The ancient Cherokees called themselves the “Ani-Yun-wiya,” which implied that they were “The Principal People.” As such, they assumed that it was their responsibility to maintain harmony and balance in the universe. They did so by invoking the powers of the upperworld to help them overcome the powers of the underworld in order to bring peace into the mundane world occupied by humans and the four-legged animals.

Quite naturally, the upper world of everlasting light and the hereafter was symbolized in their minds by the birds. The Cherokees were keen observers of bird life here in the Blue Ridge. As we do today, they admired the birds for their beauty, for their ability to sing and — most of all — for their ability to fly.

During times of peace, their national flag consisted of a long white pole with a white cloth fastened at the top. Immediately below the white cloth, a bird was painted or carved. As part of their spiritual belief system, they envisioned a mythic bird — most probably modeled upon the peregrine falcon — known as the Sanuwa, or mythic hawk.

The Sanuwa was a large and ferocious bird noted for its swift and strong flight. Numerous cliffs throughout the Cherokee country were designated as places where the Sanuwas resided. These, no doubt, were also places where peregrine falcons nested and roosted in ancient times.

As with many mythic entities in Cherokee lore, this bird could be an ally of the Cherokees at times, while at other times it could become their mortal enemy. The raven-mocker possessed a similar duality, which probably represented the Cherokee notion that “things are never quite as they seem.”

The Sanuwa was often invoked on behalf of stickball players who wore red-dyed feathers representing the great bird when they played the punishing game known as “little war.” On the other hand, the Sanuwa was sometimes known to carry off young children to its haven in the high cliffs and devour them.

For the most part, however, the Cherokees valued the Sanuwa because it was the mortal enemy of the Uktena, the giant serpent that represented the Underworld, the realm of darkness, death and decay.

The Uktena was a very large snake — no point in having a snake story if you don’t have a big snake.
When James Mooney visited the Qualla Boundary (present-day Cherokee) during the late 1880s, he collected Uktena data that he subsequently published as part of his study Myths of the Cherokee (1900). In the early 1960s, Indian historians Jack and Anna Kilpatrick found that the Cherokees who were forcibly removed to Oklahoma in 1838 still vividly retained, in their collective memory, stories of the serpent monster, which they called the Uk’ten.” To this day a conversation about the Uktena can be carried on with many native Cherokees here in Western North Carolina. In a metaphorical sense the creature lives.

According to Mooney’s informants, the Uktena — which was born of envy and anger — was “as large around as a tree trunk, with horns on its head, and a bright blazing crest like a diamond upon its forehead, and scales glittering like sparks of fire. It has rings or spots of color along its whole length and cannot be wounded except by shooting in the seventh spot from the head, because under this spot are its heart and life.” It was often depicted as having a set of antlers. Hey, if you’re going to have a big snake story, nothing says that you can’t give him antlers.

The most compelling feature of the Uktena, however, was the diamond-shaped crest (depicted as a quartz crystal) on its forehead that emitted flashes of light like a blazing star. Persons encountering the serpent were doomed, moth-like, to become so bedazzled by this light that they ran toward sure death.
In Cherokee spiritual life, though, there is always a balance between good and evil. As in all religious thought, you can’t have “good” without “evil,” and vice versa.

The danger of the Uktena was counterbalanced by the potential power in the burning stone. Cherokee medicine men utilized various crystals to forsee the future. Some came from the serpent’s glittering scales. The most powerful of all was “Ulunsuti,” the jewel in the Uktena’s head. Such a stone, they felt, “insures success in hunting, love, rainmaking and other undertakings, but the greatest use is in divination, so that when it is evoked for this purpose by its owner the future is mirrored in the transparent crystal as a tree is reflected in the quiet stream below.”

According to reliable sources, Uktenas live in the deep pools of rivers or haunt lonely passes in the high mountains west of the Balsams throughout western North Carolina and northern Georgia. Such places were carefully designated as “where the Uktena stays” from generation to generation.

All of the old-time Cherokees and some present-day ones knew and know the exact location of these Uktena places: Fort Mountain in Georgia; certain deep holes in the Tuckaseigee, Little Tennessee, Hiwassee, and Nantahala rivers; and the high Smokies from Clingman’s to Thunderhead, as well as way up in the Big Laurel in the Cowee Mountains where Jackson, Swain, and Macon counties corner.

If there was a Cherokee warrior brave enough to venture into the dreaded places where the Uktenas resided, he could evoke the spirit of the mythic hawk, Sanuwa, to accompany him. Together, they could slay the serpent, extract the “Ulunsuti” from its forehead, and bring peace and harmony into the mundane world.

For the most part, Uktenas lived on the margins of the Cherokee world like dark shadows in a dream. But from time to time they would exit their hideaways and venture into the everyday world of the open valleys and large settlements. Indeed, for those who doubt, there is tangible evidence of the Uktena’s monstrous power and capacity for uncontrolled rage at our very doorsteps.

Mooney’s informants pointed out spots in the Tuckaseigee River several miles above the mouth of Deep Creek in Bryson City that they call “Uktenatsuganuntatsunyi” places. Here the Uktena got “fastened” or “crawled” — while trying to make his way upstream near the ancient Cherokee mothertown of Katuah (also known locally as Governor’s Island or Ferguson Fields).

In its struggles to free himself from the stones, “the monster pried up large rocks lying in the bed of the river and left deep scratches upon other rocks along the other bank.” It also left prominent “wavy depressions” in rocks out in the middle of the river as its huge body worked its way upstream.

You can drive east on the Hyatt Creek connector that runs alongside the south bank of the Tuckaseigee and — during times of low water — spot the upturned rocks, wavy depressions and claw marks all along that section of river.

They’re as plain as day. You can’t miss them. But as my Cherokee friend Gary Johnson, now deceased, used to say of the “Little People” who still haunt the woodlands, “George, you gotta be in the right frame of mind to see them.”

Just so — you do have to be in the right frame of mind to comprehend the significance of the great hawk and the giant serpent. Uktena and Sanuwa places were obviously touchstones for the Cherokees’ collective imagination from one generation to the next for hundreds of years. They were constant reminders etched into the very mountains of the power of the angry and envious serpents in their lives and hearts. But they were also reminders that the dark forces could be overcome through human courage and the liberating powers of the Upperworld.

(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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