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3Ahaquo! (Still there!) The Anetso Ceremonial Complex This chapter will situate the anetso ceremonial complex in what I am calling “the Cherokee religious system.” First I will discuss a transition in the Cherokee religious system from a hereditary priestly caste to independent individual practitioners. An overview of green corn ceremonialism will follow ; these were the most durable elements that survived the transition from what was once a yearly cycle of ceremonies. Then I will provide basic information on those constituent activities of the complex that are key elements of the Cherokee religious system and summarize continuity and change in the performance of these activities since the late nineteenth century. In addition , I will present a thorough report of one of these ritual actions, translated as “going to water,” in order to assess persistence and change. Since detailing all of the complied data about every element of the complex would require a separate volume, I will highlight this action for reasons that I will explain below. Privatization of the Cherokee Religious System According to both Cherokee oral tradition and prevailing scholarly opinion, at one time there was a hereditary priestly caste in Cherokee society known as the Anikutani.1 Members of this group officiated during the seasonal ceremonial round of six regular festivals, as well during other festivals held at different intervals.2 In short, the yearly round included a “‘festival of the first new moon of spring . . . about the time the grass began to grow . . . [a] preliminary or new green-corn feast, held when the young corn first became fit to taste . . . [a] mature or ripe green-corn festival . . . forty or fifty days [later] when the corn had become hard and perfect . . . [a] great new-moon feast . . . [on the] the first new moon of autumn . . . [a] propitiation or cementation festival . . . about ten days [after the previous celebration] . . . [and] the festival of the exulting or bounding bush which came somewhat later.’”3 108 Ahaquo! Historical accounts of these festivals and Anikutani priests are available from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Alexander Longe, the controversial trader at the center of the Chestowe scandal, remarked in his 1725 account that “there is a certain family that the priesthood belongs to and they always hold that it is the fisick family [sic].”4 The editor of a published version of this account commented, “the Cherokee society of Long’s account is a society of hierarchies of rank and privilege more or less directed by hereditary priests of the ‘fisick family’ who held their People in fear of the Great Being Above. This picture corresponds strikingly to that set forth in the John Howard Payne Papers by Cherokee informants of a century later.”5 According to Mooney, Cherokee oral tradition contained accounts of the Anikutani becoming increasingly prideful. While other men were out hunting , the Cherokee priests would enter homes and rape women, believing they were above punishment. One hunter returned from the hunt and found that his wife had been treated in this manner. Community members viewed this indiscretion as the last straw in a series of excesses by this group, and led by this hunter, they slaughtered all Anikutani.6 Major John Norton related a similar account in his journal, and as was the case with his accounts of ball games, it is very detailed. He was told about an individual who had entered a Council House “at a very distant period,” saying that he had traveled “to the Country above” and returned “with the commands of the Great Spirit whose abode is there.”7 This individual “then appointed several ceremonies, dances, and purifications to be observed”; he “was joined by many others in his office,” such that the group grew in numbers and “became sacred in the eyes of the people.” They called themselves the “Anikanos” and indulged “their evil passions, without the least regard to the rights of others, or the restraints of modesty and decorum.” They “carried their wickedness to such a height, that the indignation of the people was roused . . . [until] they were finally all put to death wherever they were found.”8 Two articles in the 1980s by Raymond Fogelson remain significant to the scholarly discourse regarding the Anikutani. The first is still the most detailed discussion available of the group; the second contains a brief but crucial amplification of comments he made in the first article regarding their demise.9 Fogelson noted that a series of vicious smallpox epidemics ravaged Cherokee towns in the late seventeenth and...

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