Dr. Max White

Associate Professor of Anthropology

A.B. University of Georgia 
M.A. University of Georgia 
Ph.D. Indiana University 

Dr. White is a native Georgian, and in true anthropological fashion, has a wide range of interests.  His research has been in the areas of archaeology, history, ethnohistory, and cultural anthropology.  Fieldwork, in addition to archaeological excavations, includes work with the Eastern Cherokees, Southern Appalachian mountain people,  Blacks, and Hispanics.  Professor White is the author of numerous articles in professional journals and two books:  Georgia's Indian Heritage (1988) and An Introduction to Georgia's Indian Past (in press).  He is currently investigating prehistoric use of soapstone (steatite) in the local area, as well as conducting ethnohistoric research on descendants of slaves of the Moss and Wynne families. 

TRANSCRIPT:

For centuries the Cherokee Nation lived and thrived in Georgia. Although the sovereignty of the Nation was re-established in Oklahoma in 1835, the heart of its past still remains firmly planted in the roots of those wanting to keep their  Cherokee heritage alive for generations to come.

From a scientific prospective, Anthropologist, Max White, sheds light on the different myths and legends about Georgia’s Cherokee by separating fact…from fiction.  He says,

 “The Cherokee are believed to have come to the Georgia area after other civilized tribes settled in the area like the Creeks and Simoles. In the historic period, a number of tribes were living in what is now Georgia.  The Cherokees were in the northern part, the Creeks occupied most of Georgia, the Uchis were here and in the late 18^th century even a group of Shawnees moved to Georgia so as to trade with the English at Augusta.”

White says the true meaning to the term, the Five Civilized Tribes, stems from their earliest beginnings in Georgia.

“Those were the largest groups left in the southeast after the European diseases had decimated so many people and after all of the wars, those were the largest five remaining groups.   And I suppose for one reason that they were referred to as the civilized tribes, they lived essentially, like their white neighbors.  They were farmers, they lived in permanent villages, and their lifestyle wasn’t really much different from the European settlers.”

But farming and establishing villages weren’t the only practices that were thought to make the tribes civilized. When U.S. governmental practices were adopted by the Cherokee, this established them as a sovereign Nation.

“They Cherokee’s for instance, incorporated as a Nation.  They wrote their own constitution, which was patterned in part after our own constitution.  They wrote down their laws and they had a very well structured society.

Another historical fact worth noting, White says, is the Cherokee governmental structure in existence as a Nation before the civil war.

He says many archeological findings point to early Native settlements as far back as 8000 B.C.  But permanent settlements didn’t occur until the woodland period, roughly 2000 years ago.

White points out that, although agriculture was not practiced widely, it was important.  It wasn’t until 1000 A.D., when tribes all over the east turned to agriculture as the primary method of making a living.   It was then that hunting, fishing and gathering became secondary. He says,

 “We began to find evidence of more permanent settlements. You really can’t associate artifacts much earlier than the historic period with specific tribes but, James Mooney, who I think did the definitive work on the Cherokee was in the last 1800’s, found legends among the Cherokees and among the tribes in the northeast, to the effect that, they left the main body of Iroquoian speaking peoples in the area of New York, Pennsylvania, and moved south through the mountains probably because of over population.  They were expanding southward.  Now when that occurred, we don’t know exactly.  I would say in the not too distant past, because they were still expanding southward when the Europeans arrived.”

White says the British established early treaty negotiations over the land rights with both the Cherokee Nation and the Creeks.  He says,

“Because the Cherokees lived here, but the others, mainly the Creeks claimed it.  They said, “We were here first. It’s ours by right of original possession.”  But the Cherokees were actually occupying it. So they were still expanding at the time of European settling.”

When entering a treaty negotiation over land rights, White says, the British would have to get two or three groups to sign off for them to have a clear title to the land.   

Although he says, the Cherokee and the Creeks had a prior history of not getting along, it was not until the Europeans settlers came that the causalities on both sides grew in numbers.  He says,

“And you have to remember their warfare was not like European warfare. The Indians carried out raids. They would sneak over into the other’s territory and maybe kill a warrior or two.  Maybe burn a house or two…maybe abduct a woman and bring her back and marry her. … We taught them civilized warfare. Where you go in and kill every man, woman and child, dog and cat and burn the village and destroy the crops and the field.”

