ones who truly originate from the American continents. However, determining the origin of "Cherokee" and in Cherokee "Tsalagi" becomes extraordinarily problematic.
I spoke once, a long time ago with a man who claimed that he still spoke the "middle dialect" of Cherokee, the only to have retained the "R" sound after the beginning of the fifteenth century, both of the other dialects dropped the sound and replaced it with "L", as did several other Iroquoian languages during the same period, to the north. It was the natural evolution of language. Were one to compare say "Middle English" of the Canterburry Tales to modern American English, it would be impossible for most people to guess that the "Middle English" phrases were English at all.
In any event, the designation "Middle Dialect" becomes increasingly problematic as well. James Adair was the first to classify the Cherokee dialects according to three "regions". His regions were "Upper Cherokee" and "Lower Cherokee" and then "Middle Cherokee" between those two, the Middle Cherokee being the one to retain the "R" sound.
Mooney rejected his idea, (I would have to argue that, because of the ammount of time Adair lived among the Cherokee one could make an argument that his knowledge of the Cherokee language in the period in which he lived with them was far greater than Mooney's knowledge of the Cherokee language who spent nowhere near as much time among them as Adair had in the previous century) Mooney claimed his designation of the three dialects was imperfect.
Mooney classified them as "Western" "Middle" and "Eastern". From this classification stemmed endless confusion and today the arguments over the designation of names describing the regional dialects of the Cherokee language are far too numerous to consider here.
It is generally accepted today that the two "main" dialects are the "Eastern" and "Western". The Eastern is also called the North Caorlina, Qualla, or "Kituhwa" (Giduwa) dialect. Whereas the Western is also called the Oklahoma dialect, I've heard some also say "overhill" and then others argue that this is a misnomer, etc. etc. etc.
The middle dialect however, is thought by many to be extinct and yet by others to be remembered by the most orthodox traditional element of the Cherokee people. That small traditional core of the nation that never truly accepted Christianity and from whom stem the knowledge and protection of pre-Christian Cherokee traditions. It is argued that a few of these still know the middle dialect and argued by others that this ancient tongue is used by some as a "sacred language".
One person to whom I spoke purporting to have knowledge of the Middle Dialect told me that the word Cherokee comes from "Cherriakitarghe" which was his spelling. He claimed that it meant "people of the central fire" and since the word "atsila" is Cherokee for fire, it is "a cher ra " in the Middle Dialect which has "R" in place of "L". However, I showed the word to Linguists specializing in Iroquoian languages, most particularly Prof. Blair Rudes, author of the Tuscarora Language Dictionary and he said that he knew for a fact that it was an Iroquoian word, but had no idea what it meant, and that "cherriakitarghe" did NOT mean "people of the central fire". Then we got to talking about the Mohawk Res. named "Kahnawake"
There is supposed to be a river somewhere in West Virginia I believe, that the Cherokees called "Ganawagi" which is the exact same pronunciation as the Mohawk Reserve in Quebec called "Kahnwake", both Cherokees and Mohawks have legends that they all used to be one people, and the linguistic and historical evidence is clear that at one time all Iroquoian peoples lived together in one place, mostly likely in the Ohio River Valley in the states of Kentucky, West Va, Va, and Ohio of course. Those that moved north eventually became the St. Lawrence Iroquioans, the Haudenosaunee, the Susquehannock or (Connestoga) in Pennsylvania, and the various Iroquoian peoples such as the Huron, and others that were historically allied to the French during the period of European colonization. Those that remained in the South were the Cherokees.
Mooney's argument that, the Cherokees broke away from the Haudenosaunee in 1300 A.D. and did not "arrive" in the American South until around that time, is false, does not fit with the oral tradition nor with the linguistic evidence. According to current linguistic theory the Cherokee language seperated from the main body of Iroquoian languages as early as 2,500 to 3,000 B.C.E. (before common era) Indicating that the Cherokee had both a unique cultural and linguistic identity for at least the last five thousand years.
Tuscarora broke away from the main body of Northern Iroquoian speakers around 150 B.C.E. and they settled a region of Eastern Virginia and North Carolina that was neither occupied by Eastern Siouans, nor Coastal Algonquians, nor their Cherokee cousins who resided on the other side of the mountains.
Cherokee, is the only language in the southern branch of the Iroquoian language family, all the other Iroquoian languages, included Tuscarora, are designated as being "Northern Iroquoian". The place at which the Northern and Southern Iroquoians divided from one another was always said to have been a river. Most say that it was at the Ohio, but there is a Cherokee legend that this river that many of them called "Ganawagi" in West Virginia was the place at which the seperation occured, thus explaining the reason why the Mohawk Reserve retains the name. When asked what it meant, Prof. Rudes told me that it meant something like "place of the currents" and indicated a River, how ironic.
It also made me think of the Cherokee word "uganowa" (it is warm) as well as "ganvnowa" which I believe is the word for a pipe.
I presented the same word "Cherriakitarghe" to Durbin Feeling, a native Cherokee speaker, linguist, and co-author of the Cherokee-English Dictionary. He said he also had no clue what it might mean, but also affirmed that it was Iroquoian. Mr. Feeling told me that he'd always been taught that the word for the Cherokee people originated in the term "Atsilagi" which means "He Took Fire", this is interesting, because hundreds of years ago James Adair was the first to record that the Cherokee of that time period believed that their name had something to do with their word for "fire" (atsila) spelled variously "a ji la" and in North Carolina pronunciation "a dzi la"
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