Native American Cultures of Appalachia

Sarah Gripshover and Kelli Carmean

With over 10,000 years of occupation by Native American peoples and, more recently, Euro-American settlers, Appalachia has a deep cultural heritage. The history and cultural significance of Appalachia containing ancestral Native homelands began to be recorded in the region’s precontact archaeological record as well as in the early historic ethnographies of its Native peoples. The most well-known Native peoples around the time of European contact (see figure 1) include the Cayuga, Erie, Seneca, Mohawk, Oneida, Northern Iroquoian-speaking Onondaga, and Susquehannock, all in Northern Appalachia. To the east are the Algonquin-speaking Powatan, Delaware (now commonly called Leni Lenape), and Shawnee. The southern regions of Appalachia were the homelands of two different linguistic groups, the Southern Iroquoian-speaking Cherokee and Tuscarora as well as the Muskogean-speaking Catawba in the Carolinas and the Creek (now commonly called Muscogee) in Georgia and Alabama. To the west, in Kentucky, the most well-known early historic tribe was the Shawnee, who famously besieged Fort Boonesborough in September 1778.

In anthropology’s 19th-century infancy, Lewis H. Morgan theorized three stages of human cultural evolution (he called it “progress”), from savagery to barbarism to civilization, in his label accompanying the map of the Distribution of the Barbarous Tribes East of the Mississippi. Savagery was hunting and gathering (now called food foraging), barbarism was horticultural farming, and civilization was, of course, European society.^[1] Among the many problems with Morgan’s three stages is their Eurocentric value judgments. Clearly, the anthropological discipline has come a long way since Morgan’s time, even though general public perception about the primitiveness of precontact Native people has frequently persisted.

Figure 1. Distribution of contact period tribes and language groups east of the Mississippi. Courtesy of the Florida Center for Instructional Technology at University of South Florida. Map credit: Courtesy of the private collection of Roy Winkelman. Florida Center for Instructional Technology (http://fcit.usf.edu/florida/maps).

Of all the Indigenous groups of Appalachia, the Shawnee of the Northeast Culture Area and the Muscogee of the Southeast Culture Area best illustrate their regions, especially the cultural differences and similarities among Native Appalachian peoples. Like so many, both the Shawnee and the Muscogee were eventually forced off the land after a series of failed treaties with the U.S. government, culminating in the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Many removed and reduced tribes were successful in gaining federal and/or state recognition through formal petitions. Legal recognition in and of itself, however, is distinct from a more informal acknowledgment of Indigenous populations’ traditional presence and continuing regard for their ancestral homelands.

Archaeological Developments

The Arrival of Hunters and Foragers

Native peoples arrived in the Appalachian region during an era that archaeologists call the Paleoindian Period (about 12,000 BCE to 8000 BCE [or 10,000 to 14,000 years ago]).^[2] This initial settlement era occurred at the end of the last Ice Age and is typically characterized by small, highly mobile bands of foragers, hunters, and fishers.^[3] Fluted chipped stone projectile points dating to this era have been found throughout Southern Appalachia. Archaeologists have matched the chipped stone points to local mountain outcrops, signifying that the Paleoindian peoples knew their environment well and thus were likely longer-term inhabitants of Southern Appalachia, not simply occasional visitors or recent migrants.^[4] Projectile points and other tools manufactured from stone local to the valleys and lowlands of Southern Appalachia have also been found in the higher mountains, suggesting the Paleoindian peoples lived in settled base camps near stone sources with an array of upland hunting sites. Similar trends are indicated through the archaeological patterning in Northern Appalachia, the glaciated section of the Appalachian Plateau.^[5] Although a majority of these more northerly sites were in the lowlands, archaeologists have found Paleoindian artifacts in the higher mountains as well.

