Cherokee Tribes
A NEW PLOW IN OLD GROUND: CHEROKEES, WHITES, AND LAND IN WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA, 1819-1829
by WILLIAM MARTIN JURGELSKI
(Under the Direction of THEODORE L. GRAGSON)
coweeta.uga.edu/publications/2004_jurgelski_uga.pdf
Native American YHWH-Beautiful Video
The Pilgrimage Of Sequoyah To Find The People Of The Ancient Cherokee Church Of One God
http://www.theancientcherokeechurchoftheonegodyohewaah.org/
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The Great Sequoya, was a great educator, for it was he alone who created a syllabary, that allowed his people to become literate within a year. The original syllabary was changed so that, existing print types, could be substituted and used in a printing press, these original characters of the syllabary, that Sequoya would collect off of pottery pieces and ancient religious stone artifacts, are linked to the early Cherokee religion, in that they are also found, and the writings of the people who came, from the saltwater from the East.
Sequoyah’s exodus was to find the beginnings of the ancient Cherokee Church of One God. He had become world-famous for being the only person in human history who had invented a type of syllabary–using one symbol for several letters, reflecting syllable sounds. That enabled any Cherokee person to very quickly learn how to write and read in their language, taking only a matter of a few months to achieve what was considered impossible by the educated of the world that time: that Native Americans could without help evolve and create literacy. Sequoyah, who had been born in Tennessee, was living, after the trail of tears, in Oklahoma- far from where he was born, and far from the area where those Cherokees had lived who had spoken the ancient Hebrew in their religion. Those ancient Cherokees had mysteriously disappeared; altogether, all 5,000 Cherokees left, taking with them the secrets of what had made the Cherokee people so great, what had made them an American power in earlier times. Sequoyah had heard the stories of the old ones, of elders telling of a priest war in which the Anikutani (you of the gates of peace, we follow), the priest families, had been almost completely extinguished. After having been in the position of the highest power for almost 2,000 years, some of these priests had forgotten the teachings of Yo hee wah, (the oldest written or spoken name for the one God of Creation), and these priests had abused their position of power. Because of this abuse of power, the vast majority of those priests were assassinated or expelled. Then, in the middle and northern areas, new religions began to be introduced– religions with many gods, usually in animal form, which had come in with new immigrants. These new religions embraced magic in which they believed and involved in every level of their religions and in their life styles. This uprising against the Cherokee priests did not take place in the South Carolina, Georgia and most of Tennessee areas, where the Cherokees spoke the ancient Hebrew Cherokee words that had an R in them.
Sequoyah had a lifetime pension and a house provided, with land and a salt spring which brought him additional money. But he had spent a lifetime seeing many of the ancient Cherokee artifacts and hearing the ancient stories retold by the elders who still practiced this early religion which came directly from God. They told that the ancestors of the Cherokee had been the first people chosen to hear this first word of God, directly from God, who had told them that he was the Yo hee wah, the One God who had created all things. This direct contact took place before God had revealed his presence to human beings, yet they knew of God’s presence, as did all other forms of living things. God’s presence was even perceived by the plants, as they were a part of creation itself; in fact, all of life knew of God’s presence by the evidence of the miracles of creation with its sun, moon, and stars, and the miracle of almost uncountable life. Sequoyah was eager to find those Cherokee who had the ability to know what was desired by Yo hee wah of the way human beings should live their life, the way that would be correct in the eyes and heart of Yo hee wah, the one God of creation.
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This is a photo of the ambassadors, who journeyed to Saltillo Coahuila Mexico in 2000, and renewed the very old relationship, as the Cherokees have been recognized in Mexico since 1821, the church in the background is a European type church and arrived in Mexico, in the 1500s, this is 2000 years later, then we received the word of Yo hee wah, the one God who created all things.
So Sequoyah decided to leave the United States to go back to the Cherokees who called themselves the principal people; his plan was to follow the group of the Cherokees who practiced the teachings of this most ancient religion of the One God. Sequoyah was determined to find their first home in the Americas. He had heard of this place in the ancient stories; he knew that it was in a valley that was located up high, in the valley of the mountains of the moon, and that this valley was named for the people, the Cha la’n gee, (which in english is Laman, and in ancient Hebrew is Lam an’, meaning “a Shepherd of God. Originally the principle people were Identified as being of the followers of La’n, as being the Cha La’n Gee, after His family and it teachings, they had received from the the one God of all Things, YO HE WAH,and had been passed down from Cha La’n Gee to Cha La’n Gee, priest The principle people, became to outsiders, as Cha Ra Gee, meaning the people who are Shepherd, by God. The “Ra ” was documented in the early colonial days, who ruled this mountain valley, which was an Alpine rain forest. It was the Cha la’n gee who called themselves the principal people, which also means the chosen people, and who had brought the word of God to all of the Native Americans from across the big water, from the land where Yo hee wah the One God first spoke to people. Cherokees, or any other person who chooses to follow the teachings of the One God, knew that it was taught to and expected of that person to go to water daily to be clean, and to thank the one God who created all things for the gift of water which is the gift of life. Sequoyah had heard the ancient stories of the first church of the One God, in this land of the Americas which was called Ka tu wa, and it was up on the mountain above this high valley where, when the Cha la’n gee went to water, the springs, creeks and rivers of this valley were not too hot nor too cold. These ancient Cherokee made their homes and churches in the protective caves of the high valley, which was a practice of the principal people, or the chosen people, in the most ancient of their times, especially in times of danger or transition to a new unknown land. The protective caves of the high valley were plentiful, as was the abundance of clean ama (water). Thus, Sequoyah set out to be back with the people of the Valley of the Mountains of the Moon, the people from whom he had originally descended. Sequoyah then left his forced residence in the Indian territory of Oklahoma, living in the zone of the Cherokee Immigrant Council, and went looking for his lost Cherokee, who had chosen over 100 years earlier to leave the United States and go back to this first homeland in the Americas
Sequoyah knew that earlier, in 1720, there had been an exodus of twenty-five percent of the Cherokee tribe that practiced the teachings of the Ancient Cherokee Church of One God. These ancient principle people of the God of Yo hee wah together left South Carolina and Georgia in one group, approximately 5,000 persons. These were the R speakers of the Cherokee language, speakers of the language that had words with the R sound. These Cherokees were the faithful of the ancient Cherokee religion of One God, who they knew as Yo hee wah, and it was these Cherokees whose language contained the R sound necessary when pronouncing Hebrew words, as Hebrew is the language of the first five books of the Hebrew and Christian Bible. These principal or chosen people were the people who practiced the ancient Cherokee religion of the One God, Yo hee wah, the God of Creation, as they were what had survived from a lost tribe of Israel, that had come to the Americas in the exodus of 600 BC. The 1720 exodus of Cherokee principal people excluded many families who had elders, who could not travel, and who did not want to split up their families, so many of the principal people stayed where they were.
After the 1720 exodus, an Englishman named Adair was to write about studying the Cherokee for over 30 years; he witnessed, as he lived among the Cherokee, these religious practices and he wrote hundreds of pages listing the Hebrew words and their usage in worship and in the Cherokee culture. After decades of observation, he published his work. Even though thousands of principal people who practiced this ancient religion had already left for their homeland before Adair, he witnessed hundreds and hundreds of Cherokee men and women worshiping with the guidance of a priest in the Hebrew language which called the God of Creation “Yo hee wah”. This word is the original word of the Hebrew God of Creation; the modern word used within the Jewish faith is Yo he vah, but in the ancient Hebrew of 600 BC, it was the same for the ancient Jewish religion as that which Cherokees used in the 1600s through 1825. That same word for God was Yo hee wah, the original and oldest name for the God of Creation.
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Pictured is” The prophecy child” Charles Rogers, with a welcoming committee while waiting, for the Governors of seven different states, to arrive.
The Cherokees’ only migration legend is that we came from the East to the West, to the Americas, because we had decided to reject anything which was not true from what we had chosen to worship. Such rejection of things untrue was necessary in order to preserve the truth of the ancient religion of the one God Yo hee wah, the God of Creation. In order to protect our religion, we would have to leave the land of our birth, where Yo hee wah had given our ancestors their first instructions and teachings. Later, our home in the Holy Land was invaded by a foreign people with intolerable superstitions, causing our ancestors to exodus to find a safer homeland. We began to travel by land to the West; we traveled a great distance (in order to understand what is meant by a great distance, one should know that it was not unusual for Cherokee young men to walk 800 to 1,000 miles in a couple of years, as a form of education. So, in the migration myth a long, great distance is thousands of miles). Then, the myth continues, we traveled for a long time until we came to the big waters of the body of the long man (ocean); we built rafts and launched out onto the great waters, for God’s Great Spirit Yo was upon these waters and told our souls that this was the good direction, and that the currents of the long man would take us to our new home. The spirit of Yo hee wah spoke to us, and even though fearful, as we had no human knowledge of what dangers lay ahead, we were brave enough to go into the unknown because we had faith enough because we had the knowledge of and from the Great Spirit of Yo hee wah. At last the currents of the long man brought us to an island in the South which was unoccupied; he gave us this refuge and the safety to learn how to sustain ourselves in this new world.
In time, a war-loving tribe of Native American people came to the island in boats fashioned from large trees that had been hollowed out on the top side. These people who moved through the water swiftly came onto the island and tried to drive us out, without boats or food to be taken with us. As that would destroy our people, we refused and they attacked us; both peoples fought to a standstill. Then the lost tribe of Israel made boats and picked fruit and prepared to leave the island and continue on our exodus to the West where the sun sets. Soon we came to the mainland, in that part of the country which is now called Panama, and landed where the two sides of the body of the long man (oceans) are the closest together. It was there that the lost tribe came in contact with Native Americans who were very civilized.
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Priest Charles Jaht-lo-hi, Rogers greets, the church members as they gather to sing at the Hot Springs, were Sequoya would come every day to heal himself, as he suffered from tuberculosis, to hear the morning song, sung in the cold crisp air with steam rising in all directions, is a rich experience.
A descendant of Ephraim named Lehi had a vision of God much as Moses experienced. His tribe was part of Israel’s Northern Kingdom of Israel which had left “en masse,” having been captured by the Assyrians — and any still righteous Hebrews who kept The Law Of Moses had since moved to Judea, the Northern Kingdom or “Ephraim” (the Ten Northern Tribes) having previously fallen into idol worship.
King Rehoboam’s made a disasterous mistake of overtaxing the Northern 10 “House of Israel” tribes, which had previously been united with the Hose of Judah by King David. The 10 tribes “House of Israel” were dominated by Joseph of Egypt’s descendants of Ephraim in the north, and were usually simply referred to as Ephraim, even though ther was a tribe of Ephraim, but the House of Israel was 10 1/2 tribes, one half of Mannasseh having opted out of entering The Promised Land. The House of Israel was in the mountainous north in what is condidered today as “The West Bank” or Samaria, is where the modern State of Israel’s water supply is located — and also its prophesied future “treasures of the deep” or rich oil deposits were prophesied to be located in he future, and are being currently being located by the Texas based “Zions Oil and Gas” as this article is being written in 2012/13. Even though the Sons of Jacob/Israel reconciled their former hatreds after being reunited with their powerful brother Joseph, Viceroy of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh during a region-wide famine, their descendants later unwisely carried on the former enmity that had existed between their ancestors. God seemed has a pattern of placing the younger brother in charge of the older brothers. He did so with Joseph over his brothers, and with Ephraim over his older brother Manasseh and with Nephi over hos brothers Laman and Lemuelt. He may also do so in he future, so remember this… the prophecy of “My work, My strange work.”
After the death of wise King Solomon, his successor son unwisely heavily taxed the Northern 10 Tribes or The House of Israel, more than he taxed his own Southern tribes, and as the Holy Bible recounts, a great division occurred, and two separate kingdoms were formed, undoing the work that King David had fought so hard to accomplish. Ever since that time, righteous Jews have prayed several times a day that the two parts of the “family” would be reunited someday. Serious efforts have been and are underway in Israel since the 1970s to explore, discover and return these lost “Remnants Of Jacob” back inside the borders of The State of Israel, and this is indeed happening, but not without some political friction. As was prophesied, the first tribe to return was the Tribe of Manasseh, who have settled on The West Bank. In the 1970s, Rabbis discovered Pashtun and other tribesmen in Afghanistan wearing Star of David broaches securing their cloaks on their bodies, and upon querying these tribesmen as to the possible location of any ancient scrolls, the rabbis were led to a small building with an ancient lock. Much to the horror of the Afghans present, the door was kicked down and an ancient Torah Scroll was discovered. Many of these Afghan people converted to Islam long ago, and are today known as “terrorists.” No nation has ever conquered Afghanistan, though many (such as the British in the 1800s and the Russians in 1985 who limped home badly bloodied) have tried, and the United States is currently retreating as this article is being written. All nations who have made the attempt to conquer Afghanistan were left with thousands of dead, wounded, traumatized and disabled-for-life veterans to care for. The technology to look deep into the earth to located mineral deposits has existed since the 1980s, and it was announced not long ago that Afghanistan has the world’s largest deposits of Lithium, from which the finest batteries are manufactured. Perhaps that is the “National interest” the USA has there?
The people chosen by God to emigrate to Joseph’s Promised Land in The Americas were a family of priests from the priesthood line of Joseph of Egypt and also of the Egyptian priesthood line on On, their female ancestor being Asenath, daughter of the High Priest of On, who married “Zephanath-paneah,” aka “Joseph of Egypt” who had been sold into slavery by his older brothers, and later, because of his spiritual gift (shared by Cherokees) of the interpretation of dreams, miraculously rose from being a slave to a man in Pharaoh’s government, to become viceroy of Egypt. Genesis 45:41 “And Pharaoh called Joseph‘s name Zaphenath-paneah; and gave him Asenath the daughter of Potiphera priest of On for a woman; and Joseph went out over the land …”
Joseph and Asenath’s two sons dark-skinned sons were named Manasseh and Ephraim, and their descendants later became known as “The House of Joseph” and/or “The House of Israel,” and are sometimes simply referred to by the Rabbis as “Ephraim” but are in actuality are the 10 1/2 tribes, who later became known as “The 10 Lost Tribes.” The actual whereabouts of these “lost” tribes has never been a mystery to the priestly class of the descendants of The House of Judah (a/k/a The Jews) and to this very day their priests have detailed accounts of the migrations of The Northern Kingdom, and have prayed for centuries for their prophesied return. One conversion-to-Judaism manual clearly states that the Founders of The State of Israel (David Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, et al) knew they had absolutely NO right to use the name of “Israel,” but they did so regardless, in hopes the Israel which had left 2730 years befroe October 2008, would someday return to its possessions on the so-called “West Bank” of the Jordan River, the mountainous region of what is known “Samaria.” The Holy Bible recounts that the Samaritans had darker skin than the Jews, and they were looked down upon in some circles of Jews (even called “dogs”) for speaking a slightly different form of Hebrew after they returned from their Exodus from 400 years of captivity under a cruel “Pharaoh who knew not Joseph” in Egypt.
God revealed to the Prophet Ezekiel that both kingdoms would be in a exact years would be carried off away from The Land of Israel into exile, and gave a timetable for their return. The Jews returned from Babylon the exact year as was required by God and began to rebuild The Holy Temple, but the Ten “Lost” Tribes did not return on schedule in 390 years, and so a “decree” made against them sprang into effect that they must return in 7 x 390 or 2730 years (or by October of 2008, when coincidentally(?) the current Great Recession occurred, possibly signaling the End of The Times of The Gentiles.
This prophecy of The Return of The House of Israel has been fulfilled by a few “Baal Teshuvah,” literally a “Master of Return,” the term used to identify someone who has newly taken on or has returned to Hebrew or Abrahamic identity and covenantal status, but 100s of millions of Joseph’s descendants live all over the planet mostly along coastlines. Our Cherokee Nation of Mexico’s noted author Carol Shoemaker is just such a person, and many more in our tribe are Noachites, known anciently as “God Fearers,” who were anciently allowed residency in Ancient Israel, and access The Court of The Gentiles around The Holy Temple, or known as B’nai Noach, or “Sons of Noah,” Keepers of The Seven Laws of Noah, a pre- Sinai “Rainbow covenant” still in full effect, and given special recognition by Joint Resolution of United States Congress in 1990. Noachites today are allowed residency in The State of Israel if they do exactly what people wishing to be adopted into the Cherokee AniKilohi priestly or “Stranger” Clan must do.
