What Were The Egalitarian Beliefs Of The Cherokee Indians?

The Cherokee were horticulturalists supplementing this with foraging. Cherokee were matrilineal, with strict divisions of labor as women working on the gardens and taking care of the children while the men did the hunting and gathering. The plants they planted mostly were corn and beans. The Cherokee were mostly egalitarian and disliked controversy. They believed everything had a spiritual connection and had power, when the men went gathering and hunting the men had to perform rituals to appease the spiritual world. This was due to their belief of harmony needed in the universe. The Cherokee were horticulturists, southeastern United States, were they lived in “an area spanning 124,000 square miles and encompassing what would eventually become
Each village had a council, which was democratic, as everybody was equal and could say what was on their minds. There was also a chief who merely started the issues that needed to be discussed and kept the peace during these talks. The council would meet nightly at the council house, which was the largest house in the village. The issues were to be debated by the village people. “The council meetings were nonconfrontational. Discussion was continued until a consensus could be obtained, or if none was possible, the decision was postponed” (Anderson: 5). This type of government goes back to their egalitarian beliefs of everyone being equal. This was also done to avoid controversy and dissent in the group. If someone disagreed with the consensus they would most times back down in order to keep the peace. There were two different kinds of government for each village, there was a white government and a red government. The white government was the government during peace time, there was the white chief who was called the Beloved Man by the Cherokee. Then the red government was the government enacted during the time of war for the Cherokee, their chief was called the Great War Chief. “The Cherokee Peace Chief was in charge of domestic issues and the ceremonial life of the town. The War Chief dealt with matters involving outsiders: not just war, but negotiations, alliances, trade, and other external matters” (Ojibwa 2011). The Chiefs had no real power in the villages, no more than any other Cherokee. The main traits they look for in Chiefs is their generosity and unselfishness. It can also be found that women had a lead role in these council and had chiefs of their own, or were councilors to the male chiefs, in the Cherokee as some women had the name War Woman and Beloved Woman showing they were equal in making decisions as the male chief. Though the