Foraging, hunting, and fishing remained the subsistence for the Native peoples of Appalachia throughout the Archaic Period (about 8000 BCE to 1000 BCE [or 3,000 to 10,000 years ago]).^[6] Uplands like those in the Great Smoky Mountains contain evidence of hunting, flintworking, butchering, hideworking, and woodworking along with home constructions in the lowlands.^[7] Archaic sites have also revealed new technological developments, such as grinding stones for processing plants near residential areas and net weights for fishing the rivers.^[8] These new technologies likely indicate that a shift in culture and foodways was underway. A particularly significant change is the shift away from intensive deer and elk hunting along with a shift from a more mobile uplands lifeway to one that increasingly relied on tending wild plants through intensive foraging and hunting smaller game such as turkey, rabbit, fox, squirrel, and fish, all of which focused more on lowlands. Such subsistence shifts correspond with decreasing mobility and a transition to more sedentary village lifeways in lowland valley locations. These foodways and settlement shifts were likely occurring in response to forest and broader environmental changes related to an increasingly warmer, more modern climate.

Development of Sedentary Village Farmers

Once cultivated plants grown in small gardens (horticulture) formed a significant portion of the Southern Appalachian diet, archaeologists define the Woodland Period (about 1000 BCE to CE 1000 [or 1,000 to 3,000 years ago])^[9] as having begun. Some Woodland-era crops are still cultivated today—such as gourds, squash, and sunflower, and a bit later, corn (or maize)—while others such as goosefoot, marsh elder, and may grass are no longer cultivated but lurk nearby as weeds today.^[10] Native farmers used slash-and-burn techniques to clear small forest openings near their villages to cultivate their gardens. Early ethnographies explain that in slash-and-burn horticulture, Native men commonly chop down larger trees, allow the felled trees to dry, and then burn them along with smaller brush to finish clearing the plot as well as to provide the soil with fertilizing ash.^[11] Cultivated by Native women, the cleared garden plots lasted for several growing seasons until the soil began to lose its fertility and yields began to decline. The women then cleared new plots so the old ones could be reclaimed by secondary forests that restored fertility to the soil. In this same era, pottery became an important new cooking and storage technology, and the appearance of bows and arrows—identified by the appearance of smaller chipped stone projectile points—signified the shift in hunting technology. Indeed, both pottery and arrow points are key archaeological identifiers of the Woodland Period.

Once corn became the staple crop in the Late Prehistoric Period (about CE 1000 to CE 1750 [or 250 to 3,000 years ago]),^[12] for the first time, there was a reliable means of subsistence that could be produced in small but significant quantities and stored in lined earthen pits or small granaries in villages. Indeed, by the Late Prehistoric Period, slash-and-burn horticulture had become so important that it actually pushed back the forest edge, providing more open habitat for game and encouraging wild edible plants to grow more abundantly near valley villages.^[13] The outcome was a decreased need to travel to distant hunting grounds in the Appalachian uplands, which meant that Native people became even more sedentary. In the Late Prehistoric Period, many town-dwellers and villagers also began erecting defensive palisades, as in many regions competition for river valley farmland had grown quite intensive and warfare had become common throughout the Southeast, in particular.

Overall, the slow, archaeologically visible transition from mobile foraging bands to sedentary agricultural societies provided a stable economic foundation for the further development of cultural traditions characteristic of well-known early historic tribes of the region, such as the Muscogee in the South and the Shawnee in the North and Midwest.

Anthropology and the Role of Cultural Ecology

Human cultures adapt to constant changes, large and small, in the social and physical environments they inhabit. Anthropologists and archaeologists study this adaptation using the concept of cultural ecology to understand and document the adaptive changes within a given society. Many adaptations may be relatively minor adjustments to environmental changes. Hunting in the Appalachian uplands while maintaining lowland valley base camps, for example, was a Paleoindian adaptation to rapid climatic change toward the end of the Ice Age.^[14] As the environment began to warm and dry, Northern Appalachian Paleoindian peoples utilized the upland and lowland terraces of the recently glaciated regions to remain close to glacial lakes and other water resources. Newer settlement patterns are reflected in artifact changes, including the development and elaboration of fishing technologies, such as hooks and net weights to capture newfound aquatic resources.^[15]

The development of horticulture signaled a significant change in the relationship between Native peoples and their forests. Not only were Native people adapting to environmental changes, but they were also contributing to its change. As noted, through slash-and-burn farming, Native people actively and deliberately altered their physical environment to better and more easily cultivate their crops, gather wild plants, and increase game nearby.