According to The 1830 “Palmyra Manuscript” Book of Mormon (available today only as The Book of Mormon: Restored Covenant Edition) God Himself raised, educated and organized a small colony of two allied families from the lineage of Ephraim and Manasseh, provided them with the official recorded of The Holy Temple, Brass Plates upon which was written the Law of Moses and other records of The Holy Temple at Jerusalem — along with The Breastplate and Ephod (a device worn by Hebrew Priests to communicate with God through twelve different colored stones) and the Urim and Thummim (Two stones in Silver Bows or “interpreters”) and The Sword of Laban, the former caretaker of those records. who resisted Gods commands to turn over those records.
God taught the “Lehi Colony” how to build ships in a manner that would withstand the cross Atlantic voyage. God provided them with the “Liahona”… a compass-like “director” that showed the way to The Land Promised to Joseph — just as long as the allied families remained united and prayerful.
The Hopi today still possess (closely safeguarded in a drawer in a kiva) the self luminous stones mentioned in The Book of Mormon that were provided to the Jaredites, a migration from the time of the confusion of tongues at the tie of the building The Tower of Babel, which was restored by Saddam Hussein, and was captured by U.S. Troops. The History Channel recently aired footage of this military base, showing a man weighing almost 350 pounds dressed in a US Uniform with no identifying patches, obviously a covert American civilian employee.
Before the Lehi Colony left Israel they obtained The Brass Plates of Laban, caretaker of records of The Jerusalem Temple, upon which was written The Law of Moses. The ancient Cherokee Oukah (High Priest) primary priestly task was to visit each town annually, wearing white and being born on a sedan chair so his feet never touched the ground. He lived only in a stone house — just as proscribed by Moses for the ancient Hebrew priests so they would not come into contact with and become “corpse contaminated.”
The Cherokee possessed an Ark, guarded 24 hours a day by warriors with BRONZE arrowheads, the only such arrows in the Cherokee Nation. Europeans eventually learned of The Cherokee Ark and its metal plates , and Mormonism’s Joseph Smith Jr. came looking for it when the Mormons lived at what is now Independence, Missouri, and the Cherokee lived in southern Missouri and Northwest Arkansas.
The Cherokee possessed The Ark until about 1783 when our First Beloved Man Savanooka (Saunooke) was its last known caretaker, until he perished in warfare in alliance with Britain after following Dragging Canoe to war against “The Thirteen Fires” in 1776. During the time frame of The American Revolution, the Cherokee Ark is said to have been stolen by the Lenni Lenape (Delaware Indian who the Cherokee called “The Grandfathers”) and is rumored to have been taken north into Canada. Prophecy holds that when and if and when The Cherokee Ark is returned south of the USA/Canada border, there will be many upheavals and changes… perhaps of an apocalyptic nature. Our elders and seers warn that we have only a few years left, perhaps only three (until 2016), to prepare.
Before the departure of The Lehi Colony from Jerusalem and arrival in The Americas know to them as The Land Promised to Joseph of Egypt, the patriarchal leader, named Lehi, eventually forbade intermarriage between his son Nephi’s descendants the Nephites, and the “Lamanites” who were descendants of his sons Laman and Lemuel. Before they departed from their base near Israel, probably on the Arabian Peninsula, they had questioned the veracity of Nephi’s visions and his authority, their younger brother, over them, and so according to The Book of Mormon Laman and Lemuel were visited by an angel who reproved them, and sent an electic like shock through their bodies, and so they repented — for a while. Later, after the entire colony arrived in The Americas, they once again disagreed with their brother Nephi, moved away into the forest, but remained nearby — both factions building many generations of their own descendants and becoming a mighty nations numbering into the hundreds of thousands and perhaps even millions. They were hidden in what is now upstate New York State in a land no other humans had ever possessed, and where The 6 Nations Iroquois have lived since time immemorial, and were visited by a Lawgiver known as The Peacemaker around 1000 years ago, dating by todays astronomers according to a certain solar eclipse associated with the Peacemakers coming, now know to have occurred at an exact certain time. The Peacemaker;s name was Deganawidah, which according to the Canadian Parliament’s website meant “Double Row of Teeth” a physical trait shared by the the Gibborim, the first regiment of two regiments of King David’s bodyguard… David’s Mighty Warriors (also known as David’s Mighty Men or the Gibborim, descendants of the “Mighty Men of Renown” of Genesis 6:4.
A skulls with a double row of teeth were discovered near Kanab, Utah in the early 1960s by Robert “Three Eagles” Shrewsbury, and Maternal Lenape / Paternal Keetoowah descendant, who was the named (but later politically usurped) successor to Chief Sam Grey Wolf of The United Eastern Lenape Confederacy. Chief Robert “Three Eagles” Shrewsbury has since located over 200 burials of Red Haired Giants in the American Southwest, and was the person who led Robert Ghost Wolf to man of them, who photographed and archived them on his website.
As we said above, the Lehi Colony arrived in what is now known as the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the two groups, Nephites and Lamanites, settled in what is now Upstate New York near Palmyra, but eventually separated and warred back and forth for many generations.
Some, but not all Native Americans today are their descendants. The two groups eventually swapped righteousness back and forth many times, and became totally unrighteous and depraved, much as America has today, and a war of near total destruction in was fought in about 500 AD between both factions at what is known today as The Hill Cumorah near Palmyra, New York. When Europeans first settled that region, the soil in the area immediately around Hill Cumorah was noticably whitish, covered with the calcium from the bleached bones from the battle in which tens of thousands died 1300 years previously. Only a few Nephites survived that battle, most notably Moroni, who wandered the Americas for 17 years before his death. Before he died, he abridged the metal plate records onto plates of gold, which was plentiful in The Americas, and buried them in a stone box on The Hill Cumorah along with The Sword of Laban and The Urim and Thumim, and The Breastplate of Aaron.
The first governor of New York wrote a book about the palisaded and terraced hilltop fortresses that were still recognizable as such during European settlement in the early 18th century. These same kind of forts and warfare was written about in The Teachings of Dee Coo Dah by William Pidgeon in 1857, taught to him by Dee Coo Dah, the last prophet of The Elk Nation, while Pidgeon was surveying the ruins of Cahokia across the Mississippi River from present day St Louis, Missouri. This book hold the first accounts of what are know today as magnetic “Ley Lines.”
Sadly, modern readers of the Book of Mormon and adherents to today’s many various schisms of the original “Restoration Movement” churches founded by Joseph Smith Jr. in 1830 (Mormon e.g. LDS, RLDS, Bickertonites and many others) generally identify with — and generally think of the Nephites as “The Good Guys” and the Lamanites as “The Bad Guys” forgetting the history in the Book of Mormon when the Nephites (who had become wicked over many generations just as America has today) and the Lamanites had become the righteous group, and that God sent Samuel The Lamanite to call the Nephites to repentance. The first graphic below on the left below was (is?) included in all missionary copies of the Book of Mormon, portraying that confrontation, in which Nephite archers were unable to shoot Samuel off of their city wall. Most modern Book of Mormon believers don’t realize that the prophecy in the Book of Mormon stated that it would “come forth” from the European immigrant Gentiles, but that they would “sin against the fullness of the gospel” contained in it, and all promises and covenants would revert back to the “Remnant of Jacob, certain American Indians — remnants of The House of Israel hidden and vouchsafed by God in the Americas, who were prophesied to never break their covenant with God, but promised to “forget” (Hebrew: Mannaseh=Forgetful) much of it.
So we see and understand that all Native American ceremonies and rites, including use of medicinal plants used with skill, branded as “illegal” in the 1930s under the objection of the American Medical Association, are considered by God as being righteous and efficacious and what is done on earth is approved in heaven, so it is no wonder Indians have a reputation for perform so many miracles. Hebrew authority Rabbi Aryah Kaplan has publicly stated that the C’abis in the ancient Holy Anointing Oil used to anoint all Kings and Priests of Israel is in fact what is know today as “Cannabis.”
According to Aryeh Kaplan, cannabis was an ingredient in the Holy anointing oil mentioned in various sacred Hebrew texts. The herb of interest is most commonly known as kaneh-bosem (קְנֵה-בֹשֶׂם [13]) which is mentioned several times in the Old Testament as a bartering material, incense, and an ingredient in Holy anointing oil used by the high priest of the temple. Many Rastafarians, who use cannabis as a sacrament, identify as Jewish.
According to Josephus, the head-dress of the Jewish High Priests’ was modeled upon the capsule of the Hyoscyamus flower, which he calls “Saccharus”. This Greek word for sugar stems from the Hebrew root that means “intoxicating”.
Benny Shanon, a psychology professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, proposed that Moses may have been high on hallucinogenic mushrooms at the time he received the Ten Commandments.
Our Native American spiritual leaders have used plants to induce vision since time immemorial, and were driven and murdered up until, and even after, 1900. The United States Congress eventually recognized our religious rights in 1975, but certain U.S. law enforcement agencies, notably the D.E.A., acting under color of law, still attack our rights to worship as we please, and to allow non-Indian people to join our Native American Churches. Our leaders were threatened with trumped up charges, and threats were made by DEA gents to brand them as pedophiles, and leaders like James W. “Flaming Eagle” Mooney and is wife were threatened with a life sentence in prison for using a sacred plant… but were eventually vindicated in a unanimous Utah Supreme Court decision. Our mother Native American Church was given permission to sue the D.E.A. in US Court, and that case will be heard beginning in the Fall of 2013. We av THREE unanimous courts decisions behind us, including one from The US Supreme Court.
Oklevueha Native American “Mother Church” and its independent branches, such as The Oklevueha Ancient Cherokee Church of The One God Yo Hee Haah, are still being harassed by some circles of law enforcement, even though many of us are former police cadets, military police officer, or sworn civilian police officers, and some of us are members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. a consortium of Judges, prosecutors, and Law Enforcement offices who see the current Marijuana Prohibition as a replay of Alcohol Prohibition of the 1930s. Oklevueha has THREE unanimous U.S. Court decisions on our side, including one from the United States Supreme Court!
We Cherokee remember when President Andrew Jackson told the US Supreme court he would not enforce their ruling in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, which forbade the removal of Indians west of the Mississippi River. To his credit he did sincerely attempt to enforce treaties, but for every settler the U.S. Army would force off of Cherokee Land, seven more would move onto those lands, and so Jackson concluded that the expenses of enforcing treaties would eventually bankrupt the United States to the point that if the British would return once again, and our troops would be so busy in the Interior USA running off white settlers, that our coasts would be left undefended and we would lose possibly possession of the continent. He was a tough man, had been held captive as a boy by the Chickamauga Cherokee, and was known to some Cherokees as “Jack Skeena,” Skeena being the Cherokee word for “devil.” He made a tough call, but his address to Congress stated exactly where Cherokees resided at that time… and we lived all over the Southeast, Northeast and the Midwest.
Samuel The Lamanite Samuel The Lamanite The Heroic Samuel
Wikipedia says: “According to the Book of Mormon, Samuel the Lamanite is a prophet who lived in the ancient Americas, sent by Jesus Christ around 5 BC to teach and warn the Nephites just before the his birth in the Old World. The account is recorded in Helaman 13-16.Samuel is notable i n the Book of Mormon as he is a prominent Lamanite prophet. Lamanites generally are described as wicked, with most prophets being Nephites.”
“After attempting to preach to the people in Zarahemla, and being rejected, he was told in a vision by Jesus Christ to return and prophesy to the people. He was not allowed into the city. In one of the more iconic stories of the Book of Mormon, he preached on the wall of the city, calling the people to repentance for their sins, prophesying about the impending advent of Jesus Christ in the Old World, and warning of the destruction of the Nephite nation. The people in the city tried to kill him by throwing stones and shooting arrows, but he was protected from harm by divine providence.”
Bear in mind that first few pages of The Book of Mormon were translated by Joseph Smith Jr. using the Urim and Thummim (two stones in silver bows = eyeglasses) that were included with the Golden Plates of Moroni, He Breastplate of Aaron, and the Sword of Laban all of which were confiscated by God when Joseph erred and the church was placed under condemnation in 1832, that subject not spoken of again until 1986 by President Ezra Taft Benson.
The first 116 pages were allowed by Joseph to be borrowed and lost, so Joseph was admonished by God, the Urim and Thummim was confiscated, and Joseph Smith afterwards used a “seer stone” placed in a hat, to translate the rest of the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith seer stone was reportedly shaped as a peyote plant. Listen to an interview on his subject here. The original church founded by Smith broke into many schisms, and thousands of unauthorized textual changes have been made to the original 1830 Book lo Mormon, known as The Palmyra Manuscript, owned by the Reorganized (RLDS) Church, now styled “The Community of Christ.” Joseph Smith had a dream before immediately his death titled “The Prophet’s Dream of his Kirtland Farm” that the church he founded would break up and become violently opposed to each other.
Joseph related the following dream which he had last night prior to his death:
The Prophet’s Dream of his Kirtland Farm
“I was back in Kirtland, Ohio, and thought I would take a walk out by myself, and view my old farm, which I found grown up with weeds and brambles, and altogether bearing evidence of neglect and want of culture. I went into the barn, which I found without floor or doors, with the weather-boarding off, and was altogether in keeping with the farm.
“While I viewed the desolation around me, and was contemplating how it might be recovered from the curse upon it, there came rushing into the barn a company of furious men, who commenced to pick a quarrel with me.
“The leader of the party ordered me to leave the barn and farm, stating it was none of mine, and that I must give up all hope of ever possessing it.
“I told him the farm was given me by the Church, and although I had not had any use of it for some time back, still I had not sold it, and according to righteous principles it belonged to me or the Church.
“He then grew furious and began to rail upon me, and threaten me, and said it never did belong to me nor to the Church.
“I then told him that I did not think it worth contending about, that I had no desire to live upon it in its present state, and if he thought he had a better right I would not quarrel with him about it but leave; but my assurance that I would not trouble him at present did not seem to satisfy him, as he seemed determined to quarrel with me, and threatened me with the destruction of my body.
“While he was thus engaged, pouring out his bitter words upon me, a rabble rushed in and nearly filled the barn, drew out their knives, and began to quarrel among themselves for the premises, and for a moment forgot me, at which time I took the opportunity to walk out of the barn about up to my ankles in mud.
“When I was a little distance from the barn, I heard them screeching and screaming in a very distressed manner, as it appeared they had engaged in a general fight with their knives. While they were thus engaged, the dream or vision ended.” (Recorded 27 June 1844)
Joseph Smith, in his final address to the High Council in Nauvoo, Illinois, stated that if the Mormons didn’t shape up, that another RACE would be taken to another PLACE in the Rockies , and they, not the Mormons, would “Redeem Zion,” or build the perfect society which would be received by the Creator himself, and visited by his representatives personally. The base of the Rocky Mountains is in Mexico where much (if not most) of the Cherokee Nation migrated to in 1721.
Joseph Smith and the church’s twelve apostles stated in a Proclamation sent to all of the Emperors, Kings, Princes, and heads of state in the world at the time that “The poor degraded son of the forest “(Indians) would someday “Stand up in majesty.”
Brigham Young, who succeeded Joseph Smith warned the Mormons that “Our hope lies with the Indians” and “The Indians will yet save us,” and “When they come, I fear that we will only follow them.”
Other early Mormons, Heber C. Kimball in particular (Brigham Young called Heber “his prophet) prophesied of their most important future leader — The Choice Seer, “an Indian Prophet” that would be their “One Like Unto Moses” and would lead them out of bondage from an evil world system just prior to the return of the Messiah. “The 1905 version of the Book of Mormon, was footnoted by Parley P. Pratt, one of the churches early Apostles. All of these facts have now been forgotten by current Mormons leaders, and anyone who brings up these facts is usually officially, disciplined, excommunicated and/or persecuted.
Joseph was restless immediately before his death. He was seeking the “Indian Prophet”spoken of in the footnotes of the earliest Book of Mormon editions of 2nd Nephi Chapter 3, and Joseph had crossed the Mississippi River with a small company, and was on his way to The Rocky Mountains to find The Choice Seer when he was called back to Carthage, IL and was murdered. Brigham Young continued the search when they reached and colonized the country of the Utes, but after the Black Hawk wars Brigham eventually concluded that all Indians were savages by the time he died in 1877.
