Truth in Legends - Cherokee
So what does it all mean? What truths can be gathered from a collection of
ancient Cherokee myths and religious traditions?
From these stories, we can explore the thought processes and mindset of the
traditional Cherokee. It becomes clear upon examining these tales that there
are many notable differences between the Cherokee and the white worldview.
Through the myths about the creation, the origin of disease, and the
invention of medicine, we see humans playing a very different role than in
European legends and Biblical accounts. In Genesis, mankind is given
dominion over the earth and all the creatures and resources in and on it. In
the Cherokee story, the humans occupy a precarious niche in a world created
by animals, for animals. Humans are barely tolerated, especially when they
start exploiting the animals for food and skins. Humans are seen as having
much less power, being at the mercy of the animals when disease is
introduced. Instead of humans having dominion over other creatures, the
situation seems to have reversed itself. Humans would have been decimated by
disease had they not found friends in the plant kingdom, who helped mankind
of their own accord. In the Cherokee worldview, mankind does not control
nature, nature controls mankind.
This is a fundamental philosophical difference with the white European
mindset. Europeans saw it as their destiny to control and exploit the earth.
Cherokees saw themselves in a position that was not quite at the top of the
hierarchy of life. While European types saw fit to nearly exterminate all
bison without remorse, the Cherokee always made sure to apologize to the
spirit of a deer they had just killed, for fear of retribution by nature.
The stereotype of the Indian as a natural environmentalist in the Dances
With Wolves tradition may indeed be skewed, but there is a kernal of truth
in it. Cherokees, at least, respected nature more than their European
cousins, albeit out of fear for their wellbeing.
Another difference in the Cherokee outlook on life is with regard to the
spirit world. Most Europeans generally think of the spiritual world and the
world in which they live as two seperate places. Not so the Cherokees. In
Cherokee myths and stories, the spirit world directly affects happenings in
the physical one time and time again. Supernatural happening are treated as
commonplace events. A small ceremony performed by a shaman was able to
drastically affect a person's spiritual life, perhaps by removing it
altogether. Raven mockers were seen not as storybook characters, but as real
dangers to be feared. Some might call this superstition, but what is
superstition to one person is religion to another. These views formed a
coherent belief system for the Cherokees, in which the spiritual world was
directly accessible and performed an important role in daily life.
For centuries, the invading Europeans looked upon the philosophy of the
Cherokees and other Indians as primitive and timid. Today, in an
increasingly overtaxed environment, we might do well to reconsider the
Cherokee philosophy and respect for the natural world. In a society of
soulless automation, we could not help but profit from considering the
spirituality of the Cherokee world. By studying the myths of the Cherokee,
one is exposed to a new way of seeing the world and the role of mankind in
it.
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