The sacred formulas here given are selected from a collection of about
six hundred, obtained on the Cherokee reservation in North Carolina in
1887 and 1888, and covering every subject pertaining to the daily life
and thought of the Indian, including medicine, love, hunting, fishing,
war, self-protection, destruction of enemies, witchcraft, the crops,
the council, the ball play, etc., and, in fact, embodying almost
the whole of the ancient religion of the Cherokees. The original
manuscripts, now in the possession of the Bureau of Ethnology,
were written by the shamans of the tribe, for their own use, in
the Cherokee characters invented by Sikwâ´ya (Sequoyah) in 1821,
and were obtained, with the explanations, either from the writers
themselves or from their surviving relatives.
Some of these manuscripts are known to be at least thirty years
old, and many are probably older. The medical formulas of all kinds
constitute perhaps one-half of the whole number, while the love charms
come next in number, closely followed by the songs and prayers used in
hunting and fishing. The great number of love charms will doubtless be
a surprise to those who have been educated in the old theory that the
Indian is insensible to the attractions of woman. The comparatively
small number of war formulas is explained by the fact that the last
war in which the Cherokees, as a tribe, were engaged on their own
account, closed with the Revolutionary period, so that these things
were well nigh forgotten before the invention of the alphabet, a
generation later. The Cherokees who engaged in the Creek war and the
late American civil war fought in the interests of the whites, and
their leaders were subordinated to white officers, hence there was not
the same opportunity for the exercise of shamanistic rites that there
would have been had Indians alone been concerned. The prayers for
hunting, fishing, and the ball play being in more constant demand,
have been better preserved.
These formulas had been handed down orally from a remote antiquity
until the early part of the present century, when the invention of
the Cherokee syllabary enabled the priests of the tribe to put them
into writing. The same invention made it possible for their rivals,
the missionaries, to give to the Indians the Bible in their own
language, so that the opposing forces of Christianity and shamanism
alike profited by the genius of Sikwâya. The pressure of the new
civilization was too strong to be withstood, however, and though
the prophets of the old religion still have much influence with the
people, they are daily losing ground and will soon be without honor in
their own country.
Such an exposition of the aboriginal religion could be obtained from
no other tribe in North America, for the simple reason that no other
tribe has an alphabet of its own in which to record its sacred lore.
It is true that the Crees and Micmacs of Canada and the Tukuth of
Alaska have so-called alphabets or ideographic systems invented for
their use by the missionaries, while, before the Spanish conquest,
the Mayas of Central America were accustomed to note down their hero
legends and priestly ceremonials in hieroglyphs graven upon the walls
of their temples or painted upon tablets made of the leaves of the
maguey. But it seems never to have occurred to the northern tribes
that an alphabet coming from a missionary source could be used for any
other purpose than the transcription of bibles and catechisms, while
the sacred books of the Mayas, with a few exceptions, have long since
met destruction at the hands of fanaticism, and the modern copies
which have come down to the present day are written out from imperfect
memory by Indians who had been educated under Spanish influences in
the language, alphabet and ideas of the conquerors, and who, as is
proved by an examination of the contents of the books themselves,
drew from European sources a great part of their material. Moreover,
the Maya tablets were so far hieratic as to be understood only
by the priests and those who had received a special training in
this direction, and they seem therefore to have been entirely
unintelligible to the common people.
The Cherokee alphabet, on the contrary, is the invention or adaptation
of one of the tribe, who, although he borrowed most of the Roman
letters, in addition to the forty or more characters of his own
devising, knew nothing of their proper use or value, but reversed them
or altered their forms to suit his purpose, and gave them a name and
value determined by himself. This alphabet was at once adopted by the
tribe for all purposes for which writing can be used, including the
recording of their shamanistic prayers and ritualistic ceremonies. The
formulas here given, as well as those of the entire collection, were
written out by the shamans themselves--men who adhere to the ancient
religion and speak only their native language--in order that their
sacred knowledge might be preserved in a systematic manner for their
mutual benefit. The language, the conception, and the execution
are all genuinely Indian, and hardly a dozen lines of the hundreds
of formulas show a trace of the influence of the white man or
his religion. The formulas contained in these manuscripts are not
disjointed fragments of a system long since extinct, but are the
revelation of a living faith which still has its priests and devoted
adherents, and it is only necessary to witness a ceremonial ball
play, with its fasting, its going to water, and its mystic bead
manipulation, to understand how strong is the hold which the old faith
yet has upon the minds even of the younger generation. The numerous
archaic and figurative expressions used require the interpretation
of the priests, but, as before stated, the alphabet in which they are
written is that in daily use among the common people.
In all tribes that still retain something of their ancient
organization we find this sacred knowledge committed to the keeping of
various secret societies, each of which has its peculiar ritual with
regular initiation and degrees of advancement. From this analogy
we may reasonably conclude that such was formerly the case with the
Cherokees also, but by the breaking down of old customs consequent
upon their long contact with the whites and the voluntary adoption
of a civilized form of government in 1827, all traces of such society
organization have long since disappeared, and at present each priest
or shaman is isolated and independent, sometimes confining himself
to a particular specialty, such as love or medicine, or even the
treatment of two or three diseases, in other cases broadening his
field of operations to include the whole range of mystic knowledge.
It frequently happens, however, that priests form personal friendships
and thus are led to divulge their secrets to each other for their
mutual advantage. Thus when one shaman meets another who he thinks can
probably give him some valuable information, he says to him, “Let us
sit down together.” This is understood by the other to mean, “Let us
tell each other our secrets.” Should it seem probable that the seeker
after knowledge can give as much as he receives, an agreement is
generally arrived at, the two retire to some convenient spot secure
from observation, and the first party begins by reciting one of his
formulas with the explanations. The other then reciprocates with
one of his own, unless it appears that the bargain is apt to prove a
losing one, in which case the conference comes to an abrupt ending.
It is sometimes possible to obtain a formula by the payment of a coat,
a quantity of cloth, or a sum of money. Like the Celtic Druids of old,
the candidate for the priesthood in former times found it necessary to
cultivate a long memory, as no formula was repeated more than once for
his benefit. It was considered that one who failed to remember after
the first hearing was not worthy to be accounted a shaman. This task,
however, was not so difficult as might appear on first thought, when
once the learner understood the theory involved, as the formulas are
all constructed on regular principles, with constant repetition of
the same set of words. The obvious effect of such a regulation was
to increase the respect in which this sacred knowledge was held by
restricting it to the possession of a chosen few.
Although the written formulas can be read without difficulty by any
Cherokee educated in his own language, the shamans take good care that
their sacred writings shall not fall into the hands of the laity or
of their rivals in occult practices, and in performing the ceremonies
the words used are uttered in such a low tone of voice as to be
unintelligible even to the one for whose benefit the formula is
repeated. Such being the case, it is in order to explain how the
formulas collected were obtained.