Now, all that having been said, here is what the Cherokee Chief Priest Charles L “Jahtlohi” Rogers M.D. remember as the history we Cherokee were taught by our ancestors:
But Laman (La’n) was spoken to by the spirit of Yo hee wah, which spoke to La’n’s soul. He therefore instantly knew and believed that it was God’s will and thus righteous for his people to bring and teach the word of the one God Yo hee wah who created all things to the multitudes of the Native American people. But Lehi and his youngest son Nephi, which means a cleansing of people, cursed by God ( Maccabees 1:36 “And Neemias called this thing Naphthar, which is as much as to say, a cleansing: but many men call it Nephi, “The divider of God’s children. ” “He was adamant in his racism, as was his father Lehi, even unto war, to cleanse his people, of those Native Americans, who he judged were marked by God, (with a darker skin color, as a punishment) disagreed, saying that the difference in the color of the skin of the Native Americans showed that they were being punished for their sins or the sins of their ancestors, which would mean that God had made people without souls. La’n knew in his heart that this was wrong. His father and brother’s pronouncement of God’s judgment of the Native Americans would be degrading the Native Americans to an animal state, and as La’n knew from the revelation he had received from the Great Spirit of Yo hee wah, there was no such human on earth. The tribe of La’n became as one people with the Native Americans and their choice to receive the word of God as a basis of how to conduct their lives brought great joy and spiritual gifts of priceless value to all. They became one people–the Ani u wi yah, the principal people of Yo hee wah–and such became so, that the people of this tribe of La’n began multiplying.
Nephi, whose name is similar to Nephilim (Hebrew: fallen angels) we remember as “The divider of God’s children,” the youngest brother of La’n, had become the head of his tribe after the death of his father Lehi. Both Lehi and Nephi, “The divider of God’s children,” would not allow Native American people into their tribe because they believed that because the Native Americans’ skin was a color that was different, it was an indication of God’s negative judgement in their creation; they felt that God had marked these people with a different color as a punishment. In spite of the ancient presence of this human poison in which one race has hatred for another, a poison that taints not only the mind of the possessor of this idea but results in the slandered person reacting to this hatred in kind, by developing hatred for those persons slandering their creation as inferior. For a while, there was peace and cooperation between the two tribes. Some of Nephi’s, “The divider of God’s children’s people would join La’n’s people and vice a versa, as they were free to choose and so do. But the ancient human poison of telling someone that God is punishing someone because they look different from the person spreading those poisonous thoughts kept infecting Nephi, “The divider of God’s children’s tribe and they kept saying that lie over and over, until the presence as neighbors of these darker color humans could no longer be tolerated by the lighter tribe. The people of La’n were called by the people of Nephi, “The divider of God’s children,” to be “La’nites” (Lamanites).
After all we Cherokee and many other native people are descendants of Joseph of Egypt who was given a “coat of many colors,” and whose descendants number in the hundreds of millions and perhaps billions, and span the entire globe and have in the United States become the “Eagles of Ephraim,” whose military air and ground forces protect and defend Israel, as was prophesied… whereas The Kingdom of Judah’s descendants number only about 12 million souls, and the Mormons in Utah similarly number 12 Million, but there are many more Book Of Mormon believers than number perhaps in the millions.
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The high Cherokee priest, of the Cherokee Church of One God Yo Hee Waah and the Bishop (Catholic) of Mexico discuss, how interesting he finds the Cherokees, because of their belief in one God he was unaware, and very heartened of our earlier connection, to the word, of the one God
This “lost” Lehite Colony of Israel, descendants of Ephraim through his father Lehi. and Mannasseh through the wives chosen for and taken to The Americas with them along with their parent, had come from Judea in what is now “Greater Israel,” just before The Great Earthquake at Jerusalem approx 700 B.C. This occurred after the departure of The Northern Kingdom of Israel aka “Ephraim” into Asia Minor (Turkey) and from there they spread all across the globe. The Southern Kingdom of Israel a/k/a House of Judea, was collapsing to invaders just as the Lehi Colony began their first exodus as a “lost” tribe. Around the same time, knowing th would be slain, King Zedekiah dispatched his Crown Prince Mulek to the Americas along with Jeremiah, High Priest and Keeper of The Ark of The Covenant, who during his ocean voyage westward dropped off Zedekiah’s daughter Scotta in Spain (founding the Milesian line of kings) and delivered Princess Tea (Tamar) Tephi in Northern Island, who immediately married King Heremon of the Tribe of Dan. Jeremiah sailed west the very next day with a large box on the deck of their ship, and was never seen again.
The Harp, The Red Hand and The Phoenix
The origin of the symbol of The Red Hand (Genesis 38:27) is from the birth of twin sons to Judah and his wife Tamar, named Zarah and Pharez. Zarah’s hand emerged first:
Gen 38:27 “And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, twins were in her womb. 28: And it came to pass, when she travailed, that the one put out his hand: and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first, 29: And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? this breach be upon thee: therefore his name was called Pharez. 30: And afterward came out his brother, that had the scarlet thread upon his hand: and his name was called Zarah.”
The ruling that Pharez was firstborn caused great controversy, and many Hebrews left the main body of Israel during the time of the bondage in Egypt, and that becomes very clear when we examine the tribal genealogies as recorded in the Old Testament. These record the main lines of descent from Pharez-Judah for a very long period of time — but the record of the descendants of Zara-Judah apparently ends with the third generation.
Zara-hemla (The City of Zarah) was a chief city in The Book of Mormon.
Zarah’s hand was indeed firstborn, and a scarlet thread was tied around his hand by the midwives. Zarah’s hand went back into his mother’s womb, and Pharez’ body emerged first, and the Pharez-sees that Jesus remonstrated have claimed Royal Hebrew birthright ever since. Britain claims royal birthright through Zarah. All British laws are written as scrolls, and tied with a scarlet thread. Though there is no “constitution” as such in Britain, any laws that are no longer observed for one reason or another are “suspended” from a scarlet thread.
Ireland uses The Red Hand and Star of David. The Cherokee have a Red Hand Society that once a year return to our sacred caves, first painting their hands with Red Ochre, and then yearly refreshing the Red Hand symbol on the walls of those ancient sacred caves. The Red Hand is also know as The “Hand Kabul.”It was featured on the front of Stanley W. Hoig’s book The Cherokees and Their Chiefs: In the Wake of Empire.
The Origin of the Symbol of The Harp
Welsh, Breton, Irish, Scottish and other Celtic cultures within traditional or folk music and the harp as a social and political symbol. The harp was actually brought to Europe from Egypt by the Phoenicians, whose symbol was The Phoenix Bird, who dies and rises from its own ashes. The Kingdom of Morocco, known in Roman times as Mauritania are descendants of the Phoenician Moors. The first Native American Newspaper was The “Cherokee Phoenix,” and the Original Keetoowah Society Cherokee, whom the US Courts ruled the pre- 1906 Cherokee Nation Sovereignty in 1949, have never varied from the teachings according to an address given to the Cherokee Nation by Oconostota, that we were once a seafaring people (Phoenicians?) who migrated here across the eastern ocean long ago.
The two Hebrew colonies, the Lehites and the Mulekites, eventually discovered each other in the Americas and intermarried, leaving the dejure royal Hebrew bloodline of Judah from Hezekiah among the “Indians” that Europeans came into contact with between 1000 AD in 1492. So, Indians in America today have Hebrew birthright from both Zarah and Pharez, leaving one to really wonder about our future destiny. Was Joseph Smith and right when he send dispatches to all the Royal Families in Europe, proclaiming “The poor degraded son of the forest would someday “Stand up in majesty?”
Vikings left the Kensington Stone as a landmark in Minnesota around 1000 AD;. Prince Madoc and his party of 600 free Welshmen arrived in about 1100 AD at the height of the Mississippian Culture after the English massacred their priesthood, and the latecomer Columbus arrived in 1492. The Powhatan reported to the English that they had traded with the yellow haired Vikings who sailed down from the north on a regular basis up until about 100 years before the arrival of the English in the early 1600s.
Refuge was sought by all of these Remnant of Jacob so-called “tribes” of Israel after the final successful invasion of foreign armies who did not believe in the one God of Creation. Because they were a minority of soldiers against the larger, superior armies, the lost tribe’s main defense was to go up high into the mountains and live and worship in the caves and walk with vigilance the high ledges. When attacked, in defense they would fight from the tops of those mountains by raining down stones and arrows upon those who would come from below to destroy them for their belief in One God. This was their ancient way of using the caves for shelter and tabernacle and the ridges for defense, and they did not change this when they came to the New World. So it was in what is now called the Valley of the Mountains of the Moon, which in the Guaymi Native American language (these are the Native Americans whose kingdom ran from the middle of Mexico on the Pacific coast to what we call Bolivia today) is Caraqui, which means Cherokee in Spanish. (The word in Panama today has changed to “Chiriqui”; Chiriqui is the second largest province in Panama, whose capital city is David.) The Guaymi language also has the word katuwah, which is their word for church; they have the word koin, pronounced Cohen, which has three separate meanings in their language, one of which is heaven, the second of which is sacred food, and the third of which is a religious person. This is the very same in the Hebrew language. The valley of the mountains of the moon, Caraqui, is the land of the Ani u wi yah, (the principal people); Ani u wi yah has the same meaning as “the chosen people” for, if you believe you were created by God, it follows that you therefore were chosen by your Creator. As a person cannot choose themselves, as they did not create themselves originally, the choice is not that of any human, as humans simply continue human lives from the creation.
The Eastern neighbors of the Cherokee were the Choctaw people and they called the Cherokees the name “Cha la’n gee” which to them meant people of the high valley, ridges and caves. In time, the Choctaws were to receive the word of God from these principal people who they called the Cha la’n gee. Although that name is found in both the Choctaw and the Guaymi language, that is not what the principal people called themselves, but what the principal people had become in their joining with this lost tribe of Israel. For example, “Cha la’n gee” is a word of the tribe of La’n and was simply used by themselves to tell other Native Americans who they were as to where and how they lived religiously.Their neighbors simply learned this word of Cherokee self-description from the tribe of La’n, and so the neighbors, the Choctaw and the Guaymi tribes, used the same word when describing this Cherokee tribe to other tribes as “Cha la’n gee,” the origin of which was a self-description as to the who, where and how they live religiously. The first syllable is cha, which is found in Hebrew as meaning the week of Passover–chamat cha–which is pronounced from right to left. See that the syllable Cha is used twice in the Hebrew correct phrase for a religious week.
The Mayans were directly to the north of the Cha la’n gee; many of these Mayan people converted to the religion of One God which they learned from the Cherokee people. These Mayans had a religious ceremony which was called Cha cha ac, which they said meant a tabernacle in the high cavity of the rocks (meaning a cave); so the first sound of “Cha la’n gee,” cha means a religious place in a cave up high. The second syllable is la, and it is from the name La’n; the Native American principal people who merged with the chosen Hebrew people did not, in their language before the coming of this lost tribe of Israel, utilize the letter M, yet the Hebrew does use M, and the Hebrew did not utilize the vowel at the end of the word La’n, as the “a” was there to separate the M from the N, and the vowel was silent. So what was left was La, meaning that they were the people of La’n, who are often called La’nites. The word La’n in Hebrew comes from Lam meaning “a shepherd,” with the silent “a” vowel next and the “n” meaning from God. The last syllable in “Cha la’n gee” is gee which means in Hebrew “a valley,” as it does in the Guaymi language and as it does in the Choctaw language, describing people from the mountain valleys with the ridges and caves. This also has the exact same meaning in the Guaymi language as the word “caraqui,” which is a Spanish word written in the 1500’s to describe what the Guaymi were saying– a word that Spanish could not recreate, sound for sound, so the closest they could come to “Cha la’n gee” was “caraqui”. Whether it’s the Spanish “qui” pronounced “key” or the Hebrew and Cherokee “gee” pronounced “gee,” it means valley. In the Guaymi language it also means the Valley of the Mountains of the Moon, and is in the Panamanian present-day province of Chiriqui (“Caraqui”), which has a bay and a volcano, and a river of the same Caraqui name.
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Cherokees have the gift from God of complete free will, and how they express themselves, is how we want them to be also.
According to the Cherokee migration myth, after we fought the followers of Nephi, “The divider of God’s children,” where we were victorious but somehow felt as if we on both sides had lost the battle, we went to the north in exodus once again to find the peace of Ka tu wah, meaning “the word of God spoken by a priest, which came down from on high”. In our northern exodus, we interacted along the way with most of the other tribes and many converts were made within these tribes, and to this day dozens of Native American tribes have many of the actual words of the ancient Hebrew God of Creation within their vocabularies in their God-given choice to become the chosen people also. For to be chosen as a principal person, you must choose God first, as God has already chosen all of his human creations. What more choosing do we need? In this interaction with other tribes, we brought our religion to them only if they wished to hear the word of the one God of Creation. The Choctaw tribe, which had forty percent of the amount of Hebrew that the Cha la’n gee had at the same time in the 1700s, were solid practitioners of the Ancient Church of the One God. The Maya to this day still build a tabernacle for Cha cha ac, which coincides to the Hebrew observance of Passover, in the cavity of the rocks and many worship the One God of Creation, even though they have chosen to have other deities within their original religion. But it does show the Cha la’n gee impact and influence by contact with and to a very intelligent people.
The “Ani u wi yah” (principal people) worshiped and lived in the caves and ridges of the valleys of the high mountains and believed in the teachings brought to them by La’n, whose name meant the “Shepherd of God”. He was the priest descendant from the first priest chosen by Yo hee wah, his father Levi, the high priest and the leader who brought the first name of God, “Yo hee wah,” with its Levite priesthood to the people of the Americas. It was La’n who wholeheartedly accepted the red people as the children of the One God of Creation, as they saw them the same as they saw themselves, without differences. They intermarried, knowing that they were all the same creation of the One God of Creation.
Below is a body of evidence that James Adair witnessed and documented in his hand- written manuscript which he later, in 1775, printed in his book: History of The American Indians… in 1775, James Adair was aware of the respect given by the Native American to the set-apart name of Yo hee wah, which they used for prayer or religious song, but he said that it was also used in day to day conversation by the Cherokee, as well as the Choctaw and many other Native American tribes.
Adair observed that the Native Americans did practice the Hebrew religion. James Adair and Mr. Cotton Mather of Boston both wrote extraordinary letters to Europe informing the Royal Society in London, England of the existence in America of a tribe of Indians which “performed circumcision.” Mr. Adair declared in his letter to King George of England, that “the Jewish situation of them not having a homeland can be solved, as there are Jewish Indians who I believe to be a lost tribe of Israel living in the mountains here. Israel should be established here.”
The various Cherokee nations honor the seventh day of each week. Four and seven are sacred numbers to Cherokees (the fourth commandment brought by Moses sanctifies the seventh day.
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26 hours before the actual festivities began, we at 7 AM in the morning are receiving riders, who are seeking the blessings of Cherokee friendship, for their today ride, through the desert.
They designed their priest houses for worship so that “their backs are to the east, and faces to the west”. This is modeled after “the Jerusalem Copy”.
“They do not pay the least perceivable adoration to any images or dead persons; neither to the celestial luminaries, nor evil spirits, nor any created being whatsoever. They are utter strangers to all the gestures practiced by the pagans in their religious rites.”
“It is plain that where the Indians have not been corrupted by foreigners, their customs and religious worship are nearly alike; and also that every different tribe, or nation of Indians uses such divine proper names as awesome sounds, such as Yah-Wah-He-to-vah being transpositions of the divine essential name, as the northern Indians often repeat in their religious songs with dances.
The sound of Yah-wah jarred in the ear of Adair’s friend Laudon; he called it Java, in resemblance to the Syriac and Greek method of expressing the tetragrammaton, which Galatinus imposed upon us, calling it Jehowah, as opposed to the original importation of Yohewah.”
Many Cherokees still call their Creator “Yo wa,” omitting the” he” or the core, being God, but continuing to personally use that name. That name, in ancient Cherokee times, was permitted to be said without that person having the station of a priest who could say Yo hee wah, whereas the parishioner was restricted out of respect to use Yo wa, which is Yo the spirit of the soul of God and Wa the love or way of God. An English phrase that might best describe the Cherokee phrase (as it not a word) is “soul and heart”.
