Cherokee Food

Cherokee Food and subsistence practices.
Traditional Tsalagi recipes of the Cherokee tribe.

The Cherokee people were hunters, gatherers, and farmers. Prior to the mid-eighteenth century women did most of the farming, while men were responsible for hunting, fishing, and clearing fields for planting. Women also owned the farms, homes and most posessions, except hunting weapons.

The traditional Cherokee diet consisted of mostly wild meat, especially wild hogs and white-tailed deer, and corn and bean bread, pumpkins, dried fruit, and nuts, which were usually ground into a flour to be used in other dishes. 

The principle crops they grew were maise (corn), beans, and squash. They also grew pumpkins, sunflowers, sweet potatoes, peaches and watermelons. Around 1739, Cherokee women began growing cotton and flax, and they became expert spinners and weavers. 

During the summer months, the Cherokee harvested large numbers of fish by putting buckeye pulp in the rivers, which contains a poison that stunned the fish and made them float to the surface where they could easily be gathered. They were then barbecued and a great feast was held. Fry bread was also a Cherokee staple, as it was with many Plains Indian tribes. In the old days, the Cherokee considered dogs a delicacy, which helped them through leaner times.

 CHEROKEE RECIPES

From Momfeather Erickson

I do not remember where I got these, but some of it was written in Tsalagi

Bean Bread (tu-ya ga-du)

Cook about 2 quarts of brown beans until thick and soupy, add salt to your taste Add 1/4 cup of oil or two tablespoons of pure grease.  When beans are done and still boiling, place in a bowl 4-8 cups of yellow corn meal and 1/2 cup of oil, stir this until well incorporated, pour the boiling beans into the corn meal about 4-6 cups or more. Pour into a well oiled pan and bake in 350 degree oven. When it is done, cut into squares and enjoy.

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Crawfish - (Ge-Dv-Nv)

Catch crawfish by baiting them with groundhog meat or buttermilk. Pinch off tails and legs to use. Parboil, remove hulls and fry the little meat that is left. When crisp, it is ready to eat. Crawfish can also be used in a soup or stew after it is fried.

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Cabbage - (U-S-Ge-Wi)

Wilt cabbage in a small amount of grease (go-i). Add some pieces of green peppers and cook until cabbage turns red. Serve with cornbread (se-lu ga-du). 

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Corn and Beans - (Se-Lu A-Su-Yi Tsu-Ya)

Skin flour corn with lye and cook. Cook colored beans. Put the cooked corn and beans together and cook some more. Add pumpkin if you like, cooking until pumpkin is done.

Add to this a mixture of cornmeal, beaten walnuts and hickory nuts, and enough molasses to sweeten. Cook this in an iron pot until the meal is done. Eat fresh or just after it begins to sour. This will not keep too long after it begins to sour unless the weather is cold.

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Cornmeal Gravy (selu'si asusdi)

Fry some meat (about 4 pcs.side meat) Have enough grease to cover cornmeal. Add about 1/2 cup of meal (you may wanna salt this a bit, unless you like bland) Brown the meal in grease until light brown. Add 2 1/2 cups of milk, stir and let boil until thick. Serve hot over any kind of bread. (This was my elisi's favorite poured on top of hoe cakes)

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Cornmeal Mush - (Selu'sa Anista)

Corn meal 

boiling water

(1 part corn meal to 4 parts water)

salt to taste
 

Put water in saucepan. Cover and let it become boiling hot over the fire; then add a tablespoon of salt. Take off the light scum from the top. Take a handful of the cornmeal with the left hand and a pudding stick in the right (or vise versa if you're a southpaw); then with the stick, stir the water around and by degrees let fall the meal. When one handful is exhausted, refill it; continue to stir and add meal until it is as thick as you can stir easily, or until the stick will stand in it. Stir it awhile longer. Let the fire be gentle.

When it is sufficiently cooked which will be in half an hour, it will bubble or buff up. Turn it into a deep basin. Good eaten cold or hot, with milk or butter and syrup or sugar, or with meat and gravy or it may be sliced when cold and fried.

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Dried Apples - (Unikaya)

Peel and quarter ripe apples, or slice and dry in the sun. Cook the dried apples until done. If the cooked apple needs to be thickened, add cornmeal and cook until meal is done.

