Cherokee Adaptation to the Landscape of the West and Overcoming the Loss of Culturally Significant Plants

The Eastern Homeland: the Cherokee Landscape of the Southern Appalachians

Prior to 1721, Cherokees inhabited a vast expanse of land that is estimated to have encompassed 135,000 square miles covering an area that now includes portions of North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. This territory stretched nearly from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River, providing an almost complete cross section through the eastern temperate forest of North America. Traversing this land from east to west, one would move through ten distinct ecoregions, including the Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain, Southeastern Plains, Piedmont, Blue Ridge, Ridge and Valley, Central Appalachians, Western Allegheny Plateau, Southwestern Appalachians, Interior Plateau, and Interior River Valley and Hills (Commission for Environmental Cooperation 2006). Each of these ecoregions displays distinct landforms, soils, vegetation, and climatic influence, and, taken together, they are a rich and abundant temperate landscape characterized by a diversity of broadleaf deciduous trees and needle-leaf conifers (Commission for Environmental Cooperation 1997). Fertile soils and plentiful wildlife provided for the Cherokees, and villages were located throughout the southern half of this territory.

The Southern Appalachian Mountains are considered one of the most botanically diverse temperate ecoregions in the world. These mountains were formed roughly 425 million years ago and have remained relatively stable over the last 200 million years, allowing for the evolution of tremendous biodiversity, including over 130 species of trees, 1,500 species of flowering plants, and over 4,000 species of other plants (Schullery 2001, 123).

The boundaries of this extensive territory were not fixed but shifted over time due to pressure from neighboring tribes, population changes, and other forces. Contact with Europeans presented a new and sustained pressure that began the prolonged shrinking of the Cherokee territory. The first cession of Cherokee land to European colonists occurred in 1721 with the transfer of a small tract in South Carolina. Nearly three dozen subsequent land cessions reduced the Cherokee territory in the Southeast to an area in what is now north Georgia, western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and northeastern Alabama. This land had always been the primary location of Cherokee settlements; the northern lands were primarily hunting grounds. The landscape is embedded with meaning, history, and spirit. The landscape provided the narrative that told the story of the creation of the world, the origins of the Cherokee people, the lessons for survival, and the inspiration for the future.

The land that remained in Cherokee control up until the Trail of Tears consists of four ecoregions, dominated in character and thought by the Great Smoky Mountains. The Southwestern Appalachians are characterized by open, low mountains containing mixed oaks and shortleaf pine in upland forest, with mixed mesophytic forest located in ravines and escarpment slopes. The Ridge and Valley is a geologically diverse, relatively low-lying landscape sandwiched between more rugged mountainous regions, with a forested landscape and a diversity of aquatic habitats. The Blue Ridge is a mountainous region extending from what is now north Georgia to southern Pennsylvania and reaching elevations of over 6,000 feet. Plant communities include Appalachian oak forest, northern hardwoods, spruce-fir forests, shrub, grass and heath balds, hemlock forests, cove forests, and oak-pine communities, making this one of the richest centers of biodiversity in the United States. The Piedmont ecoregion is the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and is dominated by oak-hickory and oak-pine plant communities as the landscape transitions to the coastal plain.

Cherokees were intimately familiar with these native plants and relied on them for medicine, food, fiber, dye, ceremonial uses, and other uses. Cherokee myth explained the close connection between plants and humans. James Mooney recorded the myth of the origin of disease and medicine, which describes how animals, upset by the destruction that humans were causing due to carelessness or contempt, decided to send disease to humans. Each animal concocted a disease to afflict people with in retribution for their cruel and unjust behavior.

When the Plants, who were friendly to Man, heard what had been done...