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Cherokee Native American Healing
Photo courtesy of http://americanindianoriginals.com/
The Cherokee naturally began wearing beads not only to protect and ensure health, but also for decoration and status within the tribe. On the website above you can also see examples of Cherokee beadwork.
There is no special word in Cherokee for medicine man. Although adanöwiski is often used to refer to medicine men, they are, for the most part, individually named by words that describe their particular specialties. In 1888 James Mooney, a researcher who studied the Cherokee Indian, began his work on the now famous Swimmer manuscript, a booklet containing the medical formulas of the Cherokee. This work and that of subsequent investigators have provided a detailed account of Cherokee healing.
There are women healers, but most Cherokee healers are men. When a sick tribal member is to be treated, the Medicine Man first must diagnose the cause of there sickness. The healer questions the patient about their recent dreams and any toaboos they may have broken. Diagnosis may take questioning the patient for dream content back to 3 years.
The Cherokee Medicine Man may also consider the patients physical symptoms to diagnosis the ailment. He checks for rings around his eyes or stomach pain. Until the middle of the 20th centurty, the Cherokee believed diseases were caused by human ghosts, witches or the spirits of animals.
If the healer had difficulty diagnosing the ailment, he would use a divination method known as "examining the beads." This was the procedure as described by the ethnologist James Mooney, "the medicine man holds a black bead (called adälön; see entry) between thumb and index finger of the left hand, a white or red bead between forefinger and thumb of the right hand, and, reciting an appropriate formula, examines what are the chances of the sick man. The brisk movements of the righthand bead gives an affirmative answer; its sluggish movements, or its remaining motionless, a negative answer." (Mooney and Olbrechts, 1932). Beads were consided to produce the true diagnosis and the resulting prognosis.
The treatment took the form of a mixture of plants, spirits, and messaging the body. Specific songs were also recommended and utilized during the healing ceremony.
Healing rites were strongly tied to ceremonial performances involving the entire community, often a number of related Cherokee towns, and, on special occasions, the entire Cherokee population, largely centered in northern Georgia. This priestly class had widespread authority in all aspects of Cherokee life and was delineated as the "white" organization of knowledgeable elders representing the seven clans and their hereditary powers of leadership. Members of the priestly class were dedicated to religious activities that had to do with healing, purity, and prayer addressed to the Cherokee sacred powers.
A constituency of younger men participated in the "red" organization and had responsibilities related to warfare. War and the spilling of blood, however, were a polluting activity that required rites of purification under the direction of the white organization before members could once again participate in normal village activities.
Medical treatment took the form of a mixture of plants, spirits, and messaging the body. Specific songs were also recommended and utilized during the healing ceremony. Healing rites were strongly tied to ceremonial performances involving the entire community, often a number of related Cherokee towns, and, on special occasions, the entire Cherokee population, largely centered in northern Georgia.
This priestly class had widespread authority in all aspects of Cherokee life and was delineated as the "white" organization of knowledgeable elders representing the seven clans and their hereditary powers of leadership. Members of the priestly class were dedicated to religious activities that had to do with healing, purity, and prayer addressed to the Cherokee sacred powers.
A constituency of younger men participated in the "red" organization and had responsibilities related to warfare. War and the spilling of blood, however, were a polluting activity that required rites of purification under the direction of the white organization before members could once again participate in normal village activities.
After the Cherokee removal of 1838, the tribe had difficulty following traditional practices as they adjusted to an austere life in Indian Territory Reservation (Oklahoma). The priestly society was no longer existent, and the rituals were not remembered as before.
Also, Cherokee religius beliefs underwent a dramatic change by 1900. When the ethnologist James Mooney arrived to study the Cherokee in the late 1890s, Cherokee Medicine Men had reformulated their rituals and formulas leaving them in a structured complex of individual knowledge and ability.
Further, the South Eastern Cherokee Medicine practitioners had been reduced to a small enclave hiding in the mountains of western North Carolina, to escape being caught and removed to the Reservation as the rest of the tribe had been.
When the Cherokees were able to write down their medical formulas and rituals, thanks to the invention of the Cherokee alphabet, they were able to collect the sacred formulas and preserve them. The texts are highly structured and possess separate prescriptions for how they are to be used.
Written in small chapbooks by Cherokee shamans, in their own orthography and language, a number of these works were collected by James Mooney, who translated and commented on a small selection of them. Further work was done on these manuscripts by Olbrechts, who discussed them in detail with a number of Cherokee shamans in 1915.
These sacred texts were produced strictly for use by the shaman himself, rather than for others to use. They are the first record of Native American Cherokee oral tradition written as sacred texts and used in asking for help from the mythic powers. This makes them extremely powerful and dangerous in the eyes of the Cherokee.
Below is a Photo of the Cherokee Medicine Man's Healing Tools  | ||||||||