“The Germans among them (merchant traders), frequently say “Yah-yah” as an affirmative; they call them Yah-yah Algeh- those of the blasphemous speech,” which strongly hints to us that they still retained a glimpse of the third moral command delivered at Sinai.”
They “observed a weekly Sabbath” which is the same day which the Jewish religion observed.
They “observed a year of Jubilee.”
They spoke and sang the phrase “Ha le lu yah” in their religious prayer songs while in dance.
When they went to war they always carried their “sacred ark” with them. They rejoiced “at the appearance of the new moon.”
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Cherokees are always about family, and you can’t have too many brothers or sisters aunts or uncles or grandparents.
In the last 2,600 years, those of the lost tribe of Israel who were commanded by Levi have been divided by the same thing which divided Levi from his son La’n–the oldest cause of human misunderstanding, which is the fear of that of which we do not have knowledge and therefore do not understand. This is a unique form of ignorance which triggers or develops human survival instincts and fears– a vicious cycle that continues to prevent us from knowing enough about the very nature of the thing of which we have become frightened. Thus, the motive of God in the creation of something frightening to us, without an opportunity to understand the wisdom of God’s creation, instills fear. But the creation motive of God is that of love and kindness. Ignorance of God’s motive will always produce, out of fear, the most negative human assumptions about the differences in human beings because of a lack of knowledge as to actually why the differences exist. These differences are literally physically necessary for the survival of past and future generations of all of people. The amount of the lack of knowledge will always be equal to the amount of incorrect and harmful assumptions made by those people who see others as different from themselves, as being inferior, which always escalates into the basic fear of an enemy or predator.This way of thinking not only destructively and negatively decreases the value of the other, different person, but, more dangerously, this same assumption always brings those who fear the parent lie of a most destructive behavior–that of believing in their own superiority. By embracing this false assumption while choosing not to love their neighbor as themselves, which means that they are also choosing not to love God with all their heart, soul, and mind, they have become separated from or out of harmony with God and all things good. Once you allow your mind to learn the knowledge of why humans are created with some differences, and why we are created with the ability to change those differences as the earth changes, you will learn to embrace these differences. When you have chosen to seek knowledge about God’s creation, you have the choice of changing for the better, in harmony with God, or changing for the worse, out of harmony with God. But if you choose not to have knowledge, then human survival instincts demand, for safety and out of fear of the unknown, that you take a negative view of humans different than ourselves; this lack of knowledge, when it comes with fear, will become an inability for that human to exercise their free will; the actual reality of creation becomes a threat for that person trapped by fear; the key to to be released from this form of imprisonment by fear is a knowledge of the very nature of the God who created all things; it is the very nature of enlightenment, which becomes the entrance portal to the white path of human passage during life and after
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Nothing like, starting the drums early, to get your day moving.
Human change is always necessary on earth, for the earth changes and humans must change for human survival. When people decided to leave Eden, they left the grace of God but not the love of God; by choosing the path of self-determination, they were expelled to the world outside of Eden,where there were animals in the world which would use humans for food– there were even humans that would use humans for food and humans that would attack humans for territory to gain a richer food territory in which to harvest more animals for food and clothing. These expelled humans were confronted with the problem of how to survive and remain human, with inherit knowledge of their soul and its creator. At first, adults could or could not choose to protect and defend themselves from other humans, depending upon their knowledge and skill in preparation and self-defense of their own lives and that of their family. Some chose to be only animals and perished, while others used their free will to learn how to protect themselves in these early days of people. But human children, unlike the young of other lifeforms, are helpless or near helpless for many years. The one loving God created all things with design and function; Yo hee wah so brilliantly created humans that only a minimal amount of divine genius and wisdom, an amount so small that we cannot describe it, can even be imagined by us. For the divine wisdom of Yo hee wah created the children of human beings to have the ability to become colors different than they had been in times before. Their world was always changing, and where humans were living had changed, as they were no longer in Eden. And by the miracle of creation, their colors changed and they had the ability to survive in numbers sufficient to guarantee people a place as God intended. God was wise and loving when he created the dark child of the jungle and of the tall forests in all the ways that a child would need to be. In order to survive, to be very dark or black is correct, for that is the very color of the shadow that exists within the jungle and the tall forest. And black, that color from the goodness of God, has always been the protective shield that was needed by a child left alone, with only his first teachings to stay here in the dark and await the parents return, even when the parents were close but barely out of their sight, hidden by vegetation. Both parents were needed, as well as other adults, in the gathering of food for survival, which was absolutely critical, and the child who, over the generations, was blessed to became very dark or black to match their surroundings with its dark hiding places lived longer than the child who was of a different color from their surroundings and therefore could be more easily seen by enemies and predators. Thus, it has always been and will always be the same wisdom of God in the design of the color for all the children of God on earth. Those children who immigrated to the snow country (or the snow came to them) were also changed in color over time, yet rapidly enough so as not to become extinct. Those children which became closer in color to the white snow would live long enough to procreate. And so it was true with all of God’s children then as it is now. It can also be said that this is true of that child born in the land of the sand; the color of the child would change to match the color of the sand. That child would not stand out and be visible in the lands of the deserts, whereas it is also true that the child born of a black or white color would, of course, be more easily visible by an enemy or predator
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The principle person who has been chosen to seek out all things true can see that which is right in front of our eyes and understand that this is just one of the uncountable gifts from the wisdom and genius of the Creator. This is a gift of survival for all the children of people, this ability to change human coloration and become in harmony with the changes of the earth. For the wisdom and genius of God’s design is not that it is the adults who determine the color of the children. No, it is the children who determine the color of the adults; this is truly a loving act of God that protects the next generation to come, with each generation of children on the earth automatically protected from the eternal harm of extinction. All children are and were from the first creation defenseless; this gift of God’s wisdom started then and will continue forever, as this is the design by the One God of Creation, Yo hee wah. The continuation of life depended upon the ability of one generation to pass down to another generation this gift of coloration which was, is, and will be connected to the survival of humans. For the enemies or the predators of the future, which even though unknown to us now, may be such that people’s survival may depend upon our ability to change into the best color for the best chance of future survival. It was absolutely so in the beginning, and is may still be somewhat so now.
So for Nephi, “The divider of God’s children,” to find offense in the coloration of humans that were created by Yo hee wah, the God of Creation, the God of all of creation, is not an evil act– it is simply human ignorance, with which we are born, and it often leads the human mind to apathy, with which we are not born but develops whenever our brain does not have incoming knowledge. La’n chose to respect the obvious presence of God’s designs which are openly manifested before all humans, starting and ending with each day’s sunrise and sunset: that Yo hee wah the One Creator of all things made humans different. La’n saw this demonstrated in the indigenous Native Americans, as the children were not readily visible when he returned to their camp from hunting with them; La’n plainly saw that God had given these children the ability from birth to blend in with the vegetation, shadows, and tree trunks that came closest to their color. For La’n, it was not only an act of personal courage to go against his father and brother, it was a righteous act, as La’n was choosing to be in harmony with God’s wisdom. His tribal family was at first embracing the practice of human judgment of other persons based on differences, without the knowledge that the color of other humans is obviously a design decision from the goodness of God’s wisdom. But this was obvious to La’n. His ancestors had chosen free will over being kept in the Garden of Eden, within the grace of God, and, as they had then instructed, they learned to use their heart, soul, and minds with this ultimate gift of free will, which is the root of the tree of all freedoms. For La’n had learned that humans were made in the image of God, which is the will of God, and such will can be perceived by humans. It is the design of God and always manifests a betterment for all humans.
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Priest Rogers, speaks with a man who had family stories about the Cherokee in Mexico he called us the good people, as we protected both parties, through negotiation and counsel.
As La’n reflected on whether to be in harmony with his family or to be in harmony with God, a state of clarity came upon his mind and he felt peace, and he chose that his thoughts and actions would reflect the wisdom of God’s creation. La’n’s soul had told him that these people of a different color were good and did love their children as the Hebrews loved their own children. So La’n called out to all those others who felt as he felt, that God was correct in creating humans of different colors and that this was a good thing and not a punishment or curse, because Lehman felt God had only been wonderful to these darker skin people. Then they whose minds were waking up, after being enlightened by La’n’s speaking, felt that the presence of God’s wisdom was in La’n’s words. With this inspiration, the people in harmony with La’n began to speak out against Nephi, “The divider of God’s children,” and his other brothers and sought of La’n to lead them to live separately with the Native Americans. For La’n’s people, this took courage, as they were in a new world and all of their strength and faith would be tested.
Had La’n not chosen to be in harmony with God, he would not have had the synergistic power which comes from righteousness. If La’n had been weak, he would have chosen to be like others, who he knew in his heart and mind were incorrect because they had no real evidence by God, only human evidence. La’n had seen with his own eyes the love and kindness in God’s creation and he knew in his heart that God has nothing but love for the people who were darker than the people of La’n. Without awakening to this truth and knowledge about God, La’n’s acts of goodness would have been weakened by his ignorance; there would also always have been a weakening in his faith, and he and followers would not have had the courage of their convictions and they would have given up their free will to those who they know are incorrect in thought and action, thereby committing self-enslavement of their soul and mind under Nephi, “The divider of God’s children,”‘s authority. Without choosing to be free, without the strength of all humans of all different races working in unity, La’n and his followers would surely have perished in the Americas.
Faith and courage are always equal within each human of God’s creation. For it was the very first humans who, outside of Eden, found themselves with a lack of knowledge about God; this lack produced the first negative human assumption, as a lack of knowledge about God in the human mind will always leave that mind to form assumptions and decisions from mostly human knowledge. And as humans only know what they know, this will always be a negative, destructive, or at least non creative decision with results of an equal nature. Positive assumptions, those that are creative and therefore in harmony with creation and God’s creativity, only come from people who have hope, which only comes from people who have faith, which only comes from people who have courage, which only comes from people who have the knowledge that that which is true, is true. As all things true come from God, God is the creator of all human hope to create goodness in the likeness of a kind and loving God. La’n did, of his own free will, chose to have faith in what he had experienced as he grew to know the Native Americans; that these were evident facts– that God’s creation of all the races is the manifestation of God’s love for us all, and proof of this love is always directly in front of us and never hidden from us. Therefore, no gatekeeper need be paid in order for us to see our own property of legacy and inheritance. When we have the courage to admit that much of what we see in creation is beyond our ability to understand, we will become whole and less assumptive and judgmental of other’s gifts from the creation of Yo hee wah.
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The Cherokee nation of Sequoya paraded through the colonial town of San Fernando, in Coahuila here you see two Delaware, doing a hunting dance, where they struck a rigid pose from time to time and acting the tracking and taking down of game.
La’n trusted, in this time of crisis, the heart, soul and mind of God and he said to his followers that the truth is that the darker people are fully human beings, just as us. And that the truth is good and we should believe it– that for God to have made humans of another color live and exist within these new lands is good, because this is evidence that the spirit of God led us here; we know in our hearts that God loves us, and we remember that we were his people first chosen to receive his word, and we know by his actions he did not try to stop us. Just as we are not being punished, so they are not being punished by God. God has sent us guidance to bring us, with our faith and courage, to this new land to live with these good people of God’s creation who see, as we see, that we are as they are, brothers and sisters to each other. We thank God for the power of free will, for we have chosen to see what is before us; our eyes are now opened to God and we are clearly seeing that which is true of God’s creation. La’n said to his followers that his first belief, that all other humans were created inferior, came from being taught to him as a small child. He now knew that this untruth was from human origin and not Yo hee wah, the loving creator of all things. He now knew that he was wrong because he was ignorant about Yo hee wah. He was ignorant of the abundant evidence of love and kindness which permeates God’s design in his creation of all things. For God has placed clearly before us the miracles of day and night in order for us to thrive. You must decide of your own free will to learn that which is true, regardless of what other humans may say or how they threaten you. For whatever true is true, and whatever is true is from God. All truth is perceivable by human beings as evidenced by the presence of its goodness in the results it produces, which is evidence of God’s heart and soul. The complexity of creation is evidence of the wisdom of God, the designer and creator of all which lays before us, from the beginning, today, and in the future infinitely.
Those who choose not to evolve by accepting knowledge of God and his creation will make their minds the home of the second worst of all human assumptions, which is that we are always justified in hating those persons who hated us first. The return of hatred for those who hated us first may have been justified by the laws of man, but are not supported by evidence of God’s love and kindness that is found in the wholesome design of creation. Yo hee wah has always allowed for human life to be continued, if so desired by humans; there will be adequate gifts of sustainment, unless those gifts are squandered or destroyed by human ignorance and apathy. The chief danger is that from time to time in the history of mankind, humans choose to impersonate and speak for God in order to control others and benefit themselves, always at a cost to others and to the speaker, as both become victims. This is the source of all wars, which begin when humans become divided. One person will, in order to protect their personal, self-created vengeful God, go to war using the lie that that is what God would like, and that he is on their side, and this impersonator of God’s authority will lie and say to the people who are hesitant and undecided about whether to go to war that they will be destroyed because they did not do what God wished. Humans which claim to have the authority of God and the right to speak on God’s behalf because God speaks directly to them always use the threat of annihilation because they do not please God, saying that war is God’s choice for them. The people who do not believe in the history of God as written by the Pharisees (explaining and justifying the reasons they invented as to why God must be a vengeful and angry God and that the color of other children of God was a mark of disfavor by God, that this is evidence of being cursed by God, that this darker human color is a punishment of all generations of this person having been convicted by God, that their children are born without souls, that they are not deserving of earthly freedoms for they are the convicts of God’s vengeful anger, for a lighter person to marry one would be to punish the offspring, and all such untruths), do not believe that God loves humans born of light color more. They know that darker persons have not been judged by God but by humans, and these human judgments written as the word of God are lies which enslave us all.
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As the Cherokee people assemble, priest Rogers and tribal leaders, await and sense for a good start.
People like the people of La’n, (Laman) the principal people, the chosen people who disagree with these falsehoods in their heart, soul, and in the logical intelligence within their minds must use faith. They should not wish to have the papers written by the Pharisees and their minions, those who are the gatekeepers for human control and its resulting harvest of earthly riches. These persons who have only their faith also have the stars that shine, the water that runs, the sun that comes up and goes down, the moon that comes up and goes down, the wind that blows, the rains that come, the plants that grow, and the humans that work and multiply the spirit of Yo hee wah the God of love and kindness in responsible numbers, without the deprivation and starving of others. Such actions of faith bring the joy of being in harmony with God and earth’s bounty, for the old bodies die, and the young are born, and with their first breath, their soul is in contact with not only the earth, but with the soul of the One God, Yo hee wah, as God’s presence is with all living things. It is so with each person, and if a person chooses to know God, that person will begin to have courage, because he has begun to have real faith; not because his mind acts courageously, but because he has begun to have real knowledge. Free will has no boundaries. Human life can be taken by another human, often because of disagreements over the human interpretation of the word of God; but we know that to be wrong, as that would negate the most important teaching of all–that the actual purpose of the creation of all things by Yo hee wah is to inspire people to love thy neighbor as thyself, and to love the One God of Creation with all thy heart, soul, and mind.
La’n’s epiphany resulted from having had the Great Spirit of God’s soul speak to him; it foretold to La’n that Yo hee wah would send his actual love and its wisdom of teaching the white path of salvation, not only during human physical life, but, once chosen, after the soul has begun to return to its creator, bringing the greatest joy. This earthly presence of God would come as a sign– a son in human form. Not as a purely human person, such as Pharisees and their minions, the gatekeepers who would claim to speak for God but without the intent of producing corresponding acts of goodness in word and deeds. La’n sensed from his soul that God would not forget what he shared with La’n: that he was to send to the earth a teacher for all of people, so that they might all choose to learn how not to hate back, and break the endless human cycle of destruction, which is the clearest manifestation that we are ignorant of God. La’n, with his faith and the power of the gift of free will, thought it was best to separate his enlightened tribe from the ancient prejudices of the tribe of Nephi, “The divider of God’s children,”. This is a human reaction which allows people to become separated from one another; it allows for a void to appear–a void that is usually filled by the warmth of daily human interaction– and to become filled with apathy, ignited by the rejection felt by those who were left. This is a fertile ground for human hatred to grow. Thus, the failure of the well-intentioned leadership of both tribes was inevitable, as neither side allowed themselves to be kind to the other. Righteousness can only result in goodness when it is possessed by a person who rejects hatred and feels the love for his neighbor as himself and has chosen to love the Great Spirit Yo hee wah with all of his heart soul and mind.
