The isolation that contributed to the formation of some mountain dialects also helped Native Americans
preserve their heritage in the rising tide of European culture.
Ahnawo gisduisi [English: "putting a cloth over it"]
It talks about where the Indians used to use
a cloth to make a medicine when they used to have a cloth to put their medicine on and
that's what he's talking about on that song.
This is one of my frog bowl.
Gadagwahl degvd degvsgvyu, [English: "I use that clay and really work it,
tsulasg nigvgv. to make a pot"]
That's how I was making pottery.
My name in the Cherokee language is
Maga uwodigei, ale osigwu nagwadvhnadegv. [English: "Mark Brown, and I'm doing alright"]
I'm alright.
Nole nigohilv digilvwisdane gehv. [English: "And I used to work all the time."]
I worked all the time.
And that's the Cherokee language.
Siyo, osigwutsu? [English: "Hi, are you doing alright?
Taline denadagohv We'll see each other again."]
See you again.
My youngest one, that's all he knew when he first talked was Cherokee and he picked up
English from these other kids before he even started school.
I speak all the time, I don't care if they didn't understand me, I'd get after them if
speak in English.
I said I always tell them, I speak in Cherokee.
Well, I use Cherokee any time I'm talking to a Cherokee.
It don't matter where it's at.
I'd rather talk Cherokee than English.
Me and my grandchildren, I talk to them in Cherokee and I named them with Cherokee
names myself so I can call them.
They named these babies so hard names, I ain't never heard in my life.
I can't say their names so I just named them myself an Indian name.
Well that's the way it was in the way long time ago they had to name them an Indian name.
Now they don't even know what their Indian name is.
Prior to colonization, the area that would become North Carolina was home to numerous
native language groups including Iroquoian, Algonquian, and Siouxan language families.
In 1870, the United States government established mandatory boarding schools for Indians across
the country.
Young Indians were forced to live apart from their parents in the federal schools.
Their hair was cut, their clothes were replaced by school uniforms, and the use of their native
language was punished severely.
All of these children were assigned new English names.
They wanted to civilize us, I suppose.
They were punished for speaking Cherokee.
So I think that was when it became endangered.
Of course, you know, we feel the effects of it now because there's so many that don't
speak the language.
Every time someone that spoke Cherokee dies, there's been quite a few more and more as
they get older.
Makes me feel kind of bad.
So now we use it some here not like we did.
We only have one preacher that could preach Cherokee without any English.
Only one left.
We had two and then one died a few months ago..
I mean they did speak in Cherokee mostly all of them way back when I was growing up.
There weren't too many people that speak in English.
Just a few of them.
And you'd go to the home, they all speak in Cherokee.
Everywhere you went.
And now you can't go nowheres and they'd say I don't know how to speak it.
Cherokee language is almost gone.
There's probably less than 300 Cherokees that speak fluent Cherokee, you know.
When I was a kid, I was very much aware of that cadence in the craft shops.
I worked in the craft shops down there from the time I was 14, it was probably against
the law, clear up to when I graduated from college.
I'd go back in the summer and work down there in the summer when I was in college.
There's an awful lot of fake Cherokees now.
Guys making a good living pretending to be Cherokees that are really
extroverted and sort of show people.
You can usually identify a fake Cherokee by his name.
If it's a beautiful name.
Floating Eaglefeather, you know, Snow Bear.
Beware!
Beware, beware.
Because the Cherokee names, there are some colorful ones, but what you hear more often is
Tooni, Crow, Big Meat, Smoker, Stomper, Swimmer.
They don't have the drama that people like in a colorful name.
Princess Pale Moon, ohh, look out.
Course there's a genuine effort in Cherokee to give you the true Cherokees.
But, lots of times the tourists aren't interested in that.
They want bloody tomahawks and scalping, and they want what they're accustomed to.
They wanna see a deer slayer right there on Main Street.
And if you tell them that Cherokees were sophisticated and agrarian, they raised cotton, they had
their own alphabet syllabary, their own newspaper back in the 1820's, they get bored.
That's not really what they want.
That's not the image they want.
The Cherokee culture and language will survive because of the great emphasis that has been
going on for the last five or six years.
And I think that we are getting to the children at the right time and that is birth on.
Language is culture and culture is language.
That's who we are.
Our language is who we are.
Once you start learning the language, it branches out to all other areas: history, culture, traditions
So when they're learning the language they're learning, you know, everything about the Cherokee
people as well.
Not many of us can fully say things like the older people can, but we're learning which
makes it better.
Not many people can say they can speak two different languages.
And especially a Native American language and I think it's pretty cool that that's our heritage,
that we're learning our heritage.
If you see like white people and stuff, it's like,
we'll talk to each other about them and they won't know.
I don't know, it just kind of feels good to have our own language that nobody else can understand.
All our elders know it, but if we don't learn it,
And they're gone, then it's going to be gone.
Nobody knows it.
So if we don't learn it, nobody'll know it, and it's like our heritage is gone.
We've got some here yet who speak Cherokee in their 40s and 50s, no kids.
They speak Cherokee.
But they're learning, they sing, the kids catch on quick.