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Dried Corn Soup 

1 ear dried blue and white or other corn,
removed from the cob
7 cups water (ama)
1 (2"x1") strip fat back, sliced 
5 oz. dried beef 
1/8 teaspoon fresh ground pepper (do qua yo di)

Soak the corn in 2 cups water for 48 hours. Place the corn and its soaking water in a large saucepan. Add the remaining water and the fat back, and simmer, covered, for about 3 hours and 50 minutes or until the corn is tender but not soft. 3. Mix in the dried beef and pepper, and simmer, stir for 10 minutes more.

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Fried Squash Bread

1 cup Corn meal 
2 Summer squash -- diced 
1 Egg 
Water 
1/4 cup Buttermilk 

Cook squash in water until soft; leave 3/4 c. water in pot. Combine other ingredients with squash and water; mix together. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

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Ga-Na-S-Da-Tsi (Sassafras Tea) 

Red Sassafras roots
Water 

To make a tea, boil a few pieces of the root in water until  it is the desired strength. Sweeten with honey if desired. Serve hot or cold.  Note: Gather and wash the roots of the red sassafras. Do this in the spring before the sap begins to rise. Store for future use. Some natural food stores carry sassafrass root in a dried form. It will resemble wood chips (the kind  used when barbequeing). The "store bought" variety work just as well.  Sassafras tea tastes like watered down rootbeer and is really very good.

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Greens Salad - (Guhitligi) 

 

Sweet grass (Oo-Ga-Na-S-Di) -  Old Field Creases (Oo-Li-Si) -  Ramps (Wa-S-Di) - 
Angelica (Wa-Ne-Gi-Duhn) -  Poke (Tla-Ye-De) -

Parboil, salt, then cooked some more with grease (go-i). Serve hot. 

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Spicewood Tea - (Gv-nv-s-dv-tli)

Small twigs of Spicewood

Boil twigs in water and serve hot. Sweeten if desired. Molasses or honey makes the best sweetening. Gather spicewood twigs in the spring when the buds first appear.

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Hominy Corn Drink - (Gv-no-he-nv)

Corn, field dried or parched 
Wood ash lye 
Water 

 
Shell the corn (if still on the cob), and soak the kernels in wood ash lye until the skin can be removed (slipped).Remove from the lye and rinse with clear water. Drain.  Beat the corn in the corn beater (ko-no-na) until it is the size of hominy. Sift the meal from the larger corn particles. Cook the larger particles in water until they are done. Thicken with a little meal. Drink this hot or wait until it sours and drink it cold. The drink may be kept for quite a while unless the weather is very hot. This was a customary drink to serve to friends who dropped by for a visit. 
 

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Huckleberry Bread (gadu guwa)

2 cups self rising flour 
1 egg 
1 cup sugar 
1 stick butter 
1 cup milk 
1 tea. vanilla 
2 cups berries (Huckleberry or blueberry) 

Cream eggs, butter and sugar.  Add flour, milk and vanilla.  Sprinkle flour on berries to prevent them from going to the bottom.  Add berries.  Bake at 350 for 40 minutes.

 

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Leather Breeches - (Anikayosvhi Tsuya)               

1 pound fresh green beans, washed 
2 quarts water 
1/4 pound salt pork, diced
2 teaspoons salt 
1/8 teaspoon fresh ground pepper 
heavy thread 
darning needle

Snap the ends off the beans and string on heavy thread with needle. Hang in a sunny place to dry for about 2 months. To cook: Soak beans for 1 hour in the two quarts of water. Add the salt pork, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer slowly, for 3 hours. Add more water if needed.

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Potato Soup - (Nu-nv Oo-ga-ma)

Peel white potatoes and cut them into small pieces. Boil in water with an onion or two until potatoes and onions mash easily. After mashing, add some fresh milk and reheat the mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste, if desired.

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Ramps - (Wa-s-di)   

Gather young ramps soon after they come up. Parboil them, wash and fry in a little grease (go-i). Meal may be added if you wish. They may be cooked without being parboiled, or even eaten raw (if the eater is not social minded! *smile*)

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Red Sumach Drink - (Qua-lo-ga)

Shell berries off and gently rub between the palms of your hands, being careful not to crush the berries but only the spines, drop into water, strain, sweeten to taste and chill.

 

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Cherokee Succotash - (Iyatsuyadisuyi Selu)

 

Shell some corn and skin it with wood ashes lye. Cook corn and beans separately, then together. If desired, you may put pieces of pumpkin in. Be sure to put the pumpkin in early enough to get done before the pot is removed from the fire. 

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Swamp Potatoes - (Tlawatsuhi'anehi Nunv) 

Gather and wash swamp potatoes. Bake in oven or in ashes until they are done. Beat the cooked potatoes in the corn beater until they are like any other meal. Use as meal is used. 