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Beautiful young ladies and beautiful children princesses from every part of North America, this is important for they too, own, the same property as their parents
To be in harmony with God is manifested by our peaceful and creative actions, as it is by God’s peaceful and creative actions that we will see the results promised to all of mankind. Teaching others by example results in an increase of peace on earth among mankind, which re-creates in others the harmony of that great teacher of people who was called by the ancient principle people the Shilu hah (the peace of God), who taught people through the Great Spirit of God and who speaks to the souls of all humans if they are listening to the Revelation of the Great Spirit, whether heard by all of people or just by one human. One human does matter, as the more in harmony a person is with the Great Spirit of Yo hee wah, the more powerful that human thought will be in beneficial results and will energize others to choose to be upon the white path of peace and goodness. One person can noticeably or substantially elevate and energize the collective harmony of people. It is this teaching of love and peace which was induced by the Great Spirit of God in La’n and had been promised by Yo hee wah– that all things good have been made available to all of people through the gift of free will if they choose to become a principal person and truly live a just life of goodness. This was foretold to the lost tribes who spoke Hebrew by their prophets who perceived, as did Lehman, from the Great Spirit what was to come–brought and taught as a gift for all humans by Shiloh, the Shi lu hah, (the peace of God), the Shi luh waah (The Christ, the Way of God), and the Morning Star of Hope. All of these titles are the same and are but some of the 100 plus known names for the coming Christ Jesus before he was born to Mary.
Yo hee wah is the oldest known name of the God of Creation; it dates back to and was used from the beginning of God first contacting man. In approximately 300 BC, about 300 to 400 years after the lost Hebrew tribe had left Israel and Judea, the name YO HE WAAH was modified by adding vowels and disguising it so that the foreign occupiers of Israel and Judea could not learn the actual name of God as told to the chosen people directly by Yo hee wah. The Ancient Cherokee Church has manuscripts that exist in various famous libraries in the Americas which have hundreds of pages of handwritten, first person testimonials as to what English-speaking and writing colonists said that the Cherokee people were practicing as a religion. The similarities are numerous, such as having no other than the one God of Creation, the prohibition of eating pork, the 10 Commandments, the stories of the first five chapters of the Bible (often called the Hebrew Bible), the three cities of refuge, the hygienic practices of the chosen people, and well over 100 words in common practice by hundreds of people–Hebrew words which have the same usage and meaning, with the same pronunciation or sound.
The following Scriptures were taken from the four different English documenters of the principal people, speaking both Cherokee and Hebrew in the immediate presence of the chronological sequence of English writers, from 1692 to1825. These historians had never met one another before or after their witnessing, yet each lived with the Cherokee and personally did witness the priest of the ancient Cherokee church of one God, who would teach the Cherokees the following: that we were not and are not in Eden and we should choose to become responsible persons, as that pleases God. If we are blessed with physical life, it means that we have the God-given ability to change anything and everything, especially that which has been negatively done by humans, not only for our betterment, but for the betterment of all other life that exist. To change for the sake of betterment is to mirror in attitude and mind Yo hee wah, which pleases God; this is evidenced by the gift of works from God’s creation which so favors mankind when we take responsibility, by working to create goodness not only for our children, but for all children. We are with God when we create goodness for our families and the families of others. For the actions which we, the family of people, receives from others are based upon the nature of the actions we give out to others; this is a law of the earth, not the law of Eden, for we are outside of Eden.
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Cherokee children never forget what you have done for them.
The ancient Cherokees did not believe in the missionaries’ story that were written by and came from the early Pharisees. They knew that the Pharisees had lied to the ancient people, telling them that they were cursed and damned by God for refusing to go to the church of the Pharisees. In so doing, the Pharisees could put pressure on the people to pay their money to them. All people have the ability to respond to the love of God; they must be taught the proper way to respond so that they are in harmony with their God Yo hee wah, which will allow them to grow and prosper as the children of God. The Pharisees did not like the lack of money produced from teaching of God’s love, so they created a ridiculous human story of an angry God who is vengeful and war-loving, one that would frighten and victimize the uneducated person, as we are always afraid of that which we do not know. They portrayed God as intolerant of immature, irresponsible people, and said that God would destroy his creations if he was displeased. You could not refuse to attend the church of the Pharisees or refuse to pay money to a human gatekeeper to be with God in a special way that charged admission, even though the church’s structure and principles were not being taught as they had been taught to the first chosen people. There could be no lack of payment of money or any disagreement with their pronounced sacred judgment of God, a word that they claimed came from God, but only through themselves to those who would pay. Those that would not pay were threatened with being punished, not only during their lifetime with physical torture and sometimes even death, but they were also threatened after their physical death that their soul would not be allowed to go to their Creator, because money was owed to God. Should you then die, you would burn in hell, for you had been excommunicated from the one path to God. These are merely ideas of humans who are without free will themselves; they have become slaves to their ignorance and its fallacy of assumptions that they would gladly kill or be killed over. For these humans have chosen not to see the beauty and wonderment of the creation of the universe, the stars, the earth, and that our path in life is for the betterment of all humans out of gratitude to the One God Yo hee wah for making us a part of that image that is the love of the God, Yo hee wah. God’s love is not any part of that biggest of human lies–that God is vengeful or would harm somebody at all, much less to the point of eternal damnation in a fiery pit, for the crime of human ignorance. There is no evidence, not a molecule, in creation that supports an angry vengeful God; however, there is unlimited evidence in human history of angry vengeful atrocities. That should indicate to a principal person that this false, vengeful, cruel God is a human fabrication, for that would mean that God was made in the image of man. It would mean that God also suffers from human ignorance and apathy.
In the 1700’s, the early Cherokees told the missionaries of the European churches, “I am not afraid of your threats, for I know that God loves me. What I want to know is, if you have any knowledge of what God wishes me to be and do, please tell me, for I was not born knowing what God wants me to do, and that is what I am afraid of, as I wish to please God. Do not make the threats you would make to somebody who is a child, naturally being born without all the knowledge necessary for living on earth. Don’t think that I do not know the beauty and love that God has bestowed upon us all. It is offensive to us, as we know that God is with us always and cares for us greatly. You do not have to come here threatening us with hell, and harm to ourselves and our families, for I have seen and heard of the wondrous gifts of creation from God to all of people, and never have I ever sensed God as having anything but love for us. But you say that your human words are from God and are true, and you say that God will punish us for being born as all children are born–ignorant of adult responsibility and choices. If it is true as you say that you have had this book (the Bible) for hundreds of years, why do you still act so bad? You do not describe the same God as our teachings which are before the time when the Son of God descended as the Christ Jesus and brought Waah, the teachings of the love and peace of God’s grace, to people on earth and and the blessings that we were to receive the word directly from Yo hee wah, the God of Creation more than 2,300 years ago. Our teaching is old, even older than many parts of your book, as it is the first word to people by God; our word came from God to the ears of our priest, and our priests said it to our people and from the priest families came the new priest, who said it to our people and it continued until we were confronted with people who do not see all people as being the creations of God. And so we have chosen to leave and go back to that place where we first met and married with the lost tribe of Israel and their leader, La’n the Shepherd of God. For we are the chal la gee, the people of the Valley of the Mountains of the Moon and we are with the Shepherd of God. We know that in order to survive, we must worship in the church in the cavity of the rock, in the high mountains. We have chosen to become what we were born and intended by our creator to be–the principal people, the ani u we yah, which is the same as the chosen people. For we were told by Yo hee wah that after Eden, there is no predestined state of grace for humans. It is the will of God that we have complete free will to do that which is good or that which is bad, and we will have earthly consequences for the choices that we make, but we must do our best to show as example what good deeds can bring when done for the love of God, in order to give thanks for the goodness of God’s creation of the earth and heavens. We give gratitude, for God has loved us from the beginning of creation without asking anything in return; this knowledge creates faith and courage within the principal person, so that nothing can separate us from our God. In reality, not even death can threat our bond; for our earthly body,it is automatically ashes to ashes and dust to dust, but truly, in spite of the greed of those gatekeepers and agent Pharisees who are present in every generation, who seek to control our lives and harvest our money by telling us that our soul does not go back to the spirit of God unless something is paid of value, or something is sacrificed.
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When Cherokees of every age, are mixed together a joy is made, that is indescribable, to be among the people.
The principal person will tell the Pharisees and the gatekeepers that their threats would be ridiculous if they did not cause such harm to those persons who become afraid because they lack the knowledge of who their God of creation, Yo hee wah, is and what this loving God has done for us since the beginning of creation. The principal person will think in his heart, “Have I merited that God would want my soul to come back within the presence of the Great Spirit?” Our soul is a gift from the Spirit of God called Yo, which had no beginning and has no end, for it is with God. If a human did not have a soul, we would not be able to perceive God’s love; we would not be able to see, sense, understand, or be able to return God’s love, and we would not be able to mature as God hopes for us, as expressed in his teachings. As a human being, our soul shares with God’s Spirit a love for all living things, and our soul is naturally respectful and caring (unless we have been taught otherwise by mistreatment by others) of God’s creations and of God’s earth as a home for people. It was God’s will that all human beings have souls and therefore have the ability to understand God’s love. There is no rational basis for humans being made to do horrible things, against their will, which would mean that they have no free will, which would also mean that they have no soul; this would be the true stamp of human thought being made from only human fabrication, without the inspiration of Yo hee wah the One God of love. This victimization of humans by humans can only occur if the victim has no true knowledge of the kind and loving God that created them. Humans have been at the beck and call of human greed which uses names to scare the victims of their false declarations of God’s motive and intentions; this fear can only grow in that void of the human mind where love should have been cultivated and grown; instead, the victim,out of fear, chose to believe the lies. Yet that victim have by not having chosen to understand that God truly loves them without condition and gives to them the heavens and the earth and causes all things necessary to sustain that earth for all people, including that person who is lost. God makes the sun come up for them, the moon comes out for them, the rain falls for them, the wind blows for them, and their brothers and sisters of the family of people will receive them and love them, and when they receive love back, they will, like the sun and the moon, continue every day of their life in existence not only on earth but in heaven. The victim, because they have chosen to be ignorant of God’s goodness, is defenseless against the destructiveness of human control and greed. The most harm that can be done to a human being is the wasting of their time on earth, as having been born with an immature mind which was captured by false testaments, guarded, and imprisoned by false human threats of a vengeful, mean God; such victim is but a beast of burden. Without kindness, this victim is not fed anything which enhances life, or enlightens that person to see that they and only they have the power to have free will. Until they exercise their free will, they will not have free will, for no one else can grant you free will. For even Yo hee wah will not disrupt nor engage your free will for yourself, as that choice taken by yourself is the only path to be within the teachings of the One God of Creation. Free will is from the mind of Yo hee wah and victims may at any time simply escape the lies that have shackled them by first choosing to have knowledge of Yo hee wah, the God of creation, and to open their eyes and ears and begin to study God’s works of creation, which are all around and lay before them; it is the blue of the sky, the white of the clouds, the twinkling of the stars, the blackness of the night, the setting of the sun, the rising of the moon, the setting of the moon, the rising of the sun; it is the presence of a God of love and kindness which made such a world for us. God is all around us always, as has been and always will be, a world without end. The victims of the seeding of a mean and vengeful God have only their soul with which to escape this captivity, as it is their only refuge that is beyond the control of any human being. That victim has lost themselves to other humans controlling them or they are under the control of destructive earthly forces, such as drugs or alcohol; in order for this victim to have the power and focus to take control of their own mind, they must first connect with the soul of the Great Spirit of God by seeing, feeling, and sensing that which is beautiful and true in the creation in which we live. This is the path of light and it will take them towards God. When we are born, the human mind is absent of the conscious knowledge of God. When victimization by false doctrine has been indoctrinated in a person’s mind, it is usually for the motives of greed or control; the mind formed from this abuse is not the mind of a free person. It is this victim who at first refuses to acknowledge the works of God that are in front of their very eyes, and only when they truly understand the magnificence of God’s creation will they no longer be victims. Such wonders and gifts to people are not exclusive, as they are also gifts for all living things, all being from the Great Spirit, Yo hee wah, the God who created all things for the Cherokees, the principal people, and all other people.
The Ancient Cherokee Church of the One God Yo hee wah has evidence of a Hebrew religion being taught to the Cherokee in the ancient time of 2,600 BC; this evidence was gathered from five authors, who wrote about the religion of the Cherokees, and its Hebrew language. We have copies of these manuscripts which cover approximately 100 years to 125 years–the time span from 1682 to 1825–all witnessing the Cherokee. A minimal amount of some of this time was spent with the Choctaw and many, many other Native American tribes which have Hebrew words in their vocabularies. These priceless manuscripts have many hundreds of pages that witness by description in detail the practice by many thousands of Cherokees of worshiping in the Hebrew language and within a Hebrew church structure, utilizing a succession of priest descendants from the priest families. Yo hee wah instructed this to his first chosen priest, (who the Cherokees call Wasi) in his first teachings of the chosen/principle people– that there would always be priests available for them. The priest of the ancient Cherokee church of one God cannot take money, nor any other thing of earthly value, for performing religious ceremonies. To do so would mean that that priest is no longer working for the Great Spirit Yo hee wah, nor do they serve out of their chosen gratitude for Yo hee wah. In fact, such a priest would have two masters, and in time that will be shown to be a mistake; the early Christian church fathers also warned against hirelings and foretold that it would eventually destroy their church. For hirelings are the seedlings from which Pharisees grow.
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Can you imagine, the sense of history, of going to water, and praying at the very hot spring were Sequoya did the same.
This is a brief summary about the knowledge we possess and the beliefs we hold; there is no monetary cost in joining the Ancient Cherokee Church of One God; there is the cost of human effort required of the human trying to righteously, to live as a principal person. This is when you commit yourself to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, which means you must use your mind’s intellect as well. As a result of that being so, the Great Spirit of Yo hee wah, the one God of Creation, will be pleased in knowing of a life spent in the helping of not only yourself, but your family and friends, and to help strangers when and if possible, as that is the manifestation of all things good that was taught by Yo hee wah, the Great Spirit, who asked for nothing in return. It is the Cherokees who pray in gratitude for the love of God that has produced a continuous life for people, and for all that we have received. The Cherokee who praises God for production of material wealth is but a child in the eyes of the Great Spirit Yo hee wah; that child is not to be punished or scolded by Yo hee wah, for the God of creation is a kind and loving God who would not punish a child for being a child, without adult wisdom, regardless of their age. However, that person who blindly seeks easy solutions to their problems and who acts, not out of gratitude for the miracles of creation’s gifts that they have have already been given, but out of greed for more, will not please God. Sometimes in life, a person becomes a sad person because they do not have enough knowledge of the human powers they have been given, and that they will possess forever
It is our adult responsibility, once we are on the path to being a knowledgeable person, with the knowledge of all of our gifts of God’s creation, to exhibit our appreciation and our love for our creation to the Great Spirit of Yo hee wah, the God of all creation. If we do not, that is a lack of courage that can only come from a lack of faith. We should choose to take care of these gifts because we were given dominion over the earth, in a manner reflective of God’s wisdom, because we were made in God’s image; the earth was by divine design planned as a home to fulfill our destiny; however, with the advent of humans choosing free will, the existence of the earth lay in the hands of people. It is for us to choose whether or not we take care of the gifts we have received.
For humans not to care is ignorant but not evil, as evil truly does not exist outside of the human some God-given natural instincts, and, left uneducated, all humans will in time naturally become apathetic, which unto itself can cause the horrendous damage that always physically mirrors the man made stories–those imagined, traditional, superstitious, manipulative, for-profit stories of evil as having free will or an independent power. That is not within the laws or the protection and grace of the one God of creation, and these stories are a threat to the ignorant who have not enough knowledge of God to protect themselves. Many will tell you that unless you have a professional human gatekeeper, employed to represent you and your family to God, that you will burn in hell. Only a person who truly understands the merest fraction of God’s love and wisdom knows with certainty that nothing supernatural can be found on the earth or in the heavens that was sent to be evil. Evil exists only in the actions and irrational thoughts born of a mind ignorant of the knowledge of Yo hee wah, the Great Spirit.
