No.^iir' ^^^' EASTERN CHEROKEE GROUPS — KUPFERER 223 



their passengers without the stares of the summertime audience, and 

 the village is singularly empty and still. 



But in any season the visitors to Cherokee seldom go far from the 

 business center. A turn on the road leading to "Shut In," "Adams 

 Creek," "Swimmer Branch," or "Straight Fork" would reveal ways 

 of life not apparent in the village. Hidden in narrow valleys are 

 cabins, concealed in the summer by hovering trees and blended into 

 the gray-black background of the winter hills. Only faint streams 

 of smoke tell of their presence. Others are set on sides of mountains 

 approachable only by footpaths. Some of the trails cross swinging 

 bridges and wind through rhododendron slicks. A few well-tended farms, 

 and some not so well tended, siu-round other homes. Concrete blocks, 

 wooden poles or logs, and roughhewn boards covered with tar paper 

 are the materials which have gone into these buildings. Other houses 

 closer to the main village are modern "ranch style." But regardless 

 of the place or kind of home, a daily and seasonal round takes place 

 in it which is characteristic of Cherokee's people. 



THE PROBLEM 



Who are these people? According to the old people who speak 

 Cherokee, they are Ani-yun-wiya, the 'real people,' or 'principal 

 people.' Others who speak only English refer to themselves as 

 Indians and members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee. Phenotypi- 

 caUy, they range from copper-skinned, black-haired, black-eyed people 

 to blond, blue-eyed individuals. There are college graduates among 

 them, and some whose formal education ceased with the second or 

 third grade. There are those whose English is so limited as to be 

 virtually useless, and many whose knowledge of Cherokee is confined 

 to only a few words. Veterans of military service have been overseas, 

 while some of their parents and neighbors have never been farther than 

 Asheville. 



It is with this apparently bewildering heterogeneity that this re- 

 search is concerned. The lack of homogeneity is not a recent phenom- 

 enon among the Cherokee. Early writers hint of it in their descriptions 

 of the Indians. In 1827 the parents of Catherine Brown, a mixblood, 

 were described as members of the more intelligent class of their people. 

 It was said about Catherine, "If you were to see her in a boarding 

 school in New England, as she ordinarily appears here, you could not 

 distinguish her from weU educated females of the age either by her 

 complexion, features, dress, pronunciation or manners" (Anderson, 

 1827, pp. 17-37). Malone (1956, p. 127), commenting on the clothing 

 of the 19th-centmy Cherokee, says that it varied as widely as did the 

 social scale. Thomas Parker points out that there was a marked split 



