534 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



access of visitors to, the Mountainside Amphitheatre, the Oconaluftee 

 Village, the Cherokee Museum, and the innumerable curio shops of 

 the reservation. 



Institutional development has kept pace with the economic improve- 

 ment. The Indian Bureau provides a free school system which in- 

 cludes five elementary schools and a central high school. The U. S. 

 Public Health Service, of the Department of Health, Education, and 

 Welfare, operates a modern 25-bed hospital at the Agency where in- 

 digent Indians receive free of charge diagnosis, treatment, hospitaliza- 

 tion, and dental care. 



There are 25 or more churches on the reservation, nearly all of which 

 are served by Indian pastors. Baptists far outnumber other congre- 

 gations, but there are also Methodist, Episcopalian, and Latter Day 

 Saints missions among these people. Hymn singing is a favorite 

 pastime, and all-day "sings" are frequent. Truckloads of singers from 

 various communities meet at appointed churches to sing, and bring 

 their basket lunches with them. 



THE PHYSICAL TYPE 



Along the road the visitor sees the Cherokees, here a mother or two 

 walking with the children, there an old man humped with age and 

 plodding his way slowly to some nearby goal. These rather small 

 brown-skinned people contrast with the neighboring mountain whites, 

 who are on the average taller and are fair-skinned. The older Indian 

 men tend to be lean and wiry in build, the women more heavy-set and 

 stocky. Prominent cheekbones often appear in the women and prog- 

 nathism or projecting jaws may be present. The straight and jet-black 

 hair is typical of the fullbloods and the Mongolian eye appears occa- 

 sionally in the females. A hawklike or beaked appearance of the face 

 is frequently noticeable and it reminds one of the Maya and Mexican 

 sculptured faces. 



Today about 25 percent of the enrolled Cherokees are fullbloods, and 

 it is from these people that early students of blood type first recog- 

 nized the distinctive predominance of type I blood in the American 

 aborigines. There can be no doubt that in the present-day Cherokees 

 we are dealing with an aboriginal racial island separated by distinct 

 racial ancestry from the surrounding mountain people of the Appa- 

 lachians. Here and there in an area from Georgia, through eastern 

 Tennessee and the Carolinas, western Virginia, Kentucky, West Vir- 

 ginia, Maryland, and even Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the occa- 

 sional appearance of Indian physical traits and ways in the local popu- 

 lation is attributed, rightly or wrongly, to an infusion of Cherokee 

 blood. 



The long-continued habit of inbreeding or marrying within their 

 own race has set the Cherokees apart from others. The ensemble of 



