CHEROKEES OF NORTH CAROLINA — GILBERT 543 



Name of Dance Significance 



Partridge Dance Mimetic of quail movements 



Pheasant Dance Mimetic of pheasant drumming 



Pigeon Dance Hunting of pigeons by hawks 



Raccoon Dance Hunting raccoon 



Round Dance Dance around the fire 



Snakelike Dance Magic power from the snake 



War Dance Magical protection in war 



Woman Gathering Wood 



Dance New-fire making 



CHEROKEE INSPIRATION: THE ORAL TRADITION 



An idea or a feeling grandly expressed lives forever and gives immortality to 

 the words that enshrine it. — Viscount Bryce. 



Speech can be looked upon as a system of signals or symbols, not 

 only of ideas but also of sentiments, feelings, and emotions. The 

 first words and the nursery songs that are learned orally at the parent's 

 knee form the basis of all subsequent language learning and stay with 

 the individual to the very end of his life. Nothing can be more im- 

 portant to the preservation of a race and its culture than the continued 

 oral transmission of ideas, principles, and sentiments within the do- 

 mestic household, from generation to generation. 



This is particularly true of the religious and moral sentiments, those 

 ultimate realities with which language, in its most exalted use, is par- 

 ticularly concerned. Hence many religious systems have evolved 

 ritual or liturgical languages which commemorate the religious senti- 

 ments in fixed linguistic forms and which stand in contrast thereby to 

 everyday language with its multitude of vulgar innovations and 

 neologisms. In India the Vedic language represents an even more in- 

 tensive conservatism of speech wherein a liturgical language, San- 

 skrit, has preserved in Vedic texts the remnants of a still earlier liturgi- 

 cal form. In his work on the Swimmer manuscript, Olbrechts (1932, 

 pp. 160-165) has discussed the liturgical language of the Cherokee 

 sacred prayers or formulas. In a matrilineal clan society, such as that 

 of the Cherokees, the transmission of both oral and written liturgical 

 material is from mother or mother's brother to the daughter and son. 



So it is that, in the same way that we of the Western civilization at- 

 tempt to learn the elements of Latin and Greek in our youth for the 

 better preservation of those ideas, sentiments, and values most intrinsic 

 to our culture, the Cherokee student learns the ritual language of the 

 prayers or formulas that in part have been preserved in written form 

 through the good offices of Sequoia's syllabary and given literary rec- 

 ognition by Mooney and Olbrechts, in their printed texts with English 

 translations. Thus the mentality of the Cherokee and the values of 

 Cherokee traditional culture are made manifest and enter into the 



