Copyright © 2001 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

When I was in College in the late 1960's I had a professor who was raised near the Qualla Reserve. She use to jibe me all the time with statements that only the "Real" Cherokees lived in North Carolina. I had no frame of reference to compare those back there and the Cherokees I had known from childhood in Oklahoma; it use to P.O. me no end and she delighted in seeing me squirm. Never the less, because I had a tremendous respect for her professional integrity, I accepted her statements as fact --- that North Carolina Cherokees were more traditional, more advanced and, well, just plain more Indian. Her teasing predisposed me toward a reluctance to ever wanting to go see those "Indians"; I just wasn't interested in being a tourist and had no curiosity that bunch of people I didn't know and had no relationship to. They, for all I cared, could have been Bosnians or Ethiopians. I simply could not relate to thoughts of any group, Indian or White, east of the Mississippi River or that far away.

After I started working for the Cherokee Nation, I began going to Indian Education Conferences and met lots of Indian people from from other tribes across the nation, most from the Western Tribes and only a few from the East, some Lumbees, Seminoles and Mohawk, but no Eastern Band Cherokees representatives. During my first five or six years on the job, I discovered I had a few Cherokee friends here who made regular trips back east to visit relatives living and working in Qualla due to having gone to work for the BIA or Indian Health Service. Their first-hand descriptions along with bits and pieces of history (Unto This Hills, etc.) plus some contemporary information I read of the the people, the living conditions and the commercial ventures on the Reservation simply didn't correspond to my visual image of the real Cherokees I had conjured up in my head of those Cherokees in the Mountains. Finally, I had an opportunity to go to Macon, Georgia for two weeks to do a cultural show-and-tell at the Mounds. On my way home, I got to Atlanta and spontaneously decided that since I was that close to North Carolina I would make a detour through Northern Georgia to the Smoky Mountains and on to Qualla to see for myself what the "Real" Cherokees were like. If for no other reason than to satisfy a gnawing feeling that I needed to find out why the hell other people were so in love with those people and that part of the country.

The trip through northern Georgia was a spiritual experience: the country was lush, the hills rolling and the valleys brushed with golden sunlight, the likes I had never felt or seen before. The highway miles seemed draw me through time and history like no other experience I had ever had. Time and place melted in my brain like an old familiar song. Every curve, every hill top and every valley seemed like home; it was more intense than deja vu. The farther northeast I drove, the more I had the weirdest sensation that I had been there many times before, like a child has vague flashes of remembrance of events they had while still a babe in arms or before they could talk.

The valley towns of Dahlonaga and Marietta were so quietly beautiful that I had urges to turn off the highway and drive up into someone's front yard and scream, "I'm Home!" Those were silly thoughts because I didn't know a sole in any of those towns and had no cognizant information about those places except for the names, which were names of little communities in Adair County Oklahoma. I had done a superficial amount of reading on the history of the tribe prior to the Trail of Tears and had a general, very general, amount of comprehension of the geographical area and the names of major Cherokee places and events relating to Georgia and Southern Tennessee. Until then, those names had been simply footnotes; as I drove north, the area became a reality that transcended logic or rational thinking. This I said feels like home; This is home!

I have always had a streak of wander lust in my heart. Of all the places I had lived -- from my birth place in Kansas to New York, Californian, Western Tennessee and Minnesota -- I never felt as comfortable or such a desire to stop and settle down in any one place, except for Tahlequah. If I hadn't had a job, a family and a home in Oklahoma, I truly was tempted to consider moving there and spending the rest of my life in anyone of those little communities. The impressions of the terrain, the hills and small mountains, the climate, and the feeling that I knew exactly what lay around the corner or over the hill remain vivid on my heart and in my spirit. I have often wondered it a person can be genetically imprinted by the deeds and actions of an ancestor. It has only been recently that I have discovered through research of family prior to the Dawes Rolls that my Great Grandfather was born in that region of North Georgia. Coincidence? I wonder even more today about the possibilities of there being more to genetic inheritance than simply physical characteristics and DNA. Can one receive tiny bits of conditioning as well? My experience on that trip gives me cause to believe that there can be a spiritual connection from one generation to the next.

Once I got to Tennessee and headed east, the mood and the atmosphere of the early part of my journey dissipated not a little, it vanished. By the time I reach Gattlinburg, I was not the least bit comfortable. I was reluctant to drive any farther into the mountains. I was bored, tired and totally disinterested in the landscape from any perspective. The mountains were mountains, the rock were rocks and the blue mist was simply damp. I hated the area and felt boxed in by the towering trees, the winding road and the multitude of motel, restaurant and gift store signs along the sides of the highway. I had seen all of that kind of commercial ugliness before and although it wasn't surprising to see it in a tourist area, I was offended by the blatantness of the neon and hard metal in an area of "natural" beauty.

