CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA — GILBERT 539 



must always respect. Her father's father, however, was of the Wolf 

 Clan and she marries a man of that Clan (W. L.). Her mother's 

 father is of the Bird Clan, which also contains potential mates for her. 

 W. L.'s children will have two clans to choose mates from, the Wild 

 Potato Clan and the Blue Clan, i. e., provided the selected mates have 

 grandfathers and grandmothers in the Deer Clan. 



Thus it can be seen that lineage through the mother is of the essence 

 in Cherokee life. One acquires a clan membership by birth, through 

 the mother, and by no other way. Even after marriage the individual 

 is still a member of the same clan and remains so until death. The 

 solidarity of the clan lineage is the most important single element of 

 traditional Cherokee culture and the most effective influence toward 

 conservation of the race and the culture. 



THE TIDES OF LIFE 



Anyone who has ever spent time at the seashore is familiar with 

 the phenomenon of the tides, those regular daily risings and fallings of 

 the water level. The regularity of the tides, like the regularity of day 

 and night, and the alteration of the seasons, impresses itself on the 

 mind of man to the degree that he memorializes it in his ceremonies 

 and rituals in a variety of ways. Thus the rituals of a primitive people 

 commemorate, not only the events of past importance to their an- 

 cestors, but also the cyclic or rhythmic aspects of life generally. 



Observations on Cherokee festivals by the missionary, D. S. Butrick, 

 and others early in the nineteenth century were recorded and sum- 

 marized in a manuscript by John Howard Payne, the famed author 

 of the song "Home Sweet Home." This manuscript, now in the New- 

 berry Library at Chicago, contains a very extensive and detailed ac- 

 count of the regular monthly and seasonal feasts of the Cherokee. 

 From this account it can be seen that the great principle at work in 

 primitive art forms, and perhaps in all art forms, is the commemora- 

 tion of the past in terms of stressing the continuity between the lives 

 of the many generations. In fasting as a ritual, we cannot fail to 

 observe the periods of starvation and want in wintertime when game 

 was scarce and the future problematic. The dances, lustrations, prog- 

 nostications, ceremonial hunts, new-fire making, and the like, were 

 artistic delineations of the great natural rhythms that tie together 

 the life of the past, the present, and the future. The celebration of 

 these festivals was basic in Cherokee life, even as it was in all Indian 

 life, and constituted the logical and motivational basis of the social 

 order. 



In his book entitled "Moon Up and Moon Down," John Alden 

 Knight (1942) has outlined the feeding activities of fish as related to 

 the height of the tides. A regular "solunar" rhythm exists, he says, 

 and the higher tides at new moon and full moon are directly cor- 