Anthropologists use cultural ecology to study human adaptations to social changes as well. The arrival of European travelers, colonists, and settlers significantly impacted Native peoples and cultures throughout the Americas, including Appalachia. Relations between Native peoples and European newcomers frequently began with friendly trade agreements that were mutually beneficial for both sides. Native peoples highly desired and actively sought European-manufactured goods—so actively that in some cases, Native people shifted the location of their villages for better access to European trade along the Ohio River, and in a reversal from an earlier trend, deer hunting once again intensified in order for Native people to obtain the hides required to barter for manufactured European goods.^[16]

Historically Known Tribes of the Region

Northern Appalachia: The Shawnee

The present-day Shawnee peoples comprise three separate, federally recognized tribes that live on reservations in Oklahoma and Kansas: the Absentee Shawnee Tribe, the Eastern Shawnee Tribe, and the Shawnee Tribe.^[17] Prior to settler expansion and Native removal, the Shawnee peoples (see figure 2) were spread broadly across the North and Midwest Appalachian regions, as well as the Ohio River Valley. During winter, they broke into small, mobile, dispersed bands to hunt animal populations in seasonal migration. In summer, the Shawnee lived in small or medium-sized wigwam villages, with women tending gardens of corn, beans, and squash and men hunting nearby game.^[18] Most of their winter hunting grounds and summer villages were spread throughout present-day Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia.^[19] Practicing mixed subsistence—a mix of foraging and farming, precontact Shawnee formed part of what anthropologists call the Northeast Culture Area. Like most Northeastern tribes, they spoke an Algonquian language. Social group membership through generations was, and still is, traced through the father’s clan in a pattern called patrilineal descent. Politically, the Shawnee were loosely split into five autonomous divisions. Each division had its own main town, led by a chief whose position was at least in part inherited. Each division was responsible for performing specific ceremonial duties for the other divisions.^[20] One division, for example, may have been responsible for political decisions and peacemaking for the tribe while others were responsible for religious rituals or for providing healers.

Figure 2. Collage of Shawnee people collected from various public domain sources. Shawnee Bill; Ah-La-Wa-Bi-A-Ci (Lizzie Pecan); F. A. Rogers; Pah-te-cóo-saw (Straight Man); Tecumseh; Ten-sqúat-a-way (The Open Door also known as The Prophet); Lay-láw-she-kaw (Goes Up the River); Wet-Ta-Ka (The One Who Comes also known as Charles Tucker or Ducker); and Lay-lóo-ah-pee-ái-shee-kaw (Grass or Bush or Blossom).

Southern Appalachia: The Muscogee

Presently located on their Oklahoma reservation, the Muscogee (see figure 3)^[21] were once central actors in a powerful political alliance known as the Muscogee Confederacy. Sometimes referred to as the Creek Confederacy, this alliance encompassed many Southern tribes who lived in river- and creek-side settlements in present-day Alabama and Georgia. Although the tribes maintained political autonomy and were often linguistically diverse, many were closely related culturally.^[22] Speakers of a Muskogean language, the Muscogee were sedentary village horticulturalists, growing great quantities of corn and beans in large communal fields near rivers to take advantage of the  fertile valley-bottom soils. Ethnographic sources show that some Muscogee villages were so large that some household compounds planted small family gardens beside their homes for ease of produce access, as in some cases their communal field was a significant distance from their rectangular wattle and daub homes. Like most members of the Southeast Culture Area, the Muskogee traced, and continue to trace, social group membership through the mother’s clan in a pattern called matrilineal descent. Political position among the Muscogee was inherited through an organization structure called chiefdoms, which was the dominant political structure for Southeastern peoples prior to European contact. During colonization by European settlers, various Muscogee tribes were divided less by their own political factions than by geographical area. British colonists labeled the tribes in the Southern Appalachian lowlands, with whom they had more contact, as the Lower Creeks and those Muscogee along the upland Appalachian rivers as the Upper Creeks.^[23]

Figure 3. Photo of Muscogee Nation citizens performing a traditional dance at the National Museum of the American Indian. CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en).

