<< Back 7/17/02 Cherokee mountain farmers liked floodplains SMN Last week I had to recruit three strong backs to help me remove a large rock from my friend’s hillside garden that I’m expanding. It was the first such rock that I haven’t been able to remove myself, but it sure wasn’t the first that’s been hoisted out. (When he got his first look at the garden and the rocks lying at its edges, my friend Scooter asked if I was building a bomb shelter.) Before I have to move another, I want to make something clear: the Cherokee have traditionally lived in the mountains, but they have only fairly recently been living on the mountains. Until they were forced off by defensive considerations and land grabs, the Cherokee had for centuries inhabited the flood plains surrounding area rivers. All of the Cherokee settlements observed by 18th century European travellers were situated in flood plains. These settlements were centered around a council house (often resting upon a man-made earthen mound) and a plaza. Family compounds surrounded and were interspersed with crops. This patterns holds for the pre-European contact Appalachain sites excavated by Bennie Keel and Roy Dickens, which both describe as “proto-Cherokee.” (See Keel’s 1976 Cherokee Archeology and Dickens’ 1976 \Cherokee Prehistory for details.) University of Arizona professor Thomas Park has been a pioneer in the study of floodplain agriculture (see pages 90-117 of the March 1992 edition of American Anthropologist for a very readable article). His work was in Mauritania, where the Senegal River’s yearly floods provide moisture for agriculture in an arid nvironment; flood plain agriculture is the only option due to the limiting factor of moisture. Clearly, the Southern Appalachains’ generous rainfall makes agriculture here viable wherever soil is decent, not just in flood plains. Despite periodic droughts such as the one we are now in, no evidence of Cherokee irrigation has been found. What, then, was the limiting factor that pushed Cherokee agriculture to flood plains? Last summer I worked at a small dig on the Kituwah site. The silty alluvial soil was easy to dig and almost stone free. I envied the Cherokees who once farmed Kituwah. Even with wood and stone tools, the ground would have been easier to work than my hillside patch. My garden is largely a luxury. It may be years before enough calories are harvested to make up for those I have used to ready the area. The historic Cherokee had no such luxury — there was no Wal-Mart or Taco Bell to run to when the harvest didn’t fill their stomachs. As an interesting aside, there seems to be a connection between Cherokee agriculture and the Little People. In an article in the fall 1982 Journal of Cherokee Studies, Raymond Fogelson points out that the various varieties of Little People all live outside of the flood plains that were the home of the Cherokee for centuries. He notes that the most discussed variety, the Yvnwi Tsundsi (which literally translates as “little people”) preferred to make their homes in rockslides. I have been told that a group of Little People lives in Stoney on Big Cove. An older friend also told me of her daughter’s childhood playmate, who my friend believed to be a Little Person. The small fellow lived in a rock by the creek where my friend’s daughter went to play. I’ve long wondered about the connection between the Little People and rocks. (Cherokee children going to play in the woods are often told to beware of the rock-throwing Little People.) Between doing ethnographic interviews, reading Fogelson’s article and laboring over large rocks in the garden, something clicked. For centuries farming the alluvial soils of flood plains was the definition of being human for the Cherokee. The rocky mountainsides were the homes of the “others,” including the Little People. It should come as no suprise that the Little People are intimately tied to the stones found in their environment. The next time you read an article which refers to the Cheorkee as “mountaineers,” take the term with a grain of salt. And remember the Yvnwi Tsundsi when you’re in the woods and come upon a rockslide or hear a strange crash behind you. If you don’t quite buy my argument, drop me a line at hrsshbnd@yahoo.com. If you still aren’t convinced, you’re welcome to lend me a hand in Ollie’s garden. Mathew T. Bradley Cherokee