The Legend of the Corn Beads

- By Edna Chekelee

Cherokee women wear the legendary necklace made of corn beads.
It is a gift
from the Great Spirit in the shape of a teardrop.
This is the Cherokee legend of the corn beads.
In the 1800s
during the Trail of Tears,
the corn stalks were twelve to eighteen
inches long.
The corn stood back and watched
as the Indian people were getting pushed and shoved
by the white soldiers.
And the corn cried and cried.
And the teardrops landed on the corn fodder,
and the corn dropped down to three feet tall.
That’s why it’s called teardrop,
our mother of corn.
The Cherokee women used these teardrops, our mother of corn,
to make beautiful cornbeads,
but to me this is sad.
But it is a way to remember
The Trail of Tears.

(from Living Stories of the Cherokee, collected and edited by Barbara R. Duncan (University of North Carolina Press, 1998)



So, you reside in Western North Carolina and are looking for Christmas gift ideas? Think Cherokee. The members of the Eastern Band of Cherokees  about 11,000 strong — are among the greatest craftspeople in the world ... basketry, pottery, stone and wood carving, weaving, ornamental weapons, feather and leather handicrafts and beaded items are some of the areas in which these people specialize. A Cherokee crafted gift immediately makes it distinct, if not unique.

In Cherokee one can find a grand gift for that special person or items that can serve as stocking stuffers. We’re headed west to Colorado in December to visit my son and his family. They have a newborn baby boy who won’t know anything about Christmas, but his older sister, Daisy, knows what’s up ... and she’s expecting stuff. Well, she’s going to get, among other things, a Cherokee corn bead necklace and a corn bead bracelet. Those are items that you, too, might seek out if you have a female of any age on your gift list.

Most any shop you go into here on the Qualla Boundary will have a display of necklaces, bracelets or medallions featuring the distinctive corn beads that the Cherokees love to incorporate into their work. The origin, history, and lore concerning the corn bead are as interesting as the beautiful items in which they are featured.

The plant from which the beads are obtained is a grass (Coix lacryma-jobi), that produces stalks from two to six feet tall, with the kernels (beads) being formed on small tassels rather than in ears. The Cherokee word for the corn-like plant is “sel-utsi,” which means “mother of corn.”

Because it has been utilized as a trade and decorative item for so long, many native Cherokees naturally suppose that the corn bead plant is native to the region. Curiously enough, my research indicates that the plant is an annual grass that’s native to the foothills of the Himalayas from China into northern India. It grows to a height of around three feet with knobby, bamboo-like stems. The flowers aren’t showy, but the shiny, pea-sized receptacles that enclose their bases harden in fall to a pale bluish gray. Some selected strains in Asia are cultivated for their edible grains. I have not been able to determine when or how the plant was first introduced into this country or adopted by the Cherokees, but all indications are that it occurred at a very early date during European colonization.

The beads, which are harvested from late summer into fall, are pulled from the tassels so that a convenient hole ready-made for stringing is present. After being stored for a short while in open containers they turn lovely shades of lustrous gray, lavender or black. These are about the size of a small marble and just about as hard when dried properly. Between each corn bead a beadmaker will often insert several brightly colored “pony” beads, which are imported glass Venetian beads that come in three sizes. One beadmaker told me, with a smile, that the Cherokees also called them “hippie beads” in the 1960s. They were used on occasion to make bread or teething rings for infants.

“Corn beads are a sort of little cash crop for us Cherokees,” Stacey Saunooke, whose mother also grew them years ago, told me some years ago. “You can raise and sell them for between $40 and $60 a gallon at the local craft shops. I have several little patches every year.

“After I pull them off the stalk, I trim the rough edges, then I use an emery board to polish each bead up around the holes to get them just right. I make necklaces out of my beads, but I’m not in it for the money. It’s my favorite kind of craft. When I was little some people used the beads for conjuring, but our family never did that. We just used them for looking at or playing with.”

Mrs. Saunooke also noted that corn beads are most often called “Job’s tears” by the Cherokees, who associate them with the Trail of Tears era. Indeed, if you purchase a corn bead item in the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, Inc., you’ll also receive a printed note entitled “The Cherokee Legend of the Corn Bead,” which states that during the long march west the Indians “cried tears of sorrow and grief and hopelessness where their tears hit the ground (so that) a plant sprung up (with) seeds that looked like tears and their color is the color of grief.” Today, the Real People, as the Cherokees call themselves, sometimes wear the seeds in necklaces and medallions in memory of the “Trail of Tears.”

The botanical explanation for this association with “tears” was explained by Winnie Raby, another Cherokee woman who works with corn beads that I also talked with some years ago. She observed that a drop of fluid forms just after the flowering part has been pollinated and before the fruit form.

And so the corn beads “cried and cried.”

(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., 287713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com

 

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