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Cherokees often in non-ceremonial functions wear cowboy hats, usually after they join the Cherokee nation of Sequoyah they learn of the turbines that were worn for millennia before, the Spanish hat arrived, here in the Americas
Those humans who have chosen not to have the knowledge of the love of God all around us, even though God has been loving them from the time of the second day of creation, when the first humans were created by direction of Yo hee wah, who commanded the heavens and the earth to make such humans. This is a time before Yo hee wah made Adam and Eve (in the most ancient language, they were called Geb and Nuet). Both male and female were contained within this one creation of God and called Adadam; this was before he physically divided them into two persons. God made them two, in order to provide company one for the other, and to bring life to the earth, to breathe the air of the earth. This is the evidence that God is the only source of divine inspiration, for no human emotionality can replace the pure love which powers divine inspiration which, when we listen, speaks directly to our soul.
We are witnessing the very same daily movements of the moon, sun, earth and heavens as all those humans who came before us witnessed. Some of them gave witness to these miracles and were amazed and expressed gratitude for the goodness and some passed their stories down by telling their generations through time, always motivated by the love of one for another, so that we would not and will not perish from the earth, whether from war, famine, disease, or the destructive beliefs in the minds of immature people, wilfully ignorant of God’s greatness. The darkest times of the history of mankind, with its horrendously damaging human acts of ignorance and deeds of destruction followed or proceeded by an apathetic part of human civilization taking no responsibility for such an affront of unprincipled behavior, have been the evidence that un-caring humans of this world are without any knowledge of the one loving God, Yo hee wah, the God of Creation.
The principal person must acknowledge the wonders of God’s creation as coming from a source that people will never completely understand, for human beings have two choices: they may declare that everything came from nothing, or declare that everything has always been. To declare that everything came from nothing is to declare that magic exists, and to declare that everything has always been is to understand that the source for reality is evidenced in the existence of God’s creation that is right before us. To say that creation came from nothing is the very authority that allows for humans to war against other humans, as each side must see the other side as not being actual creations of the One God Yo hee wah, or not the creations of their God, or are of no God, as that is the justification for the taking of any human life. One must believe that their enemies did not come from anything and have not the same souls as themselves; this is the way that humans profit from war and crime; greed will always be the motive. Until humans decide to become the principal people of Yo hee wah, there will still be those who believe in magic, and magic really doesn’t exist except in a dream state in the minds of humans. That which the Pharisees call evil is only greed, and has always existed; it is a legacy handed down by apathetic humans to those who would become apathetic themselves and so forth and so on. Until we choose to take responsible dominion and actual possession of our gifts from God’s creation and use our free will to declare the concept of evil and hell to be of human origin, manufactured by the Pharisees, the gatekeepers of yesterday, and their descendants, the gatekeepers of today, and who keep from people the knowledge of God being love and kindness for all of humanity, we too will remain apathetic. To hate the gatekeepers is to give the gatekeepers power over your life; to understand and expose the gatekeepers secret that they have no power to protect anyone from anything that is real, is to take power over your own beliefs.
(Photo – Right)Priest Rogers shows the ambassadors, the antique official Mexican recognition, of the Cherokees, from the Mexican archives.
The concept of evil is an early human creation, coming out of the first fears of predators in the dark to fears of those who were dressed as predators to scare people out of their possessions. This fear was quickly used by the gatekeepers. When people started to evolve, they began to question the effectiveness of whatever fearful object that the gatekeepers were utilizing to frighten, control, and profit from those who work at gathering food. This became, in time, an unsuccessful method for the collection of valuable goods; the self- proclaimed gatekeeper then invented something more frightening than a vicious predator; thus they called on a vengeful, mean God. They did not call him Yo hi wah, for they originally did not have any knowledge about the one true God, as God did not allow any Pharisees to hear directly this first teachings to the principal chosen people. The gatekeepers then invented fictional demons that were all-powerful, from whom there was no escape; the people were told that these fictional demons had created humans and because they had created man they could do what they wanted with man. A false, vengeful, fickle, God was structured as the master of mankind, because without fear, humans will not pay the gatekeeper for protection. Finally, the Pharisees would seek out and try to take over the chosen people and would teach that God, Yo hee wah, would do something to harm them or their families for their misbehavior of not contributing money or granting power over their lives and free will. For in most the literature of the Pharisees, they would use these, their own fears, of how God might judge them for their own misdeeds and actions. The Pharisees revealed their worst fears that they had about their own behavior, because they had no real knowledge of God, and frightened the people who were vulnerable. Such scary stories, where God punishes people without mercy, always carry the message that you must fear God; this is the biggest human lie in the history of mankind.
Our free will is allowed to exist by Yo hee wah because we chose not to be in Eden; thus it is our responsibility to choose that which is true over that which is false. We must work to become closer to the knowledge of the God that created us, as it was we who chose to walk out of Eden where we had everything we could wish for except human freedom. We left with only one thing, the innate human instinct within all humans that they are part of the heart, soul and mind of God. The gift which comes with the burden of earthly responsibility is the gift of the human free will. We have been given the ultimate gift of the power and authority to be our own gatekeeper. We are no longer living in an involuntary animal state, as had those who came before Adam and Eve, the children of the earth and the heavens, which occurred on the second day of creation. We must allow ourselves to be guided through the Great Spirit and the inspiration of love from Yo hee wah, the One God who created all things to accept the responsibility to protect and to preserve all good things of earth given to all of people. As a principal people, you should choose to be guided by the inspiration and divine wisdom. The principal person will, in time, choose to have loyalty and vigilance in the fulfillment of our gift of dominion over all things given to us by the Great Spirit Yo hee wah, the One God of creation, the God of love, who created us all.
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Hiwatha and the Iroquois Confederation
By Horatio Hale
http://www.markshep.com/peace/Hiawatha.html
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This work is in the public domain and may be reproduced freely.
Contrary to his portrayal by Longfellow, Hiawatha was a statesman, peacemaker, and co-founder of the Iroquois League, Confederacy, or Confederation. This address by the pioneering nineteenth-century linguist Horatio Hale offers one of the earliest recorded versions of Hiawatha’s story, and the one probably closest to historical fact.
The address was published as the booklet Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation: A Study in Anthropology, private printing, Salem, Massachusetts, 1881, and as “A Lawgiver of the Stone Age,” in Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Vol. 30, 1882. It was then substantially reproduced by Hale in his book The Iroquois Book of Rites, Brinton, Philadelphia, 1883.
From that book come the following remarks by Hale on his sources: “The particulars . . . were drawn chiefly from notes gathered during many visits to the Reserve of the Six Nations, on the Grand River, in Ontario, supplemented by information obtained in two visits to the Onondaga Reservation, in the State of New York, near Syracuse. My informants were the most experienced councillors, and especially the ‘wampum-keepers,’ the official annalists of their people.”
The beginning and ending of Hale’s address have been omitted here, as they serve only to place his account in the context of an issue no longer of concern.
—Mark Shepard
It is well known that the Iroquois tribes, whom our ancestors termed the Five Nations, were, when first visited by Europeans, in the precise condition which, according to all the evidence we possess, was held by the inhabitants of the Old World during what has been designated the Stone Age. Anyone who examines the abandoned site of an ancient Iroquois town will find there relics of precisely the same cast as those which are disinterred from the burial mounds and caves of prehistoric Europe—implements of flint and bone, ornaments of shells, and fragments of rude pottery. Trusting to these evidences alone, we might suppose that the people who wrought them were of the humblest grade of intellect. But the testimony of historians, of travellers, of missionaries, and perhaps his own personal observation, would make him aware that this opinion would be erroneous, and that these Indians were, in their own way, acute reasoners, eloquent speakers, and most skilful and far-seeing politicians. He would know that for more than a century, though never mustering more than five thousand fighting men, they were able to hold the balance of power on this continent between France and England; and that in a long series of negotiations they proved themselves qualified to cope in council with the best diplomatists whom either of those powers could depute to deal with them. It is only recently that we have learned, through the researches of a careful and philosophic investigator, the Hon. L. H. Morgan, that their internal polity was marked by equal wisdom, and had been developed and consolidated into a system of government, embodying many of what are deemed the best principles and methods of political science—representation, federation, self-government through local and general legislatures—all resulting in personal liberty, combined with strict subordination to public law. But it has not been distinctly known that for many of these advantages the Five Nations were indebted to one individual, who bore to them the same relation which the great reformers and lawgivers of antiquity bore to the communities whose gratitude has made their names illustrious.
A singular fortune has attended the name and memory of Hiawatha. Though actually an historical personage, and not of very ancient date, of whose life and deeds many memorials remain, he has been confused with two Indian divinities, the one Iroquois, the other Algonquin, and his history has been distorted and obscured almost beyond recognition. Through the cloud of mythology which has enveloped his memory, the genius of Longfellow has discerned something of his real character, and has made his name, at least, a household word wherever the English language is spoken. It remains to give a correct account of the man himself and of the work which he accomplished, as it has been received from the official annalists of his people. The narrative is confirmed by the evidence of contemporary wampum records, and by written memorials in the native tongue, one of which is at least a hundred years old.
According to the best evidence that can be obtained, the formation of the Iroquois confederacy dates from about the middle of the fifteenth century. There is reason to believe that prior to that time the five tribes, who are dignified with the title of nations, had held the region south of Lake Ontario, extending from the Hudson to the Genesee river, for many generations, and probably for many centuries. Tradition makes their earlier seat to have been north of the St. Lawrence river, which is probable enough. It also represents the Mohawks as the original tribe, of which the others are offshoots; and this tradition is confirmed by the evidence of language. That the Iroquois tribes were originally one people, and that their separation into five communities, speaking distinct dialects, dates many centuries back, are both conclusions as certain as any facts in physical science. Three hundred and fifty years ago they were isolated tribes, at war occasionally with one another, and almost constantly with the fierce Algonquins who surrounded them. Not infrequently, also, they had to withstand and to avenge the incursions of warriors belonging to more distant tribes of various stocks, Hurons, Cherokees and Dakotas. Yet they were not peculiarly a warlike people. They had large and strongly palisaded towns, well-cultivated fields, and substantial houses, sometimes a hundred feet long, in which many kindred families dwelt together.
At this time two great dangers, the one from without, the other from within, pressed upon these tribes. The Mohegans, or Mohicans, a powerful Algonquin people, whose settlements stretched along the Hudson river, south of the Mohawks, and extended thence eastward into New England, waged a desperate war against them. In this war the most easterly of the Iroquois, the Mohawks and Oneidas, bore the brunt and were the greatest sufferers. On the other hand, the two westerly nations, the Senecas and Cayugas, had a peril of their own to encounter. The central nation, the Onondagas, were then under the control of a dreaded chief, whose name is variously given, Atotarho, Watatotahlo, Tododaho, according to the dialect of the speaker and the orthography of the writer. He was a man of great force of character and of formidable qualities—haughty, ambitious, crafty and bold—a determined and successful warrior, and at home, so far as the constitution of an Indian tribe would allow, a stern and remorseless tyrant. He tolerated no equal. The chiefs who ventured to oppose him were taken off one after another by secret means, or were compelled to flee for safety to other tribes. His subtlety and artifices had acquired for him the reputation of a wizard. He knew, they say, what was going on at a distance as well as if he were present; and he could destroy his enemies by some magical art, while he himself was far away. In spite of the fear which he inspired, his domination would probably not have been endured by an Indian community, but for his success in war. He made himself and his people a terror to the Cayugas and the Senecas. According to one account, he had subdued both of those tribes; but the record-keepers of the present day do not confirm this statement, which indeed is not consistent with the subsequent history of the confederation.
The name Atotarho signifies “entangled.” The usual process by which mythology, after a few generations, makes fables out of names, has not been wanting here. In the legends which the Indian story-tellers recount in winter about their cabin fires, Atotarho figures as a being of preterhuman nature, whose head, in lieu of hair, is adorned with living snakes. A rude pictorial representation shows him seated and giving audience, in horrible state, with the upper part of his person enveloped by these writhing and entangled reptiles. But the grave Councillors of the Canadian Reservation, who recite his history as they have heard it from their fathers at every installation of a high chief, do not repeat these inventions of marvel-loving gossips, and only smile with good-humored derision when they are referred to.
There was at this time among the Onondagas a chief of high rank whose name, variously written—Hiawatha, Hayonwatha, Ayongwhata, Taoungwatha—is rendered, “he who seeks the wampum belt.” He had made himself greatly esteemed by his wisdom and his benevolence. He was now past middle age. Though many of his friends and relatives had perished by the machinations of Atotarho, he himself had been spared. The qualities which gained him general respect had, perhaps, not been without influence even on that redoubtable chief. Hiawatha had long beheld with grief the evils which afflicted not only his own nation, but all the other tribes about them, through the continual wars in which they were engaged, and the misgovernment and miseries at home which these wars produced. With much meditation he had elaborated in his mind the scheme of a vast confederation which would ensure universal peace. In the mere plan of a confederation there was nothing new. There are probably few, if any, Indian tribes which have not, at one time or another been members of a league or confederacy. It may almost be said to be their normal condition. But the plan which Hiawatha had evolved differed from all others in two particulars. The system which he devised was to be not a loose and transitory league, but a permanent government. While each nation was to retain its own council and its management of local affairs, the general control was to be lodged in a federal senate, composed of representatives elected by each nation, holding office during good behavior, and acknowledged as ruling chiefs throughout the whole confederacy. Still further, and more remarkably, the confederation was not to be a limited one. It was to be indefinitely expansible. The avowed design of its proposer was to abolish war altogether. He wished the federation to extend until all the tribes of men should be included in it, and peace should everywhere reign. Such is the positive testimony of the Iroquois themselves; and their statement, as will be seen, is supported by historical evidence.
Hiawatha’s first endeavor was to enlist his own nation in the cause. He summoned a meeting of the chiefs and people of the Onondaga towns. The summons, proceeding from a chief of his rank and reputation, attracted a large concourse. “They came together,” said the narrator, “along the creeks, from all parts, to the general council-fire.” But what effect the grand projects of the chief, enforced by the eloquence for which he was noted, might have had upon his auditors, could not be known. For there appeared among them a well-known figure, grim, silent and forbidding, whose terrible aspect overawed the assemblage. The unspoken displeasure of Atotarho was sufficient to stifle all debate, and the meeting dispersed. This result, which seems a singular conclusion of an Indian council—the most independent and free-spoken of all gatherings—is sufficiently explained by the fact that Atotarho had organized among the more reckless warriors of his tribe a band of unscrupulous partisans, who did his bidding without question, and took off by secret murder all persons against whom he bore a grudge. The knowledge that his followers were scattered through the assembly, prepared to mark for destruction those who should offend him, might make the boldest orator chary of speech. Hiawatha alone was undaunted. He summoned a second meeting, which was attended by a smaller number, and broke up as before, in confusion, on Atotarho’s appearance. The unwearied reformer sent forth his runners a third time; but the people were disheartened. When the day of the council arrived, no one attended. Then, continued the narrator, Hiawatha seated himself on the ground in sorrow. He enveloped his head in his mantle of skins, and remained for a long time bowed down in grief and thought. At length he arose and left the town, taking his course toward the southeast. He had formed a bold design. As the councils of his own nation were closed to him, he would have recourse to those of other tribes. At a short distance from the town (so minutely are the circumstances recounted) he passed his great antagonist, seated near a well-known spring, stern and silent as usual. No word passed between the determined representatives of war and peace; but it was doubtless not without a sensation of triumphant pleasure that the ferocious war-chief saw his only rival and opponent in council going into what seemed to be voluntary exile. Hiawatha plunged into the forest; he climbed mountains; he crossed a lake; he floated down the Mohawk river in a canoe. Many incidents of his journey are told, and in this part of the narrative alone some occurrences of a marvelous cast are related even by the official historians. Indeed, the flight of Hiawatha from Onondaga to the country of the Mohawks is to the Five Nations what the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina is to the votaries of Islam. It is the turning point of their history. In embellishing the narrative at this point, their imagination has been allowed a free course. Leaving aside these marvels, however, we need only refer here to a single incident which may well enough have been of actual occurrence. A lake which Hiawatha crossed had shores abounding in small white shells. These he gathered and strung upon strings, which he disposed upon his breast, as a token to all whom he should meet that he came as a messenger of peace. And this, according to one authority, was the origin of wampum, of which Hiawatha was the inventor. That honor, however, is one which must be denied to him. The evidence of sepulchral relics shows that wampum was known to the mysterious Mound Builders, as well as in all succeeding ages. Moreover, if the significance of white wampum-strings as a token of peace had not been well known in his day, Hiawatha would not have relied upon them as a means of proclaiming his pacific purpose.
