The answer, of course, is all of the above. The word also represents a culture, a government and an example of survival against brutal and unjust persecution.
The miracle is that this brave, intelligent, independent group of native Americans has retained its identity, triumphing over indescribable adversity, greedy aggression, warfare and more than 30 treaties broken by the federal government, which always demanded that the Cherokee cede lands on the white man's terms.
But here they are—the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians—ready to share their history and traditions as they host an estimated eight million annual visitors from all over the United States and other countries to take part in continuous activities from spring through fall foliage season.
Cherokee is a good place to spend several days, situated as it is between the southern terminus of the Blue Ridge Parkway and the eastern entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Maggie Valley and Asheville, N.C. are just over the mountain to the east: Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tenn., across Smoky's Newfound Gap to the west.
The word Cherokee may have come from "tciloki" - "people of a different speech" - which the Spaniards wrote "Chalaque." Jamestown's 1607 and Plymouth Rock's 1620 pale beside the thousands of years Cherokee Indians have called this country home. Their recorded history dates to 1540, when DeSoto and his explorers found a peaceful, industrious God-fearing people, living in 50 or more towns, where they hunted, fished and raised crops and orchards. Wicker basket-like walls of their homes were woven between uprights, then plastered with a clay/grass mixture. Roofs were bark or thatch. Some Spaniards and Cherokees became friends, learning from each other. Other Spaniards, as well as many who came after them, countered the Cherokees' initial hospitality with double-dealing treachery.
The 9,000 members of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians are a microcosm of a great and powerful nation that once encompassed parts of eight southern states. They descend from 1,000 or so desperate souls who hid in the mountains of western North Carolina at the time of the Removal in 1838, to escape being forcibly marched west by federal troops, plus a few who were allowed to stay because of old age or intermarriage. Later a number, including Chief Junaluska, who had once saved Andrew Jackson's life, walked the 1,000 miles back from Oklahoma, some carrying children on their backs. (The 95,000 members of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma descend from those who stayed there after surviving the long trek.)
Contemporary Eastern Cherokee live on 56,573-acre Qualia Boundary distributed over five western North Carolina counties, surrounded on three sides by Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Intermarriage has blurred clan lines and blood lines. In 1970, 15 percent of Eastern Cherokee were fullbloods. About 3,000 of those on the official tribe roll reside off the Qualia Boundary. Some tribal members cluster on parts of the reservation in half a dozen townships with names like Birdtown, Yellow Hill and Big Cove. Non-Indians are included in the population of the town of Cherokee, which is nestled into a beautiful valley along the Oconaluftee River ("By the Water" in Cherokee) surrounded by the smokey blue mountains their ancestors called Shaconage. Annual average temperature is 54 degrees; average rainfall, 47 inches. Elevation within Qualia Boundary ranges from 1.700 feet to more than 5,000 feet.
Like many mountain towns, this family destination depends in large measure on the dollars of vacationers. At times during the season's height the town's 52 motels (1,350 rooms), plus 26 campgrounds (2,500 sites), must tum guests away.
Of the town's 45 restaurants at least one - Spirits on the River - serves up some exotic fare - buffalo, alligator, pheasant thighs, and more - along with conventional items.
Travelers bring Cherokee $40 million annually in retail sales. The majority of 250 small businesses are Indian-operated. Many of the 120 souvenir and specialty shops downtown and in Saunooke Village offer authentic Indian craft items. Located opposite the museum, Qualia Arts and Crafts Mutual, Inc. is the most noteworthy Indian-owned-and-operated such cooperative in the country, selling one-of-a-kind originals of exceptional quality made by 400 outstanding artists and craftsmen. Techniques and designs handed down for more than 300 years produce basketry whose natural dyes don't fade in the sun, pottery, hand-carved wood and stone birds and animals, dolls, finger weavings, beadwork, jewelry and more.
Cherokee differs from other mountain towns in two ways. First, it strives to foster among visitors increased understanding of the Indians' unique history and heritage as well as insight into what native language teacher Robert Bushyhead terms their "ancestral future." Second, land within Qualia Boundary is held in trust by the federal government as common tribal land. Indian residents can transfer their possessory holdings to each other or lease to private individuals, but land cannot be sold to non-Indians. This restriction has contributed to keeping the town free of the runaway development characteristic of many resort areas.
Will the government ever relinquish its trusteeship?
"We don't want it," says Principal Chief Jonathan Taylor. "If that should happen, then developers could come in to buy up the land and the Indians wouldn't have anything."
This is not to say that there is an absence of growth. Brothers James and Candler Cooper, whose business interests include Holiday Inn, Best Western and Tee Pee Restaurant, are only one example of successful Indian entrepreneurs. At some future time, the tribe dreams of building a convention center/resort hotel/golf course.
There are outstanding Cherokees in many walks of life. Examples are the Chiltoskeys, and their nationally known woodcarver friend, Amanda Crowe. Real-life Cherokee minister Robert Bushyhead has played for 40 years the minister's role in the drama "Unto These Hills." Eddie Swimmer, member of the internationally successful American Indian Dance Theatre, astounds audiences as he encompasses his swiftly moving body with 42 hoops. There's Marilou Awiakta, whose sensitive poems and other writings mirror the reverence her ancestors have channeled through her for environmental concerns, indeed, for all life.
Storyteller Gayle Ross brings alive history from the days of her famous great-great-great grandfather, Principal Chief John Ross. Her stories have this message: The Cherokee realized they were only a part of an entire ecosystem.
