Celebrating National Native American Heritage Month

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November is National Native American Heritage Month, a time to pay tribute to the rich ancestry and traditions of the Indigenous People in this country.

In present day Henderson County, North Carolina (where Falling Creek Camp is located), we acknowledge and honor that we are on the native land of three different groups of people: Catawba, S’atsoyaha (Yuchi), and ᏣᎳᎩᏱ ᏕᏣᏓᏂᎸᎩ / Tsalagiyi Detsadanilvgi (Eastern Band of Cherokee).

We believe it’s important to acknowledge traditional land in the present day, because too often Indigenous people are thought of only in the past tense. It becomes easier to deny present-day Indigenous people their rights if we only historicize their struggles, rather than also continually celebrating and supporting their culture today.

This post contains some resources that share the history of the Indigenous people who first inhabited the land that camp is on today, as well as links to the continuing culture of these groups in the present day. There are also resources on how to support the Catawba, Yuchi, and Cherokee people today. We invite you to join us in learning and appreciating the heritage of the land and the rich culture of these people, not just in the month of November, but as an ongoing journey.

Catawba:

Historically, the Catawba Nation occupied the Catawba River Valley above and below the present-day North Carolina-South Carolina border, near where Falling Creek is located. They call themselves yeh is-WAH h’reh, meaning “people of the river.”

Before white settlers arrived, early estimates of the Catawba population were between 15,000-25,000 people, but rounds of smallpox outbreaks decimated the Catawba people’s numbers by the early 1800s to under 1000 people. Today however, the Catawba Nation is still a vibrant culture and is the only federally recognized tribe in the state of South Carolina. There are currently over 3300 enrolled members of the Nation, and modern day Catawba tribal lands are located in York County, South Carolina.

The beautiful Catawba pottery tradition has survived for thousands of years as the “oldest continuous ceramics tradition in North America.” You can learn more and see some examples of the art here.

Cherokee:

A 2019 article from Blue Ridge Now shared the history of present-day Flat Rock, saying that “Locally, the ‘great flat rock’ served as a meeting and trading locus for bands of native peoples. Archaeological findings suggest Cherokees lived and hunted within the boundaries of what is now Henderson County more than 1,000 years ago. Arrowheads and spear points continue to emerge from the soil in many sectors of the county.”

Until the 1785 Treaty of Hopewell, present-day Henderson County was part of Cherokee territory. After this treaty was signed, the Cherokees were forced to relinquish their eastern lands, and the new boundary of tribal lands divided the county. White settlers controlled all of present-day Henderson County by the end of the century. In the winter of 1838-1839, the forced relocation of the indigenous Cherokee people from their ancestral home in the southeast to Oklahoma was known as the Trail of Tears. Many of the fifteen thousand captive Cherokee people died in the poor conditions while awaiting removal, and over 4000 Cherokee people died of cold, hunger, and disease on the brutal journey (almost a fifth of their total population).

Today there are 350,000 Cherokee people, mostly in Oklahoma and North Carolina. Though the tribal headquarters for the Cherokee Nation is in Tahlequah, Oklahoma today, about 1000 Cherokee people in western North Carolina and Tennessee escaped the captivity and removal on the Trail of Tears. They gained recognition in 1866 and are known as the Eastern Band of Cherokee today, based in Cherokee, NC.

Cherokee people originally called themselves Aniyunwiya, “the principal people,” but today the name Cherokee is also accepted, which is spelled and pronounced Tsalagi in their own language. You can learn more about the Cherokee language here or here. You can learn more about the Cherokee Nation, which is currently the largest tribe in the United States, on their official website. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina also has their own website.

Yuchi:

The Yuchi (also can be spelled Euchee or Uchee) are an American Indian people in present-day Oklahoma, whose original homelands were in the southeastern United States, primarily in Eastern Tennessee and Georgia. There are estimated to be about 1500 Yuchi people today, and though the US Government considers them to be part of the Creek tribe, the Yuchi people maintain their own identity, separate from the Creeks.

The Yuchi language is unique because it is unrelated to any other known language, but is also critically endangered. Yuchi people today are working to keep their language alive with the Yuchi Language Project. You can read Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians by Frank Speck, offered in PDF form online here. Other resources in and about the Yuchi language can be found here.

Links to Support:

If you are interested in additional educational resources for Native American Heritage Month, you can find primary sources, lesson plans, teaching guides, and research aids for parents and teachers here. The Smithsonian also created an American Indian online lesson plan for 6th-12th graders here.

If you want to find out what traditional lands you are on, visit Native-Land.ca, a website run by the nonprofit organization Native Land Digital. Their mission statement is, “We strive to map Indigenous lands in a way that changes, challenges, and improves the way people see the history of their countries and peoples. We hope to strengthen the spiritual bonds that people have with the land, its people, and its meaning.”

This post is only a starting point, but we hope it can offer some resources for learning about, supporting, and honoring Indigenous peoples, both during National Native American Heritage Month and beyond.

If you want to find out what traditional lands you are on, visit Native-Land.ca, a website run by the nonprofit organization Native Land Digital.

Whose Land Are You On?