Early one morning he arrived at a Mohawk town, the residence of the noted chief Dekanawidah, whose name, in point of celebrity, ranks in Iroquois tradition with those of Hiawatha and Atotarho. It is probable that he was known by reputation to Hiawatha, and not unlikely that they were related. According to one account Dekanawidah was an Onondaga, adopted among the Mohawks. Another narrative makes him a Mohawk by birth. The probability seems to be that he was the son of an Onondaga father, who had been adopted by the Mohawks, and of a Mohawk mother. That he was not of pure Mohawk blood is shown by the fact, which is remembered, that his father had had successively three wives, one belonging to each of the three clans, Bear, Wolf, and Turtle, which compose the Mohawk nation. If the father had been a Mohawk, he would have belonged to one of the Mohawk clans, and could not then (according to the Indian law) have married into it. He had seven sons, including Dekanawidah, who, with their families, dwelt together in one of the “long houses” common in that day among the Iroquois. These ties of kindred, together with this fraternal strength, and his reputation as a sagacious councillor, gave Dekanawidah great influence among his people. But, in the Indian sense, he was not the leading chief. This position belonged to Tekarihoken (better known in books as Tecarihoga) whose primacy as the first chief of the eldest among the Iroquois nations was then, and is still, universally admitted. Each nation has always had a head-chief, to whom belonged the hereditary right and duty of lighting the council-fire, and taking the first place in public meetings. But among the Indians, as in other communities, hereditary rank and personal influence do not always, or indeed ordinarily, go together. If Hiawatha could gain over Dekanawidah to his views, he would have done much toward the accomplishment of his purposes.
In the early dawn he seated himself on a fallen trunk, near the spring from which the inhabitants of the long-house drew their water. Presently one of the brothers came out with a vessel of elm-bark, and approached the spring. Hiawatha sat silent and motionless. Something in his aspect awed the warrior, who feared to address him. He returned to the house, and said to Dekanawidah, “a man, or a figure like a man, is seated by the spring, having his breast covered with strings of white shells.” “It is a guest,” replied the chief; “go and bring him in. We will make him welcome.” Thus Hiawatha and Dekanawidah first met. They found in each other kindred spirits. The sagacity of the Mohawk chief grasped at once the advantages of the proposed plan, and the two worked together in perfecting it, and in commending it to the people. After much discussion in council, the adhesion of the Mohawk nation was secured. Dekanawidah then despatched two of his brothers as ambassadors to the nearest tribe, the Oneidas, to lay the project before them. The Oneida nation is deemed to be a comparatively recent offshoot from the Mohawks. The difference of language is slight, showing that their separation was much later than that of the Onondagas. In the figurative speech of the Iroquois, the Oneida is the son, and the Onondaga is the brother, of the Mohawk. Dekanawidah had good reason to expect that it would not prove difficult to win the consent of the Oneidas to the proposed scheme. But delay and deliberation mark all public acts of the Indians. The ambassadors found the leading chief, Odatshehte, at his town on the Oneida creek. He received their message in a friendly way, but required time for his people to consider it in council. “Come back in another day,” he said to the messengers. In the political speech of the Indians, a day is understood to mean a year. The envoys carried back the reply to Dekanawidah and Hiawatha, who knew that they could do nothing but wait the prescribed time. After the lapse of a year, they repaired to the place of meeting. The treaty which initiated the great league was then and there ratified between the representatives of the Mohawk and Oneida nations. The name of Odatshehte means “the quiver-bearer;” and as Atotarho, “the entangled,” is fabled to have had his head wreathed with snaky locks, and as Hiawatha, “the wampum-seeker,” is represented to have wrought shells into wampum, so the Oneida chief is reputed to have appeared at this treaty bearing at his shoulder a quiver full of arrows.
The Onondagas lay next to the Oneidas. To them, or rather to their terrible chief, the next application was made. The first meeting of Atotarho and Dekanawidah is a notable event in Iroquois history. At a later day, a native artist sought to represent it in an historical picture, which has been already referred to. Atotarho is seated in solitary and surly dignity, smoking a long pipe, his head and body encircled with contorted and angry serpents. Standing before him are two figures which cannot be mistaken. The foremost, a plumed and cinctured warrior, depicted as addressing the Onondaga chief, holds in his right hand, as a staff, his flint-headed spear—the ensign which marks him as the representative of the Kanienga, or “People of the Flint”—for so the Mohawks style themselves. Behind him another plumed figure bears in his hand a bow with arrows, and at his shoulder a quiver. Divested of its mythological embellishments, the picture rudely represents the interview which actually took place. The immediate result was unpromising. The Onondaga chief coldly refused to entertain the project, which he had already rejected when proposed by Hiawatha. The ambassadors were not discouraged. Beyond the Onondagas were scattered the villages of the Cayugas, a people described by the Jesuit missionaries, at a later day, as the most mild and tractable of the Iroquois. They were considered an offshoot of the Onondagas, to whom they bore the same filial relation which the Oneidas bore to the Mohawks. The journey of the advocates of peace through the forest to the Cayuga capital, and their reception, are minutely detailed in the traditionary narrative. The Cayugas, who had suffered from the prowess and cruelty of the Onondaga chief, needed little persuasion. They readily consented to come into the league, and their chief, Akahenyonk, “the wary spy,” joined the Mohawk and Oneida representatives in a new embassy to the Onondagas. Acting probably upon the advice of Hiawatha, who knew better than any other the character of the community and the chief with whom they had to deal, they made proposals highly flattering to the self-esteem which was the most notable trait of both ruler and people. The Onondagas should be the leading nation of the confederacy. Their chief town should be the federal capital, where the great councils of the league should be held, and where its records should be preserved. The nation should be represented in the council by fourteen senators, while no other nation should have more than ten. And as the Onondagas should be the leading tribe, so Atotarho should be the leading chief. He alone should have the right of summoning the federal council, and no act of the council to which he objected should be valid. In other words, an absolute veto was given to him. To enhance his personal dignity two high chiefs were appointed as his special aids and counsellors, his “secretaries of state,” so to speak. Other insignia of preeminence were to be possessed by him; and, in view of all these distinctions, it is not surprising that his successor, who, two centuries later, retained the same prerogatives, should have been occasionally styled by the English colonists “the emperor of the Five Nations.” It might seem, indeed, at first thought, that the founders of the confederacy had voluntarily placed themselves and their tribes in a position of almost abject subserviency to Atotarho and his followers. But they knew too well the qualities of their people to fear for them any political subjection. It was certain that when once the league was established, and its representatives had met in council, character and intelligence would assume their natural sway, and mere artificial rank and dignity would be little regarded. Atotarho and his people, however, yielded either to these specious offers or to the pressure which the combined urgency of the three allied nations now brought to bear upon them. They finally accepted the league; and the great chief, who had originally opposed it, now naturally became eager to see it as widely extended as possible. He advised its representatives to go on at once to the westward, and enlist the populous Seneca towns, pointing out how this might best be done. This advice was followed, and the adhesion of the Senecas was secured by giving to their two leading chiefs, Kanyadariyo (“beautiful lake”) and Shadekaronyes (“the equal skies”), the offices of military commanders of the confederacy, with the title of door-keepers of the “Long-House”—that being the figure by which the league was known.
The six national leaders who have been mentioned—Dekanawidah for the Mohawks, Odatshehte for the Oneidas, Atotarho for the Onondagas, Akahenyonk for the Cayugas, Kanyadariyo and Shadekaronyes for the two great divisions of the Senecas—met in convention near the Onondaga Lake, with Hiawatha for their adviser, and a vast concourse of their followers, to settle the terms and rules of their confederacy, and to nominate its first council. Of this council, nine members (or ten, if Dekanawidah be included) were assigned to the Mohawks, a like number to the Oneidas, fourteen to the lordly Onondagas, ten to the Cayugas, and eight to the Senecas. Except in the way of compliment, the number assigned to each nation was really of little consequence, inasmuch as, by the rule of the league, unanimity was exacted in all their decisions. This unanimity, however, did not require the suffrage of every member of the council. The representatives of each nation first deliberated apart upon the question proposed. In this separate council the majority decided; and the leading chief then expressed in the great council the voice of his nation. Thus the veto of Atotarho ceased at once to be peculiar to him, and became a right exercised by each of the allied nations. This requirement of unanimity, embarrassing as it might seem, did not prove to be so in practice. Whenever a question arose on which opinions were divided, its decision was either postponed, or some compromise was reached which left all parties contented.
The first members of the council were appointed by the convention—under what precise rule is unknown; but their successors came in by a method in which the hereditary and the elective systems were singularly combined, and in which female suffrage had an important place. When a chief died or (as sometimes happened) was deposed for incapacity or misconduct, some member of the same family succeeded him. Rank followed the female line; and this successor might be any descendant of the late chief’s mother or grandmother—his brother, his cousin or his nephew—but never his son. Among many persons who might thus be eligible, the selection was made in the first instance by a family council. In this council the “chief matron” of the family, a noble dame whose position and right were well defined, had the deciding voice. This remarkable fact is affirmed by the Jesuit missionary Lafitan, and the usage remains in full vigor among the Canadian Iroquois to this day. If there are two or more members of the family who seem to have equal claims, the nominating matron sometimes declines to decide between them, and names them both or all, leaving the ultimate choice to the nation or the federal council. The council of the nation next considers the nomination, and if dissatisfied, refers it back to the family for a new designation. If content, the national council reports the name of the candidate to the federal senate, in which resides the power of ratifying or rejecting the choice of the nation; but the power of rejection is rarely exercised, though that of expulsion for good cause is not infrequently exerted. The new chief inherits the name of his predecessor. In this respect, as in some others, the resemblance of the Great Council to the English House of Peers is striking. As Norfolk succeeds to Norfolk, so Tekarihoken succeeds Tekarihoken. The great names of Hiawatha and Atotarho are still borne by plain farmer-councillors on the Canadian Reservation.
When the League was established, Hiawatha had been adopted by the Mohawk nation as one of their chiefs. The honor in which he was held by them is shown by his position on the roll of councillors, as it has been handed down from the earliest times. As the Mohawk nation is the “elder brother,” the names of its chiefs are first recited. At the head of the list is the leading Mohawk chief, Tekarihoken, who represents the noblest lineage of the Iroquois stock. Next to him, and second on the roll, is the name of Hiawatha. That of his great colleague, Dekanawidah, nowhere appears. He was a member of the first council; but he forbade his people to appoint a successor to him. “Let the others have successors,” he said proudly, “for others can advise you like them. But I am the founder of your league, and no one else can do what I have done.”
The boast was not unwarranted. Though planned by another, the structure had been reared mainly by his labors. But the Five Nations, while yielding abundant honor to the memory of Dekanawidah, have never regarded him with the same affectionate reverence which has always clung to the name of Hiawatha. His tender and lofty wisdom, his wide-reaching benevolence, and his fervent appeals to their better sentiments, enforced by the eloquence of which he was master, touched chords in the popular heart which have continued to respond until this day. Fragments of the speeches in which he addressed the council and the people of the league are still remembered and repeated. The fact that the league only carried out a part of the grand design which he had in view is constantly affirmed. Yet the failure was not due to lack of effort. In pursuance of his original purpose, when the league was firmly established, envoys were sent to other tribes to urge them to join it or at least to become allies. One of these embassies penetrated to the distant Cherokees, the hereditary enemies of the Iroquois nations. For some reason with which we are not acquainted—perhaps the natural suspicion or vindictive pride of that powerful community—this mission was a failure. Another, despatched to the western Algonquins, had better success. A strict alliance was formed with the far-spread Ojibway tribes, and was maintained inviolate for at least two hundred years, until at length the influence of the French, with the sympathy of the Ojibways for the conquered Hurons, undid to some extent, though not entirely, this portion of Hiawatha’s work.
His conceptions were beyond his time, and beyond ours; but their effect, within a limited sphere, was very great. For more than three centuries the bond which he devised held together the Iroquois nations in perfect amity. It proved, moreover, as he intended, elastic. The territory of the Iroquois, constantly extending as their united strength made itself felt, became the “Great Asylum” of the Indian tribes. Of the conquered Eries and Hurons, many hundreds were received and adopted among their conquerors. The Tuscaroras, expelled by the English from North Carolina, took refuge with the Iroquois, and became the sixth nation of the League. From still further south, the Tuteloes and Saponies, of Dakota stock, after many wars with the Iroquois, fled to them from their other enemies, and found a cordial welcome. A chief still sits in the council as a representative of the Tuteloes, though the tribe itself has been swept away by disease, or absorbed in the larger nations. Many fragments of tribes of Algonquin lineage—Delawares, Nanticokes, Mohicans, Mississagas—sought the same hospitable protection, which never failed them. Their descendants still reside on the Canadian Reservation, which may well be styled an aboriginal “refuge of nations”—affording a striking evidence in our own day of the persistent force of a great idea, when embodied in practical shape by the energy of a master mind.
The name by which their constitution or organic law is known among them is kayánerenh, to which the epitaph kowa, “great,” is frequently added. This word, kayánerenh, is sometimes rendered “law,” or “league,” but its proper meaning seems to be “peace.” It is used in this sense by the missionaries, in their translations of the scriptures and the prayer-book. In such expressions as “the Prince of Peace,” “the author of peace,” “give peace in our time,” we find kayánerenh employed with this meaning. Its root is yaner, signifying “noble,” or “excellent,” which yields, among many derivatives, kayánere, “goodness,” and kayánerenh, “peace,” or “peacefulness.” The national hymn of the confederacy, sung whenever their “Condoling Council” meets, commences with a verse referring to their league, which is literally rendered, “We come to greet and thank the Peace” (kayánerenh). When the list of their ancient chiefs, the fifty original Councillors, is chanted in the closing litany of the meeting, there is heard from time to time, as the leaders of each clan are named, an outburst of praise, in the words—
“This was the roll of you—
You that were joined in the work,
You that confirmed the work,
The GREAT PEACE.” (Kayánerenh-kowa.)
The regard of Englishmen for their Magna Charta and Bill of Rights, and that of Americans for their national Constitution, seem weak in comparison with the intense gratitude and reverence of the Five Nations for the “Great Peace” which Hiawatha and his colleagues established for them.
Of the subsequent life of Hiawatha, and of his death, we have no sure information. The records of the Iroquois are historical, and not biographical. As Hiawatha had been made a chief among the Mohawks, he doubtless continued to reside with that nation. A tradition, which is in itself highly probable, represents him as devoting himself to the congenial work of clearing away the obstructions in the streams which intersect the country then inhabited by the confederated nations, and which formed the chief means of communication between them. That he thus, in some measure, anticipated the plans of De Witt Clinton and his associates, on a smaller scale, but with perhaps a larger statesmanship, we may be willing enough to believe. A wild legend, recorded by some writers, but not told of him by the Canadian Iroquois, and apparently belonging to their ancient mythology, gives him an apotheosis, and makes him ascend to heaven in a white canoe. It may be proper to dwell for a moment on the singular complication of mistakes which has converted this Indian reformer and statesman into a mythological personage.