The Colonial Era

The “discovery” and subsequent colonization of North America by Europeans brought many new infectious diseases as well as increasing conflicts over land. Tribes were routinely disrupted and then displaced—first by fur trappers, then by settlers—and forced to try to find new lands in unoccupied territory, which by the Colonial Period (the years following CE 1750) was scarce, as the Native population was dense, particularly in Southern Appalachia. Displacements met with great resistance. Tribes such as the Shawnee and the Cherokee confronted colonists who continually entered their territory to poach game and take land, and some even launched formal complaints with colonial officials and the superintendents of Indian Affairs.^[24] Despite such Native protests against trespassing to steal the land and wild animals, little was done to prevent colonists from traveling westward into Appalachia and beyond it in search of deer and other game.^[25]

Interaction between colonists and Native Americans was not always volatile. Some European colonists sought to establish and maintain friendly trade relations with tribes. The Muscogee Confederacy in Southern Appalachia, for example, began to trade deerskin for European goods in the 18th century. The Muscogee provided colonists with deerskin and other animal hides in exchange for woolens, cloth, metal tools, and other European goods that had quickly become integrated into their lives.^[26] Despite such friendly trade relations between colonists and tribes, the business of the fur trade had negative consequences for the tribes that participated, especially in the long term. The high demand for fur pelts and other animal hides caused Native peoples to hunt many species close to extinction in the drive to maintain favorable trade relations with the colonists. That drive frequently generated conflict among Native American tribes, particularly the Shawnee, as they competed against other Shawnee villages as well as other Native peoples for control of the hunting grounds that were needed to generate enough fur and hides to develop and preserve rival trade relationships with colonists.^[27]

Royal Proclamation Line of 1763

Shortly after the Seven Years’ War (fought between France and England from 1756 to 1763), England’s King George III issued the Royal Proclamation Line of 1763 (see figure 4). While the proclamation established borders for the new territories gained by the British, more significantly for Native people, it established a line to halt the expansion of western colonies, whereby colonists were prohibited from buying or selling land in or west of the Appalachian Mountains. The proclamation states, “We do further declare it [. . .] for the use of the said Indians, all the Lands and Territories not included within the Limits of Our said Three new Governments, [. . .] And We do hereby strictly forbid [. . .] all our loving Subjects from making any Purchases or Settlements whatever, or taking Possession of any of the Lands above reserved. Further, the Proclamation declares the government and militias within the colonies will enforce this new border ‘to remove all reasonable Cause of Discontent’” among the Native populations.^[28] Intended to alleviate the very real, constant threat of colonial incursions into Native American lands, the establishment of the Royal Proclamation Line of 1763 angered colonists mightily and contributed to several acts of rebellion, all of which eventually culminated in the American Revolution.

Figure 4. Map showing, in red, the Royal Proclamation Line of 1763. East of the line are the British colonies. Lands west of the line were reserved for Native peoples and were not to be crossed by colonists. The American Revolution served to erase this line. http://americanrevolutionpartnership.pbworks.com/w/page/46830946/Proclamation%20of%201763.

The American Revolution and Westward Expansion

In the early years of the Revolutionary War, most Native American tribes sought neutrality. As the war continued, however, due to their diverse colonial experiences, different tribes in different regions formed differing alliances with the combatants: “Some [. . .] were loyal allies of the British, others enlisted in the Continental Army, while still others stood neutral or switched sides as circumstances dictated.”^[29] The differing tribal decisions led to altered relationships with colonial and patriot powers, with other tribes, and even with competing factions within a tribe. Previously allied tribes developed strained relationships, and other tribes divided permanently into factions after establishing loyalty to one side or the other.