(During winter famines, many Cherokees had no other meal except that made from the swamp potatoes.)

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Sweet Corn Mixture - (Sedi Tsuya Selu) 

Skin flour corn by putting it in lye. Cook the corn until it is done. Add beans and continue cooking until the beans are done. Add pumpkin and cook until it is done, then add walnut (se di) meal and a little corn meal. Add a little sugar or molasses if you'd like. Cook until the corn meal is done. 

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Possum Grape Drink (Oo-ni-na-su-ga Oo-ga-ma)   Possum grapes (muscadine grapes), dried
 Water
 Corn meal 

Gather ripe possum grapes - the kind that are still sour after they ripen when the frost has fallen on them. Hang up for winter use.

To prepare: Shell off the grapes from the stems, wash, and stew them in water. When they are done, mash in the water they were cooked in. Let this sit until the seed settle, then strain, reserving liquid. Put the juice back on the fire and and bring to a boil. Add a little cornmeal to thicken the juice. Continue cooking until the meal is done. Remove from the fire and drink hot or cold. Sweeten, if desired.

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Old Field Apricot Drink (Uwaga (Oo-Wa-Ga) 

Gather old field apricots 
(field apricots are the fruit of the passion flower) 

Hull out the seed and pulp, and put on to boil, discarding skins. Add a tiny bit of soda to make the seeds separate from the pulp. Squash out the pulp, straining the mixture through a cloth. Drink hot.

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Wanegidv (Wah-neh-gee-Duh) 

Pick when tender, parboil, fry, and serve with eggs and bread or just bread.

Trade Prices in SC

Trade Prices In 1716 the South Carolina Board of Trade issued the following trade schedule.


Number of deerskins for each item follows item name.

A Gun. 30

A Yard Strouds. 7

A Duffield Blanket. 14

A Yard Half Thicks. 3

A Hatchet. 2

A narrow Hoe. 2

A broad Hoe. 4

Fifty Bullets. 1

A Butcher’s Knife. 1

A pair Cizars. 1

Three Strings Beads. 1

Eighteen Flints. 1

An Ax. 4

A Pistol. 20

A Cutlash. 8

A Shirt. 4

A Steel. 1

A Calico Petticoat. 12

A red Girdle. 2

A laced Hatt. 8

A Clasp Knife. 1

A Yard Cadis. 1

Rum, mixed with1/3 Water; per bottle. 1

Another Cherokee Learning Detour from My Family Research

Houses of the Cherokees

Wattle and Daub Houses

Wattle and daub houses (also known as asi, the Cherokee word for them) are Native American houses used by southeastern tribes. Wattle and daub houses are made by weaving rivercane, wood, and vines into a frame, then coating the frame with plaster. The roof was either thatched with grass or shingled with bark.


          rivercane frame       plastered and thatched

Wattle and daub houses are permanent structures that take a lot of effort to build. Like longhouses, they are good homes for agricultural people who intended to stay in one place, like the Cherokees and Creeks. Making wattle and daub houses requires a fairly warm climate to dry the plaster.

The Cherokee Indians lived in settled villages, usually located near a river. Cherokee houses were made of rivercane and plaster, with thatched roofs. These dwellings were about as strong and warm as log cabins.The Cherokees also built larger seven-sided buildings for ceremonial purposes, and each village usually had a ball field with benches for spectators. Many Cherokee villages had palisades (reinforced walls) around them for protection.

At the time of contact, the Cherokee were a settled, agricultural people living in approximately 200 fairly, large villages. The typical Cherokee town consisted of 30 to 60 houses and a large council house. They built permanent, well-organized villages in the midst of extensive cornfields and gardens throughout the fertile river valleys of the Cherokee country.

In these villages, homes ranged around a central plaza used for dances, games, and ceremonies. At one end of the plaza, the council house, or townhouse, held the sacred fire, symbol of the Creator and embodiment of the spirit of the town. Often the townhouse stood on an earthen mound from the earlier Mississippian culture, although the Cherokee themselves did not build mounds during the historic period. However, the mounds sometimes grew with successive, ceremonial rebuildings.

Ancient Cherokee Village

The size of the townhouse varied, depending on the size of each village, since it had to be large enough for all the people to meet to discuss community matters and hold festivals. Council houses, as they were also called, were made of saplings (young trees) and mud. The Cherokee would gather at the council house for parties, political assemblies and religious ceremonies. Bunched around the council house was a collection of extended family homes.