And that’s not the only form of warfare that was introduced by the early European settlers.  White says, germ warfare also played a large part in the early settlers obtaining Native lands.  He says,

“There are instances later on where the European deliberately gave small pox to the Indians just to kill them off.  Then it made it easier to take their land because instead of fighting them, you can just walk in and take it because they are all dead. …Send someone with small pox to them or give the Indians a blanket which had been used on a small pox patient.  It had the virus.”

Although the European settlers taught the Cherokee and the other Native tribes how to kill…it was the Cherokee that taught the Europeans how to survive in the new territory.  White says, the agricultural practices of the Cherokee differed greatly from the early settlers.

“Their farming was done with a digging stick and a stone or bone hoe. That’s all they had.   They raised huge crops of corn, but you see, for one thing here in the southeast, their villages and farmlands were situated in the river bottoms, the flood plains.  This is rich alluvial soil, it’s not rocky, and usually it wasn’t forested.   The river bottoms were usually covered in huge cane breaks.  Very large stands of Native River cane. And to clear that all you have to do is set fire to it when it’s dry and the whole thing goes up.  Then, all you have to do is dig out the roots. Once you get that removed, you have a clear open field.”

But White says, the farming practices are only a small part of what made the Cherokee culture impressive.  He says for him it encompasses much…much…more.

“I suppose their world view, their way of seeing the environment and man’s place in it.  They did a better job than we do. The Indian people in general saw, man as part of the living system, not as master of it.  And some Indian leaders would point out, if you harm the earth or any part of it, you are ultimately harming yourself. We are all inner-connected.  That’s a totally different view, than that of Europeans where man is seen as master of the earth, it’s there to do with as we see fit.”

But he says as time went on the Indians wanted the material possessions the European settlers had to offer, which led to them ultimately wiping out the eastern buffalo in the earl 1700’s.

The Indians when they got guns they were so desirous of what the Europeans had to offer the iron skillets and other metal pots and pans, and steel axes and knifes they wanted that so badly…and the Europeans wanted animal skins…they would wipe out a whole herd and strip the hides off and give to the Europeans for what they wanted.”

White says for all of their accomplishments, Indians were still technologically at the Stone Age level. Because the metal tools made it easier to work and farm the Natives became hooked on European trade goods.  This placed them at a great disadvantage because they lost the art of making stone tools and became dependent upon trading.

Most of their communicating was done through half-breeds that could speak both languages, but they also developed a trade language, which is not like the sign language of the plains, but one which they could use over a wide area.  This southeastern trade language has been studied by linguist. 

It was later while serving  in the US Army during the Creek War of (1812-1814) that a mixed-blood Cherokee named Sequoyah, first had the idea for a Cherokee writing system.  White says,

According to his biography he was intrigued by white people making little marks on the paper and they could send that across the county or across the state and another white man look at it and know what the other one said, and he wanted to do that with the Indian language.  And he worked on it for years. But he finally hit on the idea of making a symbol to represent a sound. The Cherokee language has approximately 88 sounds, so by memorizing which symbol stands for which sound, you can put them together in a meaningful sequence and you have writing, and that’s what he did and it was so simple, until practically the whole Cherokee Nation  could read and write in their own language in two or three years.  It was phenomenal.”

Although the Cherokee language is a form of the Iroquoian language, there are still some Natives in smaller reservations in New York and Ontario that speak the original dialect. 

The Cherokee language itself is still mostly spoken in Oklahoma. But White says he fears the language is dying due to old governmental policy towards the Indian languages.

“I’m afraid it’s a dying language…. Mostly because of our government’s policy towards the Indian language…. They tried for more than over 100 years to eradicate all of the Indian languages, and I’ve had older people in North Carolina tell me that they purposely did not teach the language to their children because they didn’t want them to suffer, just because of a language.  It was government policy for a longtime to eradicate Indian culture.  And forcibly so. A lot of people don’t realize that Indian children were taken out of the homes and placed in Boarding schools and there they were made to learn and speak English.  They were punished…sometime severely, if they were caught speaking the Indian language. And it was a very successful program.  Now most of the Indian languages are either extinct or on the way out.”

