Cherokee Pride

1. Cherokee Pride By Emily Jackson

2. Cherokees Indians Are Native Americans • The Cherokees are called Native Americans because they were the first to come to North America. • They came to North America over 700 years ago. • The Cherokees lived in Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.

3. What Did They Live In? • Cherokees did not live in T-pees like other Indians. • Cherokees made houses called stockades. • Stockades looked sort of like our houses. • Stockades had four walls made out of logs, dirt, and grass to protect the family. • The roof was made out of split cedar wood to keep the rain out.

4. What Did Use to Hunt? • They used spears, tomahawks, and bow and arrows to hunt and fish for food. • Cherokees made their weapons with rocks, bones, and stones that they sharpened into a point. • These sharp points were called arrow heads or spear heads. • They tied the arrow heads to sticks to make the arrows and spears.

5. What Did They Wear? • The women in the villages made clothes from woven plants, deerskins, and bird feathers. • Men wore deerskin breech clothes and rabbit fur capes. • The women wore skirts made from deerskin. • Cherokees wore deerskin mocasins to protect their feet. • They also made bead necklaces, breast-plates and jewelry carved from animal bone and wood. • They made headbands out of leather and pretty feathers.

6. Art and Pottery • Cherokee men painted tatoos on their faces and bodies before they went hunting, went to battle, or before they celebrated. • Women used clay and water to make bowls with Cherokee symbols and pretty paint.

7. What Did They Eat? • There was a big garden in the middle of each Cherokee village. • They grew lots of vegetables like corn, beans, sunflowers, pumpkins, and squash. • The men planted the garden and the women picked the vegetables. • The men fished and hunted for deer, rabbits, and bears for their family to eat.

8. Cherokee Music • Music was very important in their village. • Cherokees made their own instruments using turtle shells for rattles, animal skins for drums, animal horns, and wood for flutes. • They told Cherokee legends and stories by singing and dancing. • They also played instruments, sang, and danced to celebrate.

9. What Did They Play • They played a game they called Anejodi. • This game is sort of like lacrosse. • The village divided into teams and each player had two wooden sticks with a basket on the end of each stick. • They would score points by using the sticks to throw the ball between two posts.

10. What Did They Believe? • The Cherokees believed that nature was sacred. • They believed that the owl and cougar were sacred because they stayed awake during the seven days of creation. • They believed that the Cedar, Spruce, Lavrel, and Pine trees were special because they kept their leaves all year long. • The Cherokees also believed that if you were good, you were rewarded and if you were bad, you were punished.

11. What the Europeans Do to the Cherokees • At first, everything was good between the Cherokees and Europeans. • They traded furs and other items in peace. • The Europeans began to take over and eventually took over the Cherokees’ land. • The Europeans pushed the Cherokees to move to new territories.