Cherokee Summer House

Some cherokees lived in a different style of house in the summer than the winter. Summer houses were in the shape of a square or rectangle. Upright poles formed the framework. The outside was covered with bark, wood or woven siding coated with earth and clay. This type of construction with clay is called wattle and daub. The cherokee dwelling was usually quite large, because Cherokees lived in extended matrilineal families consisting of the mother's parents, the parents, children, and unmarried siblings of the mother of the house. A husband joined the family of his wife.

Cherokee Winter House

During the winter, some Cherokee lived in a smaller, circular, dome shaped structure that looked like a beehive or an upsidedown basket. It was partially sunken into the ground. This style of Cherokee lodge was called an asi. Being smaller and lower than the summer homes, it was easier to keep warm in winter.

In later years, many Cherokee, lived in the same kind of houses the European settlers lived in -- log cabins and wooden houses. A typical log cabin had one door and a smoke hole in the center of the roof.


Cherokee Clothing

                                                                 
Breechcloths leave the legs bare, so Native American men often wore leggings to protect their legs. Native American leggings are tube-like footless pant legs, usually made from buckskin or other soft leather. They are not connected to each other--there is one separate legging for each leg. Both leggings are tied onto the same belt that holds the breechcloth with thongs that attach at the hip. 

Legging styles varied from tribe to tribe. Sometimes they were fringed, like the ones in this picture. Sometimes they were painted with colorful patterns or decorated with beadwork or quillwork designs. Many Indian men tied garters (straps, thongs, or bandana-like cloths) around their leggings at the knee to help keep them in place.

Women and girls also wore leggings in many tribes, but female leggings were shorter and were not attached to a belt, simply gartered at the knee.

A breechcloth is a long rectangular piece of tanned deerskin, cloth, or animal fur. It is worn between the legs and tucked over a belt, so that the flaps fall down in front and behind. Sometimes it is also called a breechclout, loincloth, skin clout, or just a flap. In most Native American tribes, men used to wear some form of breechclout. The style was different from tribe to tribe. In some tribes, the breechcloth loops outside of the belt and then is tucked into the inside, for a more fitted look. Sometimes the breechcloth is much shorter and a decorated apron panel is attached in front and behind. A Native American woman or teenage girl might also wear a fitted breechcloth underneath her skirt, but not as outerwear. However, in many tribes young girls did wear breechcloths like the boys until they became old enough for skirts and dresses Transportation

The Cherokee Indians used to make long dugout canoes from hollowed-out logs. Over land, the Cherokees used dogs as pack animals. There were no horses in North America until colonists brought them over from Europe.

Indian Territory

Part of what became Oklahoma was designated the home for the Choctaw Nation. Later the area would be named Indian Territory. The goal was to provide ample lands for the relocation of Native Americans in the eastern states who did not wish to assimilate.


Delegations to make the territory into a state began near the end of the 19th century, when the Curtis Act furthered the allotment of Indian tribal land. Attempts to create an all-Indian state named Oklahoma and a later attempt to create an all-Indian state named Sequoyah failed but the Sequoyah Statehood Convention of 1905 eventually laid the groundwork for the Oklahoma Statehood Convention, which took place two years later.^[54] On November 16, 1907, Oklahoma was established as the 46th state in the Union

James Tidbits

Girls and Boys
In the 1910 census Alfred and Lucinda had 7 children. One Baby, Haskell, had died in 1907 in infancy. Of the 6 other children only 1 was a boy. As a farmer, was Alfred disappointed he didn't have more farm hands? Interestingly and finally, there was a total of 14 kids born - 7 boys and 7 girls.

JAMES Surname Meaning and Origin:
James is a patronymic name derived from "Jacob" and usually meaning "son of Jacob." In English, Jacob and James are distinctly separate names, but throughout the rest of the world, the two are often used interchangeably.

James is the 80th most popular surname in the United States. James is also popular in England, coming in as the 41st most common surname.

Surname Origin: English

Another Mystery - I Need A Flow Chart

I noticed a discrepancy in the different census about where Grandpa Alfred and Grandma Lucinda said their parents were born as follows:

Alfred said in the 1900 qnd 1910 census his father was born in Tennessee, his mother in Kansas
Alfred said in the 1920 census his father was born in Kentucky, his mother in Kansas
Alfred said in the 1930 census his father was born in Oklahoma, his mother in Oklahoma

Lucinda said in the 1900 census her father was born in Georgia and her mother in Arkansas
Lucinda said in the 1910 census her father was born in Tennessee and her mother in Arkansas
Lucinda said in the 1920 census her father was born in North Carolina and her mother in Arkansas
Lucinda said in the 1930 census her father was born in Oklahoma and  her mother Arkansas

Did they not know? Did they distrust the government and for some reason didn't want them to be able to trace them? We'll probably never know. They certainly had no reason to trust anything the government ever did.


