Under the Rattlesnake: Cherokee Health and Resiliency

1. Tohi: The Cherokee Concept of Well-Being

1 Tõhi: The Cherokee Concept of Well-Being Heidi M. Altman and Thomas N. Belt Encounters between Euro- and Native Americans from the earliest times have prompted individuals on both sides to marvel at the difference in languages and to wonder about the differences in ideas and perspectives that must surely follow. Nowhere have these differences drawn more interest and speculation than in the complex realm of healing and medicine. Since the period of earliest contact between Cherokees and European colonists, the distinctive features of the Cherokee medical system and beliefs have been duly noted. From Adair and Timberlake to Mooney and Olbrechts to the Kilpatricks and Fogelson, interested observers have described and documented the beliefs, practices, and formulas that form the basis of Cherokee medical practice. The Cherokee medical formulas collected and examined over the years reveal substantial portions of the ideology that underpins Cherokee healing practices. The goal of this chapter is not to add another layer of understanding to Cherokee medical practice specifically, but rather to look at the linguistic evidence for an understanding of the basic state of nature and the cosmos in the Cherokee worldview. This fundamental project will cast additional light on the materials collected by others and form the foundation for a linguistically based examination of the Cherokee medical system as it is understood today. Background: Challenges to Studying Cherokee Medicine Despite the number of formulas and practices collected by various scholars, it is safe to say that there is not any one collection that adequately captures the Cherokee medical system in its entirety, especially given the individualistic nature of practitioners and their specialization in different domains 10 Altman and Belt of healing. As Cherokee medicine is practiced today, different types of injury or illness have their own proper means of healing (as one would expect ), and practitioners tend to have a focused set of healing knowledge that pertains to a few types of injury or illness (e.g., some are adept at healing wounds from metal, others from wood; some at “working on” gastrointestinal disorders, others at respiratory disorders). Rarely if ever does one individual claim knowledge of the complete system. Rather, a practitioner will refer patients to other healers if the condition at hand is not within the realm of his or her specialty. Historic evidence exists for the specialization of Cherokee medical practitioners in some of the earliest documentation of Cherokee and colonial government relations, dating from the early 1750s. In the South Carolina Indian Books, a collection of colonial-era papers that reflect interactions between the government of South Carolina and the native peoples of the area, one of the warriors of Settico who has interaction with the governor is known simply as “The Smallpox Conjuror of Settico.” This name is used in the time period immediately following the smallpox epidemic(s) of 1736–38 that decimated the Cherokee population by half, as described by Adair. Adair’s History of the American Indians (1930) is one of the earliest documents of the lifeways of native peoples in the Southeast. Although many of the descriptions are biased by Adair’s colonial perspective and religious beliefs , they do provide some basic information about the beliefs and behaviors of the peoples he encountered. He also provides accounts of various verifiable events of the time, like the smallpox epidemics that raged through the region, from firsthand experience. The Smallpox Conjuror of Settico must have developed either a method for dealing with smallpox or been thought to have done so by enough people that he gained the appellation. From the name we can assume only that he was someone who “worked on” smallpox particularly, and presumably successfully. An interesting perspective on the specialization of Cherokee healing is presented by Mooney in an early (1890) article in which he criticizes both prevailing notions of Indian medicine at the time and Cherokee healers themselves. Mooney points out that, as opposed to popular opinion at the time, Cherokee practitioners were not familiar with all the plants in the forest and were so specialized in their knowledge that no individual had plant knowledge greater than three hundred species—in comparison to the probable two thousand species of plants that grow in the mountain region. Interestingly, the total number of plants recognized by healers as a group was about eight hundred species or nearly half the possible total. The main Tõhi: The Cherokee Concept of Well-Being 11 thrust of Mooney’s argument is that individual Cherokee...