Ever wish you could travel back in time and see how things used to be?

Now you can.

Oconaluftee Village in Cherokee is an authentic replica of what a Cherokee village might have looked like 250 years ago. Along a wooded nature trail, visitors can tour more than a dozen sites where Cherokee artists and crafters in traditional dress make everything from arrowheads and beaded necklaces to pottery, baskets, and blow gun darts. There are models of Cherokee cabins, animal traps, canoes, a storage house, a council house and the ceremonial ground where Cherokee villagers would meet and celebrate the events of their daily lives.

Oconaluftee means “beside the waters” or “all towns along the river” in the Cherokee language. Many Cherokee villages were naturally situated near rivers that provided food and water for the people.

Oconaluftee Village is perched on a mountain top just past the “Unto These Hills” Mountainside Theatre. Turn at the light where the Museum of the Cherokee Indian is, and take the road all the way up to the top.

A sign at the entrance to the Oconaluftee Village reads, “Here you will see descendants of the original inhabitants who lived and played in the Great Smokies before the White man tamed the American wilderness.”

A tour takes about an hour. After that, visitors can go back to any of the stops on the tour and spend more time as they choose. There’s also an Indian Herb Garden. It’s best to come early in the morning before the crowds come.

The Village is open from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. May 15 through Oct. 25. Tickets are $12 for adults and $5 for children 6-13. There are discounts for groups of 15 or more.

Dan Conseen, one of the guides at the Village, gives a brief informational talk at each of the stops. He will tell you, for example, that hand-made baskets were made from hickory bark, river cane and white oak saplings, and dyed with bloodroot, black walnut or butternut to give them certain colorful designs.

Further down the trail, Conseen explains how flint was collected from Tennessee and Kentucky and chipped into arrowheads, which were used for hunting or warfare. There’s also a blow gun demonstration where you can see darts fired at a nearby target.

The tour is loaded with historical nuggets and intriguing insights into the daily village life of the Cherokee.

Canoes were made from yellow poplar trees that were chosen near rivers. Villagers would pack red clay around the base of the tree and burn a fire so the fire would fell the tree without destroying it, Conseen said. The log was gutted by constructing a fire along the side of it and again packing clay on it so the fire would burn slowly through the log and carve out an inside without devouring the entire log. It was a process that could take six to eight months, according to Conseen, but once the broad axe was introduced to the Cherokee, canoes could be made in six to eight weeks.

The guides will be sure to explain many of the details of Cherokee tradition and history — and dispel some of the myths about Cherokee culture.

Don’t expect to see teepees or long feathered headdresses. The Cherokee were a farming people, so they did not use nomadic teepees, which are more associated with Western and Plains Indian tribes.
Also, the Cherokee did not use lots of feathers in their culture, which is another custom associated with Western and Plains Indians. The Cherokee did, however, use eagle feathers in a special ceremonial dance — the Great Eagle Dance — which was performed in late fall or early winter in times of peace.

Visitors are given a special guide for the tour’s discussion at the ceremonial ground and the council house, which were both very important centers for a village. The ceremonial, or square, ground was a meeting place for dances, prayers and songs. The council house, or temple, was the place where a year-round sacred fire was kept and the leaders of the village met with the people to discuss the important affairs of the village. In each of these places, there are seven sections to represent the seven clans of the Cherokee Nation — Blue, Long Hair, Bird, Paint, Deer, Wild Potato and Wolf. Each clan played a specific role in village life, and when members of the village married into another tribe as was the custom, the husband went to live in the wife’s clan.

The Cherokee nation — once the largest Native American tribe in the South — stretched over much of Western North Carolina and included about half of South Carolina, north Georgia and north Alabama, much of Tennessee and Kentucky, and western parts of Virginia and West Virginia. In their native language, the Cherokee call themselves “Ani Yunwiya,” or “the principle people.” Other tribes called them “Cherokee,” which meant “people who speak another language.”

By the 16th century, Spanish explorers under the direction of Hernando De Soto were the first Europeans to come in contact with the Cherokee. About 25,000 Cherokees were estimated to be living here at that time. Soon after, European settlers poured into Cherokee lands, and smallpox killed nearly half the Cherokee population. By 1838, the federal government ordered all Cherokees and other remaining tribes throughout the South to be moved to a reservation in Oklahoma. During this forced removal and march West, more than 4,000 Cherokee men, women and children died along the way. This infamous journey was eventually known as the “Trail of Tears.” The tragic story is told each year in the outdoor Cherokee drama, “Unto These Hills.”

On the tour of Oconaluftee Village, visitors can also learn about George Guess — perhaps one of the most famous of all Native Americans. A half white, half Cherokee also known as Sequoyah, he created a written language of 80 symbols that became the Cherokee Syllabary. Though Cherokee students were once punished for speaking or writing the Cherokee language in the boarding schools set up by whites, it is now a mandatory course at Cherokee schools.

Oconaluftee Village is a trip into the past with an eye on the future. As people come to see what traditional Cherokee life was once like, they can realize time-honored traditions are still being remembered for present and future generations to appreciate.

People come from all over the world — Asia, Europe, Australia and across the United States. In the 1980s, the Village accommodated 2,000 people a day, according to Oconaluftee Village Manager Aaron Bradley. In the last several years, he added, attendance has dropped off some since the new Harrah’s Casino in Cherokee opened, beckoning tourists with glitzy lights and the lure of winning money. But Oconaluftee Village still brings in about 100,000 visitors in a season. Next year will be the 50th anniversary for the Village.

“It’s a special place,” Bradley said.

In the 20 years he’s worked at the Village, he’s grown to love watching a hand-woven shawl or a basket take shape. His father was once the manager at the Village and now that Bradley’s into his second year as manager, he continues to carry that child-like fascination for the artists and the history and the way life used to be.

“Come prepared to learn,” Bradley said. “Ask questions. That’s what we’d like people to do.”
For more information about Oconaluftee Village, call 828.497.2315 or 828.497.2111 or go to the website at www.oconalufteevillage.com or write to: Oconaluftee Village, P.O. Box 398, Cherokee, N.C., 28719.

 

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The Smoky Mountain News