Indians Were Not Citizens

Indians on reservations were not considered citizens until 1924; therefore, they were only included sporadically on most nineteenth and early twentieth-century U.S. federal census records.

The Indian census schedules started after an act of Congress on 4 July 1884 said, “That hereafter each Indian agent be required, in his annual report, to submit a census of the Indians at his agency or upon the reservation under his charge.” Besides other things, these censuses were taken to help the government keep track of who was eligible for land or money allotments.

Artist Mary Adair

A Depiction of the Events in the Life of Nancy Ward

What a wonderful picture!!!! The Beloved Nancy Ward is my 6 g grandmother.

A great comment written by K.C.on March of 2010 about Amatoya Moytoy- Making sure it gets just notice

K.C. said...


The Shawnee and Cherokee Nations adopted by blood and marriage. No matter the racial or ethnic composition of someone who originated from outside the Clans, if they married a Cherokee, they were considered as full-blood by the Nation. They remained "full-blood" unless they remarried outside the Nation, in which case they were considered to revert or relinquish their blood-tie vow. The "provable dna" blood-ties via validated lineages and delineations only became re-defined during the time of Native American removal [Trail of Tears for example], and federal rolls for purposes of documenting the Nation, by the US Government, came into effect. US government required a person to "validate" their "native claim", first, as a way of counting the population which they were removing from native soils, and, then, to "prove" their right to receive federal dollars for support. Moytoy is considered to be full-blood by members of the Nation because his white father married Pride, a Shawnee. Noone knows if Pride was 'mixed blood' or not. With a name like Pride, which is english, it would seem that Thomas Carpenter was not the only white to intermarry at this time. Shawnees had already had at least 150 years of euro-white contact by the time Thomas showed up as a trader. The name Pride is also consistant with many early american names such as Loving, Charity, Comfort, Patience, Simplicity, Mercy, Joy etc. I have an early american ancestor named Comfort and one named Gladness, as well as one name Plenty. The emigrants who established our first colonies had a tough go. They often named their children for the virtues which they longed for, or identified with. Initially, many emigrants worked with the various Nations, and intermarried without racist views. Shawnee and Cherokee, they remembered their blood ties to Thomas Carpenter and by associative lineage based on their own societal order, to the British and, by extension, to the new Americans. So, a few generations later, they actually saw the bonds as ones of family [which is the truth]. British and new American views were roman-euro-centric, however, and did not politically agree. It is my humble opinion that they were wrong. The Nation had it right. People of my people, Blood of my blood, We are all earths children. >k.c

The Cherokee Nation

The Cherokees called themselves the Ani-Yun' wiya meaning leading or principal people. The original Cherokees lived early times in Georgia, Alabama, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia.

The Cherokee seal (above) was designed to embrace the early government structure, and the eternal endurance of the Cherokee Indians. It was adopted by Act of the Cherokee National Council, and approved in 1871. The seven-pointed star symbolizes: (1). the seven age old clans of the Cherokee: (2). the seven characters of Sequoyah’s syllabary, meaning "Cherokee Nation." (The Cherokee characters are phonetically pronounced "Tsa-la-gi-hi A-yi-li") .. The wreath of oak leaves symbolizes the sacred fire which, from time immemorial, the Cherokees kept burning in their land. Oak was the wood traditionally burned, different species of oak having ever been indigenous to Cherokee country, both in North Carolina and Georgia as well as in the Indian Territory to which the Cherokees removed in the early 1800's...The margin wording proclaims the authority of the seal in both the English and the Cherokee languages, and records the date (1839) of the adoption of the Constitution of the Cherokee Nation West...This seal was imprinted on all documents until the dissolution of the Cherokee Nation at Oklahoma Statehood

Chronicles of OklahomaSEAL OF THE CHEROKEE NATION

Interpretation of the device in this seal is found in Cherokee folklore and history. Ritual songs in certain ancient tribal ceremonials and songs made reference to seven clans, the legendary
beginnings of the Cherokee Nation whose country early in the historic period took in a wide area now included in the present eastern parts of Tennessee and Kentucky, the western parts of
Virginia and the Carolinas, as well as extending over into what are now northern sections of Georgia and Alabama. A sacred fire was kept burning in the "Town House" at a central part of the old nation, logs of the live oak, a hardwood timber in the region, laid end to end to keep the fire going. The oak was thus a symbol of strength and everlasting life in connection with the sacred fire. The seven-pointed star centering the device of the Cherokee Seal represents
the seven ancient clans in tribal lore.

