Saturday, November 20, 2010

Field trips: Cherokee history

While we'd been to both places before, I was compelled to visit New Echota, Ga., and Red Clay State Park in Tennessee again.
Here is The Daisy listening to the Cherokee syllabary, which Sequoyah/George Gist (pictured) wrote, giving the Cherokee the first written language of all the First Nations.
New Echota was the Cherokee capital during the time of removal.It was here the treaty was signed (illegally) authorizing the removal of the Cherokee to Indian Territory, which would become Oklahoma. This is a replica corn crib of a Cherokee homestead:The interior of a Cherokee home, in which, typically, six people lived. The kids were adamant that it was too small!But I was really obsessed about visiting Red Clay again. Here is a sacred spring called the Blue Hole, which really is blue although you can't see it in these pictures.I think it pumps more than 300,000 gallons of water a day into this spring.The Cherokee met here prior to removal when the treaty was signed at New Echota and today it is the site of an annual Cherokee pow wow.
Here is the eternal flame of the Cherokee, lit when both the North Carolina Cherokee and the Oklahoma Cherokee met in '94 (I think) together at Red Clay. And The Boo demonstrated his balancing skills before we got back on the road:

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