Following the war’s conclusion in 1783, the people of the new nation—Americans—no longer had to follow England’s laws, policies, and prohibitions, including those of the Royal Proclamation Line. This—coupled with manifest destiny, the worldview assuring settlers that God intended the United States to span the continent from Atlantic to Pacific—paved the way for remarkably rapid westward expansion. Not surprisingly, expansion was met with resistance. In the Ohio Valley, for example, the 1791 Battle of the Wabash saw a coalition of Native American tribes roundly defeat the United States Army.^[30] Despite such major military successes, in the long run, Native peoples were not victorious and were soon removed from their homelands through federal legislative action even as their artifacts, names, and symbols were appropriated by the incoming American settlers.^[31]

Indian Removal and the Trail of Tears

The Indian Removal Act, signed into law by President Andrew Jackson in 1830, made the forcible removal of Native peoples from their ancestral homelands legal.^[32] Removal nullified previous treaties between the United States and Native American tribes, setting the stage for the establishment of new treaties that would entail the removal of tribes from their ancestral homelands.^[33] The enforcement of the Indian Removal Act and these new treaties resulted in the Trail of Tears, an over 900-mile journey that forced Cherokee off their territories in the uplands and valley lowlands of the Appalachian Mountains toward new, government-mandated land in Oklahoma.^[34] After being removed from their villages, the Cherokee were kept in internment camps for long periods before they were forcibly marched across the country, during which some four thousand died of dehydration or disease.^[35]

The Era of Treaties

Numerous treaties were negotiated between representatives of the United States and Native American tribes. For the U.S. government, a main treaty-making objective was the acquisition of land, primarily farmland, for the burgeoning push of immigrants from Europe. For the tribes, a main treaty-making objective was the establishment of reservations in their homelands and the preservation of traditional use rights such as hunting, fishing, and gathering on the lands they ceded. Few of those early treaties were respected or followed. The Shawnee of Northern Appalachia, for example, signed many treaties. First, an 1817 treaty granted the Shawnee who had not thus far been displaced from their Appalachian homeland three reservations in Ohio. Second, following the Removal Act, a treaty with the Shawnee that had remained in Ohio moved them to an established Shawnee reservation in Kansas. Third, an 1854 treaty significantly reduced the size of that Kansas reservation, forcing the Ohio Shawnee on the reservation to move to a reservation in Oklahoma.^[36]

In Southern Appalachia, a similar series of treaties continued the gradual cession of ever-greater amounts of Muscogee land to the United States. Initially, a series of treaties limited the Muscogee to certain rivers in Alabama and allowed the federal government to construct a horse path through Muscogee territory.^[37] Loss of territory, a federal horse path, and other compromises made by the Muscogee Confederacy during negotiations caused considerable internal division within the Confederacy, the more traditional segments of which opposed the terms of these new treaties. Disagreements developed into civil war between the Lower and Upper Muscogee tribes, but despite this internal conflict, the Confederacy as a whole continued to negotiate and sign treaties with the U.S. government, surrendering over twenty million acres of land in 1814 alone.^[38] Following yet more treaties between the Muscogee and the United States, the Muscogee ceded all of its Southern Appalachia homelands and was forced, like so many other eastern Native American tribes, to move to “Indian Territory” in what later became the state of Oklahoma.

State and Federal Recognition

As of 2023, there are 577 federally recognized American Indian and Alaska Native tribes in the United States.^[39] In order to become a federally recognized tribe and to receive the rights thereof, there must be an act from Congress, a decision for federal recognition from a court, or a submission of a formal petition by members of a tribe to the Office of Federal Acknowledgment (OFA) within the Office of Indian Affairs of the Department of the Interior. The OFA then makes recommendations to the assistant secretary of Indian Affairs, who “has the authority to make the decision whether to acknowledge tribal existence and establish a government-to-government relationship, or to deny acknowledging a petitioning group as an Indian tribe.”^[40] The OFA provides a list of necessary documents that must be included in a petition for federal recognition. Primary among these documents is historical evidence supporting a tribe’s continuous existence since 1900 and an official membership list.^[41] The three Shawnee tribes are federally recognized with their reservations in Oklahoma; while there are Shawnee that remained in Ohio despite treaties and removals, they are not recognized at the federal level in Ohio but are instead recognized at the state level as the United Remnant Band of the Shawnee Nation.^[42] The Muscogee are federally recognized on their Oklahoma reservation as the Muscogee Nation.

