ANCIENT CHEROKEE ORIGINS

also see THE CHEROKEE/PHOENICIAN X-FILES

see also Cherokee travel to Europe to view artifacts (off site)

see also The Chickamauga Cherokees of Southern Kentucky and Northern Tennessee

The Cherokees did NOT originate in North America, are different from the Muskogean Creeks and others

What Our Historical Chiefs Have Said

According to Chief Attakullakulla's ceremonial speech to the Cherokee Nation in 1750, we traveled here from "the rising sun" before the time of the stone age man.

What Anthropologists Say Today

The Cherokee migrated back and forth from Mexico twice, making the Ozark plateau our home the second time, about 800-1500 years ago. This fact has been proven scientifically by Dr. Tim Jones (a Cherokee descendant) of the University of Arizona -- who holds doctorate degrees in BOTH archeology AND anthropology.

What Anthropologists said in 1949

Cherokees skulls are NOT like those of other American Indians, as is shown from Anthropological evidence gathered in Archeological sites.

From a newspaper article titled For Palefaces, by Walter Carroll, Durham Morning Herald, December 11, 1949,

"Dr. Kelly explained that his initial concern with Cherokee Origins occurred when he came to the Cherokee reservation in 1929 as a fellow of the National Research Council. He had traveled from Harvard to make a racial study of the present tribes, principally their head forms, which are 'dolicephalic,' (Ancient European, like Hitler called "Aryan" and like many of the Basque Indigenous people of the mountains of Spain possessed anciently) in contrast he said, with more southeastern tribes, who were prevailingly 'round-headed.' "

Long-headed or dolicephalic (on the left) and round-headed or brachycephalic (on the right) types of Amerindian: both were present in East Tennessee, the former distributed in Canada and northward, the latter in southeastern states. Many of these closely resemble the maritime Neolithic people of Mugem, Portugal, who frequented coasts and rivers, used the bone harpoon, and had domesticated the dog. Photo Walter Eitel.]

"'Speculations about the origins of the Cherokee' Dr. Kelly said, 'has agitated the minds of anthropologists for fifty years or more, beginning with James Mooney, who made investigations on Cherokee myths and traditions at the turn of the century.'"

"'Anthropologists', Dr. Kelly told the people gathered at the feast, 'have always been intrigued by the ethnic picture of the Cherokee, holding the great central massif of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, a mountain people whose culture always reflected adaptation to uplands, surrounded by tribes of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. To the south and west, since earliest recorded history (the reports of the expedition of Hernando DeSoto and other 16th century Spanish explorers) were the various tribes belonging to the great Muskogean-speaking family. On the north were the Algonquins and Iroquoian (editors relatives, and toward the Carolina coast was the conclave of Siouan-speaking tribes, whose presence as detached Siouan tribes in the southeast is almost as big a mystery as the Cherokees.'"

"Dr Kelly explained that archaeologically the picture of the Cherokee origin remains a mystery despite a great amount of theorizations. This is true, he said, in spite of the extensive archeological work done in the southeast in the last 20 years.Work of the Tennessee Department of Anthropology, Dr. Kelly stated, has indicated that the Overhills Cherokees were culturally divergent from the parent body of the older Cherokee settlements in the highland sections of North Carolina and South Carolina."

"Dr. Kelly was high in his praise of the Cherokee people. He described them as a brave, wise, and intelligent group, but added that they had always been "Something like the Irish" in that they could not pass up a good fight when they saw one."

What Our Cherokee Historians Have Said

Budd Gritts was a prominent conservative Baptist minister, author of the first Keetoowah Constitution and one of the reorganizers of the Original Keetoowah Society in 1858.

The Cherokee Nation lands were allotted at the turn of the 20th century, and its government was terminated by Congress in 1906... illegally as it turns out...

Levi B. Gritts was the ONLY man ever recognized by all Cherokee Nation factions to be acceptable as their Chief back in the mid 1920s.

Budd's relative Levi B. Gritts taught that the Cherokee came from an island off the coast of South America that sank after the elders misused "white fire." This is too close to the story of the destruction of Atlantis to be ignored except by the most inveterate cynics among us.

Levi B. Gritts was a very honorable person and remembered as a very wise man, and later became historian for the Cherokee Nation after Harry Truman illegally appointed W.W. Keeler as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, an action which was later overturned in Ground vs. Keeler, and the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the governments of a "5 civilized tribes" to hold elections and set up national governments.

Old Traditions Held By Some Cherokee

Some Cherokee holy people taught that we came from what is known today as "Atlantis," from a Medicine Clan called the Assaga (pronounced Ah-sah-gah). These people sent out colonies to preserve the Ageless Wisdom. One group of Assaga went into the Great Smokey Mountains where they later combined with other wanderers to become the Cherokees. Another group settled in what became "New England" and combined with an exiled Cherokee clan to become the Oneida tribe, and another went much further North into what became Nova Scotia to become known as Naskapi.

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