week of 7/23/03
 
 
 

Caves served many purposes for Native Americans
By George Ellison

One of my interests through the years has been relocating historic, sacred and other sites associated with the Cherokees. These would include various “caves” they might have utilized.

The most exciting event of this sort that I’ve been involved with was back in 1984. That was when Cherokee native Gil Jackson, myself, and my wife, Elizabeth, relocated the site where the Cherokee martyr Tsali may have been. It is located high on the Left Fork of Deep Creek under Clingmans Dome in the Great Smokies in some of the roughest terrain I’ve experienced in Western North Carolina. The site is referred to locally as Tsali’s Cave or Tsali’s Rock.

It is a small rock overhang that creates a small enclosure just large enough to provide refuge for several people. But Tsali’s story, especially his supposed surrender (in actuality a capture) at the overhang is so ingrained in Cherokee history and lore that the site is truly significant.

Then there are the so-called Indian Caves in the lower Nantahala Gorge. I have no doubt that the Cherokees used them for shelter. And there are several legends having to do with the Cherokee “Little People” associated with the site. Consisting of several large rooms, these aren’t really caves either.

Because of the intrusive limestone terrain in the Nantahala Gorge, which is a part of the Murphy Marble Belt, there are extensive cavern systems there — some of which are interconnected. I’ve ventured into several of them for short distances and found them to be exciting as natural features. But I don’t know of anyone who has discovered evidence of Indian use of them.

You have to venture into portions of east Tennessee and Alabama to find cavern systems that were utilized on a large scale by the early Indians (including the Overhill Cherokees) for utilitarian and spiritual reasons.

Many thousands of years ago nomadic bands of Indians, hunting in the vicinity, stumbled upon Russell Cave in the hill country of northern Alabama. Beginning about 9,000 years ago, Archaic Period Indians first began to occupy the site. They lived there only during the autumn and winter seasons, maintaining themselves by hunting game and gathering wild plants. Successive small bands took shelter in this cave until A.D. 1000. The records of their occupations, including several burials of adults and children, have been uncovered. These include charcoal, bones of the animals they ate, rock and bone tools, spear points, and broken pottery.

With the departure of the Indians, a thousand years after the birth of Christ, Russell Cave retained a record of at least 9,000 years of human occupation. University of Georgia archaeologist Charles Hudson has described Russell Cave as “a habitation site that was favored by Indians through all phases of southeastern prehistory. ”

But what interests me as much as habitation use is the possible uses of cave sites for religious purposes. One of the best sources I’ve been able to locate in this regard is an essay by Professor Jan F. Simek contributed to the “Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture,” which is online at: www.tennesseeencyclopedia.net/catsearch.htm.

While browsing in the site’s “Religion” category several weeks ago, I happened upon Simek’s essay, which is titled “Prehistoric Use of Caves.” Here are some excerpts from that text. I hope you will find Simek’s overview — especially the portion dealing with caves.

“More than seven thousand deep caves have been recorded throughout Tennessee ... and they represent one of the most extensive cave systems in the world. Ancient Native Americans took note of these caves, incorporated them into their world view, and used them in a variety of ways.

“There is no evidence that prehistoric peoples ever lived in the ‘dark zones’ of deep caves beyond external light. Occupations did occur in open rockshelters and in cave vestibules, but the deeper recesses were clearly considered unsuitable for habitation. Deep caves were used for more specialized purposes. Dr. Patty Jo Watson, a leading cave archaeologist, defines four types of sites based on variation in ancient underground activities. These are footprint caves, mortuary caves, mines and quarries, and ceremonial caves. All four types are found in Tennessee.

“Footprint caves preserve the imprints of human feet in mud or soft sediments and are often associated with very limited archaeological debris, suggesting ephemeral, exploratory visits to the dark zone ...

“Mortuary caves are holes in the ground into which human bodies, intact or cremated, were introduced for inhumation. There may be hundreds of these sites in Tennessee, but very few have been studied out of respect for their dead ...

“Mines and quarries are well known from Kentucky and Indiana, where caves were mined during the Woodland Period for minerals, especially crystalline salts (epsomite, gypsum, aragonite and mirabilite). . .

“Historical Native American groups in the Southeast saw caves as pathways to the underworld, which was an enigmatic and even dangerous world. Prehistoric ceremonial activity is evident in a number of caves in the form of cave art. This is the only dark zone cave art tradition known from prehistoric North America. Images of religious import are incised into rock (petroglyphs), painted (pictographs), and engraved into wet clay (mud glyphs). The great majority of cave art was produced in the Mississippian Period, but some sites may be Woodland and even Archaic in age.

“Cave use by prehistoric peoples involved a variety of activities and changed over time. In the Archaic, caves were explored, mined, and decorated with art. The same range of activities occurred during the Woodland Period, with the probable use of pit caves for burial; mining of mineral salts was emphasized. Mississippian peoples decorated caves and may have performed limited mining. Tennessee’s vast karst (i.e., limestone) systems were an important part of the prehistoric landscape.”

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com.