When by the events of the Revolutionary war the original confederacy was broken up, the larger portion of the people followed Brant to Canada. The refugees comprised nearly the whole of the Mohawks, and the greater part of the Onondagas and Cayugas, with many members of the other nations. In Canada their first proceeding was to reestablish, as far as possible, their ancient league, with all its laws and ceremonies. The Onondagas had brought with them most of their wampum records, and the Mohawks jealously preserved the memories of the federation, in whose formation they had borne a leading part. The history of the league continued to be the topic of their orators whenever a new chief was installed into office. Thus the remembrance of the facts has been preserved among them with much clearness and precision, and with very little admixture of mythological elements. With the fragments of the tribes which remained on the southern side of the Great Lakes the case was very different. Except among the Senecas, who, of all the Five Nations, had had least to do with the formation of the league, the ancient families which had furnished the members of their senate, and were the conservators of their history, had mostly fled to Canada or the West. The result was that among the interminable stories with which the common people beguile their winter nights, the traditions of Atotarho and Hiawatha became intermingled with the legends of their mythology. An accidental similarity, in the Onondaga dialect, between the name of Hiawatha and that of one of their ancient divinities, led to a confusion between the two, which has misled some investigators. This deity bears, in the sonorous Mohawk tongue, the name of Aronhiawagon, meaning “the Holder of the Heavens.” The early French missionaries, prefixing a particle, made the name in their orthography, Tearonhiaonagon. He was, they tell us, “the great god of the Iroquois.” Among the Onondagas of the present day, the name is abridged to Taonhiawagi, or Tahiawagi. The confusion between this name and that of Hiawatha (which, in another form, is pronounced Tayonwatha) seems to have begun more than a century ago; for Pyrlaeus, the Moravian missionary, heard among the Iroquois (according to Heckewelder) that the person who first proposed the league was an ancient Mohawk, named Thannawege. Mr. J. V. H. Clark, in his interesting history of Onondaga, makes the name to have been originally Ta-oun-ya-wat-ha, and describes the bearer as “the deity who presides over fisheries and hunting-grounds.” He came down from heaven in a white canoe and after sundry adventures, which remind one of the labors of Hercules, assumed the name of Hiawatha (signifying, we are told, “a very wise man”), and dwelt for a time as an ordinary mortal among men, occupied in works of benevolence. Finally, after founding the confederacy and bestowing many prudent counsels upon the people, he returned to the skies by the same conveyance in which he had descended. This legend was communicated by Clark to Schoolcraft, when the latter was compiling his “Notes on the Iroquois.” Mr. Schoolcraft, pleased with the poetical cast of the story and the euphonious name, made confusion worse confounded by transferring the hero to a distant region and identifying him with Manabozho, a fantastic divinity of the Ojibways. Schoolcraft’s volume, absurdly entitled “The Hiawatha Legends,” has not in it a single fact or fiction relating either to Hiawatha himself or to the Iroquois deity Aronhiawagon. Wild Ojibway stories concerning Manabozho and his comrades form the staple of its contents. But it is to this collection that we owe the charming poem of Longfellow; and thus, by an extraordinary fortune, a grave Iroquois lawgiver of the fifteenth century has become, in modern literature, an Ojibway demigod, son of the West Wind, and companion of the tricky Paupukkeewis, the boastful Iago, and the strong Kwasind. If a Chinese traveller, during the middle ages, inquiring into the history and religion of the western nations, had confounded King Alfred with King Arthur, and both with Odin, he would not have made a more preposterous confusion of names and characters than that which has hitherto disguised the genuine personality of the great Onondaga reformer.
About the main events of his history, and about his character and purposes, there can be no reasonable doubt. We have the wampum belts which he handled, and whose simple hieroglyphics preserve the memory of the public acts in which he took part. We have, also, in the Iroquois “Book of Rites,” a still more clear and convincing testimony to the character both of the legislator and of the people for whom his institutions were designed. This book, sometimes called the “Book of the Condoling Council,” might properly enough be styled an Iroquois Veda. It comprises the speeches, songs and other ceremonies, which, from the earliest period of the confederacy, have composed the proceedings of their council when a deceased chief is lamented and his successor is installed in office. The fundamental laws of the league, a list of their ancient towns, and the names of the chiefs who constituted their first council, chanted in a kind of litany, are also comprised in the collection. The contents, after being preserved in memory, like the Vedas, for many generations, were written down by desire of the chiefs, when their language was first reduced to writing; and the book is therefore more than a century old. Its language, archaic when written, is now partly obsolete, and is fully understood by only a few of the oldest chiefs. It is a genuine Indian composition, and must be accepted as disclosing the true character of its authors. The result is remarkable enough. Instead of a race of rude and ferocious warriors, we find in this book a kindly and affectionate people, full of sympathy for their friends in distress, considerate to their women, tender to their children, anxious for peace, and imbued with a profound reverence for their constitution and its authors. We become conscious of the fact that the aspect in which these Indians have presented themselves to the outside world has been in a large measure deceptive and factitious. The ferocity, craft, and cruelty, which have been deemed their leading traits, have been merely the natural accompaniments of wars of self-preservation, and no more indicated their genuine character than the war-paint, plume, and tomahawk of the warrior displayed the customary guise in which he appeared among his own people. The cruelties of war, when war is a struggle for national existence, are common to all races. The persistent desire for peace, pursued for centuries in federal unions, and in alliances and treaties with other nations, has been manifested by few as steadily as by the countrymen of Hiawatha.
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A Hiawatha and Deganawidah Bookshelf
Good Books and More for Getting Into the Founding of the Iroquois League, Confederacy, Confederation
By Aaron Shepard
For more treats and resources, visit Aaron Shepard at
www.aaronshep.com
Copyright © 2000–2002, 2004, 2014 Aaron Shepard. May be freely copied and shared for any noncommercial purpose as long as no text is altered or omitted.
Here are all the publications I found valuable in researching the legend of Hiawatha, Deganawidah, and the founding of the Iroquois League, Confederacy, or Confederation. Most links are for more info at Amazon.com, an affiliate. Please note that this is the historical Hiawatha, not the cultural travesty in Longfellow’s poem!
The Great Law and the Longhouse: A Political History of the Iroquois Confederacy, by William N. Fenton, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1998. Includes the most thorough and up-to-date overview of the League legend, its evolution, and its variants, as well as extensive material on the League itself.
The Iroquois Book of Rites, by Horatio Hale, Brinton, Philadelphia, 1883; reprinted by Iroqrafts, Ohsweken, Ontario, 1990, and others. Hale was a pioneering nineteenth-century linguist, and this book includes his version of the Hiawatha story, based on interviews with the Iroquois. It is one of the earliest recorded versions, and the one probably closest to historical fact. The section on Hiawatha is drawn almost entirely from an address of Hale’s that had been published as the bookletHiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation: A Study in Anthropology, private printing, Salem, Massachusetts, 1881, and as “A Lawgiver of the Stone Age,” in Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Vol. 30, 1882. Hale’s book includes everything important from that address and adds useful notes—but if you don’t have the book, you can read the address in a slightly abridged form on Mark Shepard’s Peace Page.
Parker on the Iroquois, by Arthur C. Parker, edited with an introduction by William N. Fenton, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York, 1968. Includes a complete reprint of Parker’s influential collection The Constitution of the Five Nations, which has several versions of the legend. As a needed balance, Fenton’s introduction points out the questionable nature of Parker’s sources.
The White Roots of Peace, by Paul A. W. Wallace, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1946. A popular but unreliable interpretation.
Wilderness Messiah: The Story of Hiawatha and the Iroquois, by Thomas Henry, Crown, New York, 1955. Especially good for background material.
Concerning the League: The Iroquois League Tradition as Dictated in Onondaga by John Arthur Gibson, edited and translated by Hanni Woodbury, Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1992. With footnotes.
The Founders of the New York Iroquois League and Its Probable Date, by William M. Beauchamp, New York State Archeological Association, Rochester, New York, 1921.
“Legend of the Founding of the Iroquois League,” by J. N. B. Hewitt, in The American Anthropologist, Vol. 5, April 1892.
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Inspiring prison inmates
Wednesday, 30 November 2005
Grandmother White Eagle, a Cherokee elder, does a lot of inspirational speaking. She also counsels Cherokee prisoners in Texas prisons. She has a method of spiritual rehabilitation amazingly similar to the method I developed as rabbi and director of spiritual rehabilitation at Ramla prison several years ago. Grandmother White Eagle is a staunch supporter of Israel and a firm believer in every iota of Torah. She always knew in her heart that the Cherokees had Jewish roots, and after the Trail of Tears series, she was doubly sure. Since then, she calls me Wa ya Udo, or Wolf Brother in Cherokee.
Here’s another moving letter she sent me, with an amazing drawing:
Osyio Wa ya Udo (Peace Wolf Brother – LB),
I have attached a photo of a card that came to me over the weekend. It is from an incarcerated Cherokee. He hand drew this with colored pencils. Inside about 35 of the 50 men that I counsel signed the inside of the card with blessings from the Creator. It is a thank you for the words of wisdom I have been sharing. These words have all come from the book of Proverbs and they have been blessed – to some it is the first time they have heard these words.
As you can see, when I saw this card I was reminded of my Wa ya Udo. As you also know, the Cherokees believe that the eagle and the wolf work closely together and are brothers. The eagle represents the link between the Creator and man. The wolf has the gift to teach the ways of the Creator – giving out this wisdom to those in need. I saw where you have been involved in prisons as well and I hope you are blessed with this card too – he did not know that we have been communicating – this prison is about 150 miles from here – I will share with them of their new Wa ya Udo and your words of wisdom.
Osyio and Wadoequa (peace and thank you tremendously – LB)
Ulisi Unegv Wohali (Grandmother White Eagle)
Israel’s Lost Tribe’s & The Cherokee
Hebrew writing, some dating back 2000 years, has been discovered on cave walls and etched into stone throughout the Americas. But there’s even more very credible evidence that the Cherokee people must be descendants from Israel’s scattered tribes. James Adair, a Hebrew scholar, who lived among the Cherokee people for 40 years in the early 18th century recorded many amazing similarities between the Cherokee culture and the Hebrews of Scripture.
The Cherokee name for the Creator is YoHeWaH.
YoHeWaH is ONE triune being called El-o-HeyM.
The Cherokee account of CREATION took 7 days, in which God formed a man from red clay, then formed a woman from the man’s rib.
The Cherokee teach that the Creator YoHeWaH caused a great flood, after which He promised never to flood the earth again. The flood wiped out all the giants, and only one family survived, the family of a man named Noo-uh, whom the Creator instructed to build a large Canoe. Onto it, the Creator led two of each animal.
Per their most ancient religious laws, the Cherokee were not to keep idols.
The Cherokee were commanded to work 6 days and rest on the 7th.
The Cherokee consider pork unclean.
Ceremonial Cherokee songs often start with, “Hallel, Hallelu-yah!”
The Cherokee forbid the practice of divination. Witchcraft and “bad medicine” was punishable by death.
When the Cherokee went to war they carried a sacred arc into battle.
Both Cherokee and Hebrews sacrificed fat offerings for sin, trespass, and peace. Both Cherokee and Hebrew priest wore white robes, 72 bells, a sleeveless jacket, and a breast plate set with 12 stones.
Similar Linguistic Structure In Hebrew & Cherokee
The Cherokee word for wife is “havah” or “avah”. “Chavvah” a similar sounding Hebrew word that means “giver of life” has been translated into English as Eve, the very first wife ever mentioned in the Bible.
The Cherokee word for earth is “yahkane”. It means Yah’s footstool.
Similarities In Timekeeping
In both Hebrew and Cherokee cultures a new day begins at sunset. A new month begins with the first sighting of the new moon. The new year, which is celebrated with a gathering, begins with the first sighting of a new moon in the Spring equinox.
Biblical Feast Days & The Cherokee
The Cherokees celebrate a yearly Feast Day similar to the Hebrew Passover. Songs sung during this celebration include the phrase “YoHeWaHsho Mashi-yo,” which means “the anointed ruler.” Likewise, the Cherokees celebrate Feasts that correspond in timing and other aspects to Torah’s mandated First Fruits, Shavuot, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot.
These are just some of the similarities enumerated in the writings of James Adair which strongly indicate a connection between the Cherokee people and ancient Israel. Explorers and botanists, men like William Bartram, James Mooney, John Payne, and Daniel Butrick, who lived among the Cherokee for decades, have also attested to these amazing similarities.
At some time in their ancient past, the Cherokee people have either been greatly influenced by Hebrews, or the Cherokee people are in fact descended from Israel’s scattered tribes. And there are other Tribes living in the Southeast (the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Haliwa-Saponi, and the Muskogee Creek) whose tradition and culture show a Hebraic influence, but these are not as well documented as those of the Cherokee.
Their Old Ones had long prophesied that a message to return to the old ways would be brought to them, and it was. But tragically, the Christian missionaries, who fulfilled this prophecy by bringing Scripture’s “Talking Leaves”, failed to do what the “Talking Leaves” actually said to do. Like the scribes and rabbis spoken of in Matthew 23:2-4, these misguided missionaries exchanged Yah’s written instructions for manmade Church traditions.
The Cherokee and other First Nations tribes were commanded to give up their worship of the Creator through their Feast Days and new moons, through their dancing and beating of drums. Such things, although found throughout Scriptures, were, according to these misguided missionaries, demonic. Yet Israel’s King David declared in Psalms 150:4, “Praise God with the drum and dance.” (CEB)
Drum Or Tambourine
In “That’s What The Old Ones Say,” Chief Joseph RiverWind explains that the Hebrew word transliterated as “toph”, though often translated as tambourine or timbrel, literally means “a hide stretched across a wooden frame and struck with the hand or a stick.” That, my friends, is a drum!
In Closing
I could go on and on, for there is so much that I learned from Chief RiverWind’s book, but this article is already too long. So I will close with a thought and then an exciting announcement. My thought is this: We must stop trying to put the Creator in a theological box. He won’t fit. I first realized this when I learned that many Orthodox Jews have and continue to discover Israel’s Messiah, Yeshua, not from reading the New Testament, nor from the witness of Christians, but from the Hebrew Torah itself…from words, from the letters, and even from the numerical value of those letters. In my article titled, “An Interview With A Dead Rabbi”, I told of Rabbi Simcha Pearlmutter, who came to faith in Israel’s Messiah by reading prayers that were published in Israel’s Orthodox Prayer Book. When this rabbi was alone in his office, he cried out these words to Yeshua. “Lord, I can’t fight you anymore. Either I must throw out the entire orthodox Jewish faith that I was born into, or I must accept You as given to me by our ancient rabbis, and as confirmed by our Holy Scriptures (the Old Testament).”
This is an amazing utterance in a time when so many have been led to believe that Yeshua (Jesus) came to start a new religion.
So what does Orthodox Rabbi Simcha Pearlmutter have to do with Chief Joseph RiverWind? They both learned the TRUTH, but not in the usual way. Chief Joseph had been witnessed to by many Christians, including his own father, but due to the horrific cruelty committed for over 500 years by those who claimed to be Christians, their witness held no validity. The same could be said for Orthodox Rabbi Pearlmutter, who set out to destroy the name of Yeshua, but instead found Yeshua in his own ancient Jewish prayerbooks. Neither came to the faith reading the gospel of John. Neither came to faith in church saying the sinner’s prayer. For these two men, and for hundreds of others like them, the usual pattern did not apply. That is because God cannot be put into a theological or denominational box. He’s too big! He doesn’t fit! God told Rabbi Pearlmutter, “I have made you clean before My Father in heaven. Now please make Me clean before My people. Cleanse My name before My people.” And He instructed Chief Joseph RiverWind to, “Make music and point people to Me!”
The atrocities perpetrated on Chief RiverWind’s people had caused Chief Joseph RiverWind to reject his father’s brand of Christianity. So filled with bitterness, Chief Joseph returned to the old traditional ways of his native people, where he heard stories that had been told and retold, generation after generation, stories committed to memory, word for word, by the Old Ones. These incredible stories revealed the Creator’s name, YoHeWah. They told of a Spirit Being, who responded to the prayers and fasting of an old Chief who went up on a sacred mountain (like Moses) to plead for his people, by creating a window in time, a window in the sky through which the old Lakota Chief beheld a man. This man was pierced and he was hanging on a tree. “He died,” the Spirit Being told the Lakota Chief’, “so your people might live.” When the old Chief asked who this man who died for them was, the Spirit Being told the Chief He was YoHeWah’s Son, “Bright Morning Star.”
Now For My My Exciting Announcement
Our congregation the Vineyard, located in what is known as the Tri-Cities area of TN, Johnson City, Kingsport & Bristol, has moved to a huge building in Johnson City that once was a grocery store, a building God has provided for us rent free. Our congregation is growing. People who’ve been watching our sabbath services online for a while, via our Face Book page, as well as many locals, are joining us. God is leading them here to be a part of what He is doing at the Vineyard. And in just a few weeks Chief RiverWind and his beautiful his wife, Dr. Laralyn, will be among those moving here to join us. With Sukkot not far off, I can hardly wait! Just think, we will be celebrating Sukkot with the RiverWinds! How cool is that?