He says most Native tribes have been indoctrinated into the Anglo Saxon ways, leaving many today without the heritage of their ancestors.

“Because they were in much more isolated circumstances. They underwent this forcible change maybe a little later. There are several reasons.  But you see here the east especially, you just had little pockets of Indian people surrounded by a sea of whites. And they were under the gun.”

But loosing their languages wasn’t the only tragedy the Five Civilized tribes faced at gun point.  White says the discovery of gold and the richness of the farmland led them to loosing their homeland also.

 “Now the discovery of gold was the straw that broke the camels back with regard to the Cherokee, but other groups had already been transported to Oklahoma, the Creeks in particular.  It was greed on the part of white people.  But not all of them.  It was a government policy.”

And White says, some citizens were not afraid to speak out against the injustice.

“Now 1830…this is eight years before the Cherokee removal and at that time the boundary with the Cherokee nation was just a few miles to our west, where White county is now. But listen to this:

“WE the grand jury chosen, sworn and selected for the county of Habersham, superior court, October term 1830, do make the following presentments to wit. The present as a serious grievance, improper conduct of some of our citizens on the frontier part of our country in oppressing the Indians by forgeries and other illegal measures, whereby, they have fraudulently deprived those unfortunate people of their rights, we earnestly recommend and enjoin it on every good citizen to use their best endeavors to bring to justice all persons who have or maybe found engaged in such dishonest practices.   This is signed by the members of the grand jury.  One of them is Mr. John Holcomb, Mr. Joseph England, Mr. Enoch Wood and Mr. Elijah England.”

Which also proves he says, that not all of the early settlers wanted to seize Cherokee land and force them to go to Oklahoma.  There were cases where settlers living in the area actually joined the Cherokee Nation at that time. 

Some small bands were hidden out by individual families in the mountains of north Georgia and the Carolina’s.  Because Natives were not allowed to buy or own land a portion of the money awarded to the Cherokees by the government was given to a trader, Colonel Will Thomas, to purchase land in North Carolina.

“As a white man he could do that, Indians could not.  He bought land with their money in North Carolina with the understanding that it was their land.   Later on, that land was transferred to the federal government to be held in trust. This group of Indians petitioned the government to be allowed to remain, because they said they had not been represented at the treaty session, where the treaty removal was signed, therefore, they weren’t bound by it.  And for some reason the government said o.k.  And that’s how the Eastern band of Cherokees got to stay.  See that is not a reservation there.  They bought and paid for that land. But it is held corporately as a tribe.”

Today, the Eastern band continues to buy plots of adjacent lands to expand their holdings.

White says he would like American history textbooks to accurately depict what really happened to the Cherokee Nation and all other Native lands.

“Yes there are a lot of books about Indian people and about Indian wars and things that would be appropriate for middle school, high schools to read but, what I’m saying that, in the classroom, the teachers who teach history, the textbooks for those classes, a lot of times, they don’t spend enough time, the Indian period, the pre-historic period, they historic period and they don’t tell what really happen on the removal.  I suppose it’s a part of our history that we don’t like and we would like to forget or at least that’s the case for some. More of the truth. Don’t try to gloss it over or ignore it. Just teach what happened.”

White says through proper education many will learn what really happened to early American Native civilizations, and it will go a long way in dispelling the myths and legends that have been passed down through the centuries as truth.

“I would like people to be more aware of the Indian heritage not only of this area but of the whole state and elsewhere in this nation.  We are not usually aware of the contributions of the Indian people to our culture, to our history and we don’t appreciate what they accomplished before the Europeans came. And I would like certainly for the people to realize what happen to Indian people. 

The Indian removal has been something that has not been talked about that much in our schools and it needs to be. We need to know what happened.”

For most  sustaining a quality of  life and a distinction among its people is at the very core of each tribe’s identity. And knowing what truly happened is exactly what Native American History is about.

It is the celebration of the richness of each heritage, family and home. It is also about allowing others to see and experience what is at the heart and soul of Native culture.