One detail that stood out to me that was part of both the Cherokee creation story and the Hopi origin story, and involved there being different sections of the world, or of space. In the Cherokee creation story, this was described as an above world of balance, and a lower world of chaos, and the creation of a middle world that I believe was a combination of both. In the Hopi creation story, they mention finding a “center place.” I thought the way these similar story aspects come up in various cultures was super interesting, and made me want to know more about communication across the map and interactions between different groups of people.
I think there are many reasons why listening to these stories is important, especially as opposed to not only reading them but reading about them. I almost think there’s a level of respect that absorbing a story in the way it was originally intended provides—it feels more accurate to the content of the stories, which I’m sure were often evolving and changing between families and through generations of being told. I also think hearing the stories in their original language is valuable, such was the case with the Hopi origin story.
Using the Perdue source, Cherokee Women, I think one way the structures of Indigenous communities (Cherokee communities, in particular) shaped their resiliency, sustainability, and cultural vibrancy relates to gender and responsibility—that is, the division of duties between men and women, and how no gender necessarily “worked harder” than another. The difference in power between genders did not seem nearly as prominent or troublesome in Cherokee societies as it did in European settler societies. I feel like the division of labor—with men commanding the hunt and women controlling agriculture, both helping each other out in various smaller ways—promoted a certain level of efficiency that was beneficial to Cherokee society.
I also certainly don’t think we should take all the quotes and observations presented in the book at face value including the ones about how women may have felt about their variety of duties. A lot of observations from Europeans especially compared the work to being “slavish,” and seemed to be operating from a general opinion that women should not be doing the kind of work they observed women doing in Cherokee communities, which is an opinion rooted in a lot of societal differences and misunderstanding.
Hi Tove!
These are such important details that are key for understanding these stories and their messages. The concept of different spheres of spiritual worlds as layers above and below was so interesting. I think the Lakota emergence story would also fit into this conversation, although it was a little more ambiguous. There was definitely a spiritual world that interacted with Earth– and I liked how the story centered on the passageway of the Wind Cave as a bridge between the two. When thinking about all three stories, I was also struck by the fluidity between the different worlds– something that seemed to “harden” or became more difficult to do with the peopling of Earth/the Middle World.
On the reading, I completely agree– the sense of order and responsibility structured through gender was critical to the continuity (and survival) of the Cherokee. It came with a lot of nuance, that was very different from the way that Europeans conceptualized gender. I wish we had the chance to read the rest of the book, because it does an excellent job walking through how colonial empires targeted Cherokee gender structures as a tactic to dismantle the community. Despite these efforts, women in Cherokee society led the resiliency of the entire community.