Over the mountain and down in to Qualla was a trip from hell -- long lines of cars, white river rafting launch sites, tourist cabins, little communities begging for tourist dollars sitting on mountain sides along the highway. I felt like the narrow serpentine road was sucking me up and that I would never escape the towering boulders, the too tightly growing trees and all that damn, wet, sun-blocking mist. I felt like I was spiritually dying; this was not a place any self-respecting cherokee could ever call home, not two hundred years ago, not then, not now, not ever! It was foreign, damp and nothing pretty about it. North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains could only be a place of refuge as a last resort. Northern white tourist may delight in the grandeur of the wild beauty, but for this Cherokee it was lush, but barren.

By the time I reached the capitol of the Eastern Cherokees, I had become a genuine, cold-hearted tourist on a pilgrimage. Driving into town was the worst kind of commercial adventure I experienced in all my years of wandering. New York had been exciting and a little scary, but exhilarating; Cherokee North Carolina was depressing. Miles of signs, funky little wood buildings sitting jammed up next to concrete along with overly bright signs saying Cherokee this and Cherokee that and Cherokee everything else was overpowering. Almost all the people I saw on the streets or in cars with northern state tags were white. Even in the few places I stopped for gas or window shopping were staffed with non-Indian looking people. So, this was where the real Cherokees lived; where were they?

I stayed for four days and was more than happy to leave. I went to the Cherokee owned and operated museum, the gift store, the Arts and Crafts co-op, and the Ancient Village next to the Outdoor Drama. Tacky wasn't in my vocabulary then, but that was my impression. The one element that struck me was that the "Cherokee owned and operated" tourist attractions were trying too hard to be "traditional" but poorly artificial. I remember the men and women who worked in the ancient village as been dressed in gaudy cotton-polyester pioneer style clothes -- obviously costumes, which I later found out had been designed years earlier by some university consultants who had been instrumental in getting the Outdoor Drama and the Museum started. I suppose that it satisfied the admission paying tourist, but the imposed cultural style offended me more than words can say. I hated the entire experience of seeing the commercial dependence and degradation of discovering that many of the business were not run by Cherokees but by outside entrepreneurs who leased the property from Cherokees. Hopefully, that system has changed, but I haven't any desire to return to find out.

After spending four days and three nights among the "Real Cherokees" I came to the conclusion that they were not any more traditional than my folks back in Oklahoma. Perhaps less. Let me correct that. They were less traditional; many were just as poor and just as suppressed by the school systems, the economic opportunities and their isolation from the world that lay over the long drive over the mountains. Those that had succeeded were the mixed bloods who had gone away to get better educations, work in better paying jobs, or had seen the advantages of using the lease system to get cheap property for little money. True, I did get to meet some Cherokee who one could describe as "traditional" but only for the poverty or the isolation of their homes up the mountain ravines away from the hub-hub of the town. But their traditionalism wasn't necessarily by choice; it was imposed by a continuation of poor living standards in housing, modern conveniences and limited transportation, not too much different than the traditionalist Cherokees in Oklahoma at the time.

Looking back on that experience, I can only say that anyone who looks to the Eastern Cherokees as the role model for culture and tradition can have my share. The separation of time and space has been too great in too many ways for us to have much in common, our mutual history prior to the Trail of Tears not withstanding. Their history of persecution and forced isolation has formed their current society and values in much the same way that he Forced March along the Trail has formed our current society. I have no doubt that they will continue to prosper in the mist of commercial opportunities that we lack here in Oklahoma, but as for wishful thinking that they are better off or have more remnants of the old ways to give them greater credibility as the holders of the fire, I find that too romantic to be realistic.

Neither they nor we have the upper hand in which one are more traditional than the other. I am pleased that our people here in Oklahoma are settled where we are and that we have developed our own history and government. Now, when someone attempts to jibe me with their opinions that the Real Cherokees are in Qualla, I can stand tall knowing that I have seen and compared each for myself. I won't go so far as to say that the "Real Cherokees" are in Oklahoma, but I cannot accept the held notion by some that they are still living in exile in those wet mountains of the east either. I found that the best way any Cherokee can find the truth is for them to visit both places and reach their own conclusion. I'm glad I did. I have no desire to ever go on that pilgrimage again.