Indian Info Tidbits

Matriarchal Society

The Cherokees had a matriarchal society whereby descent was traced strictly through the mother's side of the family. A person belonged to his mother's clan and the most important and powerful man in a child's life was not his father, but the mother's brothers. The maternal uncles had responsibility for discipline of the child and taught him about hunting and warfare. The women owned the dwellings and were in control of all the property.

Clan affiliation was inherited through the mother's line and marriage within a clan was strictly forbidden. The household was the basic unit of the Cherokee social organization and a newly married couple usually lived with the wife's family.

What type of clothing did the Cherokee used to wear?

The Cherokee wore clothing made from animal skins before the Europeans introduced cloth to the tribe. Even into the 1800's the men wore the leggings made of deer hide in order to protect their legs from thorns and underbrush.

The introduction of the turban indirectly came from the Muslim people. When a Cherokee delegation went to visit the Royal Family of England, the men were thought to be very frightening with their tattooed heads and bodies. It was decided to cover their upper bodies with the English smoking jacket, which became our hunting jacket and cover their heads with a shorter version of the turban of the Muslim house servants of the Royal Family. These introduced styles were well received among the men of the Five Civilized Tribes and continue to be a part of our cultural dress styles.

Chasing Indians

Some Cherokee Background:

The Cherokee are a people native to North America, who, at the time of European contact in the sixteenth century, inhabited what is now the Eastern and Southeastern United States. Most were forcibly moved westward to the Ozark Plateau in the 1830s. They are one of the tribes referred to as the Five Civilized Tribes. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, they are the largest of the 563 federally recognized Native American tribes in the United States.

The Cherokee refer to themselves as Tsa-la-gi ( pronounced "Zah la gee" or "Tsa lah gee" in the eastern Giduwa dialect or pronouced "ja-la-gee" in western dialect) or A-ni-yv-wi-ya (pronounced "ah knee yuh wee yaw" (western) or "Ah nee yuhn wi yah" (Eastern dialect), literal translation: "Principal People.

The English first had contact with the Cherokee in 1654.By the late seventeenth century, traders from both Virginia and South Carolina were making regular journeys to Cherokee lands, but few wrote about their experiences

The trade was mainly deerskins, raw material for the booming European leather industry, in exchange for European technology "trade goods" such as iron and steel tools (kettles, knives, etc), firearms, gunpowder, and ammunition. In 1705, these traders complained that their business had been lost and replaced by Indian slave trade instigated by Governor Moore of South Carolina. Moore had commissioned people to "set upon, assault, kill, destroy, and take captive as many Indians as possible". These captives would be sold and the profits split with the Governor. Although selling alcohol to Indians was made illegal by colonial governments at an early date, rum, and later whiskey, were a common item of trade.

The Cherokee people never lived in tipis. The Plains Indians lived in these, as they were able to be moved when following herds and hunting. The Cherokee people historically lived in houses made of mud and clay with roofs of brush and river cane. In the winter time, they lived in even smaller clay and mud houses which included the construction of the roof, as well, in order to keep warm. By the late 1700’s, many Cherokees were living in log cabins while some even lived in clapboard houses like their non-Indian counterparts.

The Cherokee Nation is a 7,000 square mile jurisdictional area located in all of eight counties and portions of six counties in Northeastern Oklahoma. It is not a reservation. As a federally recognized Indian tribe, the Cherokee Nation has both the opportunity and the sovereign right to exercise control and development over tribal assets which include 66,000 acres of land as well as 96 miles of the Arkansas Riverbed.

Cherokee Clan Names - English Clan Name
Ani-Wa-ya -Wolf Clan
Ani-Wa-di -Paint Clan
Ani-Ka-wi - Deer Clan
Ani-Tsi-s'qua - Bird Clan
Ani-Ga-ta-ge-wi - generally "Blind Savannah" but more likely "Wild Potato"
Ani-Gi-la-hi - Long Hair Clan
Ani-Sa-ha-ni - Blue Clan
Sources: Cherokee Registry and Wikipedia