Cherokee Pottery

Three thousand years ago there were potters in the southern Appalachian Mountains making cooking vessels of local clay. In those early days the pots were rough. They got more refined and uniform over time. Then about 1900 years ago the potters began to use paddles to stamp designs on the outer surfaces of their pots. Paddle stamping was their way of getting better heat distribution for cooking and offering a more secure hand grip for carrying and serving. The designs on the paddles added elements of the spiritual to everyday utilitarian objects.

The Cherokee continued developing and refining their pottery tradition until they hit a life-changing roadblock when the US Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1832 and President Andrew Jackson signed it into law. The remainder of the 1830s saw most of the tribe rounded up by the military, relieved of everything they couldn’t carry, and then relieved of most of what they could carry, too. Then they were forced to negotiate the eight-hundred-mile gauntlet of the Trail of Tears led by incredibly incompetent government appointees. At least 1 in 10 of their people died on that trek. They were relocated to eastern Oklahoma on land nothing like what they had always known. Many of their ancient traditions fell by the wayside there as everyone's lives became focused on basic survival.