Like federally recognized tribes, tribes can be formally recognized by state governments, also following a petition process. However, state-recognized tribes do not enjoy the same rights as those who are federally recognized; primary of them is a government-to-government relationship with the U.S., which is a statement of Native sovereignty.^[43] Some states do “acknowledge the historical and cultural contribution of tribes,” but only sixteen have legal petition processes to recognize tribes, including Alabama and Georgia, both of whom recognize the Muscogee Creek Tribes.^[44]

Land Acknowledgments

Although the Shawnee, the Muscogee, and other Appalachian tribes may be recognized on federal and state levels, the reservations on which they currently reside are largely government-chosen and thus in most cases are not their ancestral homelands. Indeed, their true homelands, subsequently and still populated by settler societies, are usually significantly altered such that their present-day occupants may fail to grasp that the land on which they reside was once a Native homeland. When tribal citizens of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma are hiking North Carolina’s Appalachian Trail, for example, they understand the ground they tread as Cherokee land, but most know it as Nantahala National Park.^[45]

To resolve the issue of ignorance regarding the homelands of their nation’s first inhabitants, many countries have or are composing land acknowledgments—formal statements that recognize an area as the ancestral homeland of a named Indigenous people. Such land acknowledgments are also meant to help all residents recognize “the unique and enduring relationship that exists between Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories.”^[46] In Canada, land acknowledgment statements are now read before most public events: school, hockey games, public meetings, and other celebrations. Public events in Australia also frequently recognize the traditional land where they are held, sometimes even inviting an Aboriginal elder to make a “Welcome to Country” statement, which serves the added element that descendant people have endured.^[47] In the United States, several states, cities, and even colleges or other private organizations have begun to develop land acknowledgment statements in order to recognize the Native American peoples that once resided in the area. Even at its most basic level, land acknowledgment recognizes that one is on land that once belonged to Indigenous people, and this basic recognition represents the first step in not allowing these histories to be forgotten.^[48]

This example of a land acknowledgment is written by two Emory University faculty whose stated intention is that it be temporary until a more formal acknowledgment can be written in consultation with others, including descendant Muscogee people: “Emory University is located on Muscogee (Creek) land. Emory University was founded in 1836, during a period of sustained oppression, land dispossession, and forced removals of Muscogee (Creek) and Ani’yunwi’ya (Cherokee) peoples from Georgia and the Southeast.”^[49]

Berea College in Berea, Kentucky, has created the following:

We invite you to join us in acknowledging that the Berea College Forest is located on the traditional territories of the sovereign Shawnee and the Cherokee nations. Both nations hold these mountains in care and tradition. Tribes are often involved in work to protect land that many have been forcibly driven from. The harms inflicted by the separation and removal of Indigenous People from these ancestral lands run deep. The erasure of their language and stories further rewrites the narratives we tell about these lands and waterways to keep them conveniently open, and this only deepens wounds for Indigenous communities. Please take a moment to reflect on this beautiful land, to honor and show gratitude towards its original caretakers—the Shawnee and the Cherokee. We hope that you, too, will become a caretaker of this land.^[50]

A shorter example for the entire Commonwealth of Kentucky reads, “Indigenous peoples have always lived on the land that is now called Kentucky and continue to live here today. The place we now call Kentucky is primarily Shawnee, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Osage land.”^[51] Acknowledgments such as this one are important in recognizing an area as a former territory and homeland of a named Native American tribe, many of whom were displaced and forced onto reservations often in the West. Distinct from legal, federal, or state recognition of a tribe, which defines government-to-government relationships between tribes and the United States, land acknowledgments also recognize tribes’ continuing regard for their homelands, regardless of the historical fact that they no longer reside on them.

Conclusion

Appalachia was once the home of people who foraged, hunted, and farmed the region’s many mountains and abundant valley lowlands over the course of more than ten thousand years. At European contact, many Native people still lived here—hunting, foraging, and farming—and did not willingly give up these beautiful mountains and valley lowlands. They fought mightily to retain their lands but found themselves confronted by forces far more powerful than they had the ability to control. Treaties and removals set in motion a long series of hardships of many kinds, but throughout it all, they endured, never forgetting their Appalachian homelands.

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