How Did the Cherokee Live?
iNorlli Carolinians will Irani uIumi an an¬
cient village» is rebuilt ainl peopled with
modern Indians.
INDIAN LAND — Looking down into the Cherokee Reservation from New¬
found Cap in the Smoky Park.
к
ft joe ji:\\i.\c»s
The Cherokee Historical Association
expects to bring to life, on a 39-acre
wooded tract near the Mountain Side
Theatre, a Cherokee village such as
these mountain-dwelling Indians lived
in two hundred years ago. The money
for the construction of the village.
$25.000, was appropriated by the
North Carolina Legislature last spring,
and must eventually be repaid from
funds secured by a small admission
charge to the village.
Early Reports
Much of the information which
makes possible the erection of such
a village has been gleaned from the
writings of travelers who visited Chero¬
kee villages of long ago. Unfortunately,
these travelers were interested only
incidentally in Indian life and Indian
villages. They were soldiers or traders
or naturalists, and wrote their accounts
from the point of view of their own
professions.
Bartram, for example, was a botanist
who traveled through the southeast to
gather plant specimens, but he has
left us in his writings an excellent
description of the construction of the
council house in the Cherokee village
of Cowc. Lieutenant Timberlakc was
a soldier, but in his "Memoirs” he de¬
voted several paragraphs to the town
houses and winter dwellings of the
Cherokees. Other facts have been dis¬
covered through the excavation of long-
dead Indian villages. From such ruins
the plan of a village can often be
detected, and to sonic extent the struc¬
ture of the buildings can be surmised.
Bits of old pottery and other furnish¬
ings which have been dug up at village
sites help scientists to piece out the
story of ancient Cherokee life.
These fragments of information from
all sources have been gathered together
from all sources by the anthropologists
of the Universities of North Carolina,
Tennessee and Georgia. The anthro¬
pology department of the University of
Tennessee, in particular, has collected
all of the known written information
relative to Cherokee villages and build¬
ings, and has engaged extensively in
the excavation of Indian villages in the
Tennessee Valley. Using all of the
information available. Miss Madeline
Kncberg. of the University of Ten¬
nessee, has made drawings of the
village, and with the co-operation of
the anthropologists of the other uni¬
versities mentioned, has prepared the
plans from which the village will be
built.
Scholars Help
The anthropologists who are the
technical advisers in charge of village
construction arc Dr. T. M. N. Lewis
and Miss Knebcrg of the University
of Tennessee, Dr. A. R. Kelly and
W. H. Scars of the University of
Georgia, and Dr. Joflre Coe of the
University of North Carolina. They
are generously giving their services to
this project, without remuneration, be¬
cause it is of immense educational
value.
The village, which is modeled after
villages of the 1750 period, will be
surrounded by a log stockade. Work
on the stockade is in progress.
The “town house," as the Cherokees
called the large, almost circular build¬
ings in which their public meetings
were held, will be constructed of logs
THE STATE. December 1, 1951