A people with the heritage of two cultures are doubly blessed. Those of us less rich could profit from this lesson and from other aspects of Cherokee civilization:
• After the Cherokee genius Sequoyah invented the syllabary in 1821, the entire Cherokee nation became literate within a few months without schools or teachers. They had many more literate citizens than adjacent states, even publishing a weekly newspaper, Cherokee Phoenix.
• The Cherokee knew how to use as natural medicines (and some still use them) 400 of the 800 Smoky Mountains area plants for which they have names.
• During their Golden Age in the early 1800s, they had a constitution, a republican form of government, and a tribal organization so efficient it has been copied by other tribes.
• Due to a matrilineal culture in which Gian membership and right of inheritance are determined through the mother's line, Cherokee women have enjoyed the kind of equality, respect, freedom and recognition their white sisters have struggled for. Widows of chiefs and those who have made lasting contributions are titled "Beloved Woman" and given special authority.
The petite, blue-eyed teacher came 48 years ago from Alabama to teach math, social studies and be librarian at the Bureau of Indian Affairs School. Some teachers had not stayed long. Mary Ulmer not only stayed, she set in motion a revolution still in progress.
There's a Cherokee saying: "The old ways are swift birds. They fly away or die and leave no sign." The new teacher perceived right away that the priceless heritage of a valuable subculture was going down the drain. Some values, ways of life, and customs that had developed over centuries were already forever lost. After World War II more folklore was being abandoned as the Cherokee, along with other Americans, questioned old ways while adapting to new technologies. As much as any one person, Mary Ulmer Chiltoskey retrieved the slipping culture and restored pride in it.
First, she interviewed elderly Cherokee known as good cooks. Her initial book, "Cherokee Cooklore," was published in 1951. Goingback Chiltoskey helped compile the material and drew the illustrations. Many of the recipes came from "a destitute period of the past when subsistence living was the only living. "
"Cherokee Words," written as a children's picture dictionary but interesting to all ages, came out in 1972, followed by "Cherokee Plants," with Paul B. Hamel, in 1975, and "Cherokee fair and festival History" in 1979. Each book contains much more than its title indicates.
No matter how they disagree. Cherokee historians concur on one point: William Holland Thomas, a white lawyer; was the best friend the Indians ever had.
Sara Thomas Campbell of Waynesville. N.C., granddaughter of Thomas, never knew her grandfather: but knows the stories well.
'The Indians liked my grandfather right away," she says. "He was honest and they knew they could trust him He's the one who saved them. there's no doubt about that. Through him the Indians stayed on the reservation. He bought the land in his own name because the Cherokee were wards of the government."
That same fall the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians and the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma met jointly to commemorate the 1,200-mile journey the tribe was forced to make from Southeastern United States to Oklahoma during a six-month period in 1838-39. The council was held less than a year after the passage of a congressional law designating the trail as part of the National Historic Trail System.
Marking the trail and building interpretative centers along the route will take several years. Commemorative sites include Tsali's Rock near Deep Creek in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where the Indian and his sons hid after killing a U.S. soldier who had mistreated Tsali's wife, and fort Butler near Murphy, one of six military centers for the Cherokee roundup in western North Carolina, North Georgia had five forts; northern Alabama, one; and southwestern Tennessee, one.
"The law was a long time coming," says Chief Jonathan L. Taylor who heads up the Eastern Band. "It was time there was some recognition of what happened to us. We are glad the trail is going to be a historical landmark. People who look at it will be aware of what happened."
What happened to the Cherokees during the Removal has been called "America's Holocaust." They were corralled into a dozen hastily constructed stockades in groups of 1,000 and then transported by wagons, steamers and keel boats by some 7,000 soldiers and volunteers, under the supervision of General Winfield Scott. Eyewitness accounts paint an ugly picture:
"Men working in the field were arrested and driven to the stockades," wrote Private John G. Burnett. "Women were dragged from their homes by soldiers ... Children were often separated from their parents and driven into the stockades ... And often the old and infirm were prodded with bayonets to hasten them to the stockades."
"On Tuesday evening," reported a traveler from Maine in the New York Observer, "we fell in with a detachment of the poor Cherokee Indians ... about 1,100 of them - 60 wagons, 600 horses, and perhaps 40 pairs of oxen. We found them in the forest camped for the night by the side of the road ... under a severe fall of rain, accompanied by a heavy wind ... We learned from the inhabitants on the road where the Indians passed that they buried 14 or 15 at every stopping place, and they made a journey of 10 miles per day only on the average ... "
The Removal was, without doubt, the darkest chapter in the history of the proud Cherokee Nation. Approximately 4,000 of the 16,000 who made the journey over land and over water died en route from exposure, malnutrition, disease and brokenheartedness.
The Removal Treaty of 1835 was not the first treaty between the Cherokee and the white man. A series of some 30 treaties, beginning with the first one in 1684, led up to the U.S. government's final decision to relocate the Cherokees to Oklahoma. Leaders of both factions had tried desperately to come to a settlement. Davy Crockett, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster all championed the cause of the Cherokee, but President Andrew Jackson, who reputedly hated the red man, pushed the treaty through before the end of his administration, and it was carried out under his successor, President Martin Van Buren.
Understandably, the Indians were unwilling to relinquish their fertile lands, while settlers moved further west in search of new territory and gold.
The tribe was promised 13 million acres of land and $5 million in compensation for moving to the new Oklahoma Territory. Many Cherokees never received what they were promised.
In 1866, the Cherokees residing in North Carolina were recognized as residents by the state. The Eastern Band was united in 1868 and incorporated in 1889. The Qualia Boundary was established for them in 1876. It was not until 1929, however, that all American Indians were granted U.S. citizenship.