Cherokee Diet (2024)

FAQs

Cherokee Diet? ›

The tribal diet commonly consisted of foods that were either gathered, grown, or hunted. The three sisters – corn, beans, and squash – were grown. Wild greens, mushrooms, ramps, nuts, and berries were collected. Deer, bears, birds, native fish, squirrels, groundhogs, and rabbits were all hunted.

The Cherokee were prolific farmers and grew corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, sunflowers, and tobacco. They grew three different kinds of corn, one for roasting, one for boiling, and one for grinding into flour. They also gathered crabapples, berries, nuts, and other fruits. The Cherokee also hunted for game.

The earliest Cherokee fishers were skilled trappers. They constructed underwater raceways called stone weirs to collect and harvest the native sicklefin redhorse, brook trout, and other fish in large baskets. The dried and smoked meat was preserved as a winter food staple.

Visitors, citizens, and students are able to take guided tours learn about the traditional plants cultivated there, such as white eagle & flour corn, redroot, rivercane, Trail of Tears beans, jewelweed, potatoes, Cherokee dipper gourds, New Jersey tea, elderberry, and chinquapin trees.

Today, the Eastern Cherokee maintain traditions of music, storytelling, dance, foodways, carving, basket-making, headwork, pottery, blowgun-making, flint-knapping, and more. Their language, which was forbidden by the federal schools for more than half a century, is being revived in classrooms and the community.

Modern Cherokee Food

Cherokee people still eat the three sisters and grow a variety of vegetables and fruits. People also get together for hot dogs, hamburgers, BBQ, turkey, ham, steaks, fish, etc. One more modern, local favorite is shared by many people in the Qualla Boundary and beyond: it is called fry bread.

Some Cherokee favorites include cornmeal-dredged fried crawdads, wild onions cooked with eggs, fried hog meat, fried fish, brown beans, bean bread, greens such as kochani, poke sallet and watercress, and desserts such as grape dumplings and kanutsi.

Cherokee Nation citizen Jared Davis has been cooking hog meat for several years, having learned from elders and using that knowledge to cook the porcine delicacy. Traditionally, Cherokees would hunt feral hogs for the meat. Some still do today.

One of the strongest taboos common to the Navajo, Cherokee, and many other tribes involves interaction with dead human bodies. “Contact with dead human bodies means contact with evil…

Wild plants constituted the bulk of their diet during the summer months when vegetation was abundant, while hunted meat saw the people through the winters. Fruits and berries were particularly important foods that could be preserved by drying to bridge the hunger gap; huckleberries, serviceberries, wild strawberries, ...

What do Cherokee call God? ›

The Cherokees have only two names of God, one of which, (5 Cherokee letters) U-ne-la-nv-hi, signifies the Creator, and the other (6 Cherokee letters) Ga-lv-la-ti c-hi, he who dwells above.

We suggest that you interview your various family members, especially the more senior ones, so you can gather names, dates, places, and stories. With that information in hand, we suggest that you search the Dawes Final Rolls and the Blackfeet Agency Census for your Cherokee and Blackfeet lineage.

The Red-tailed Hawk is said to be a protector spirit of the Cherokees and is therefore considered sacred. Tail feathers were and are used ceremonially.

Members of this clan were known to be "keepers of the land," and gatherers. The wild potato was a staple of the traditional Cherokee diet back east.

A rich and creamy nut soup of Cherokee origin, kanuchi has few ingredients but a world of deep nutty flavor.

The essential staple foods of the Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands have traditionally been corn (also known as maize), beans, and squash, known as "The Three Sisters" because they were planted interdependently: the beans grew up the tall stalks of the corn, while the squash spread out at the base of the ...