THE CHEROKEES - Gli ultimi indiani d'America

                           Meglio sarebbe dire " natives " ma ormai non sarà più possibile correggere l'errore nato con l'epopea cinematografica.

 Two nations, one people.

           More than 150 years ago, the Cherokees of the North Carolina follow separate paths as they seek to keep thair tribal soul while making in the outside world.

 A ceremonial dancer wears paint and feathers adapted from the dress of his Plain forebears at the Cherokee National Holiday Powwow.












Mike Grant plays with his niece. During the busy season in Cherokee, North Carolina, he earned cash posing for snapshots: All tourists want is your indian face, so that's what you sell.Off-season work at home is scarce;when last heard from, Grant was headed for South Carolina where friends think he may have landed a factory job.




NORTH CAROLINA - Rusting visage of Sequoyah, the indian scholar who in the 1800s devised a writing system for the cherokee language, rises above the tourist clamor in Cherokee.  A gateway to Great Smoky Mountains National Park the headquarters of the Eastern Band is a Jumble of storefronts, neon signs, and tepees that draws nearly six million visitors each year to the Cherokee reservation.

Charmed by his act, a french tourist plants a kiss on Henry Lambert in the town of Cherokee.By chiefing - posing for visitors - for 44 years, he has earned enough money to educate six children and pay for his home.
         The tourists love this look, Lambert says, so, i'll be chiefing this way until Gabriel blows his horn.

                                       "  Parhaps the Mountains were calling me to return, for i could get no rest in my soul until i agreed to follow "...
wrote the cherokee poet Marijo of her 1992 move from western Tennessee to the Great Smoky Mountains.
       Hiding in the highland forest to evade forced removal, precedessors of the eastern band planted the seeds of a separate nation.
       Cedar and oak sheltered them; deer and trout susteined them.



The trail of tears.

                  Many white americans acknoledged the agrarian skills of the Cherokee,Creek and Seminole as well as thei adoption of european customs - dubbing them the Five Civilized Tribes of  the Southeast. Yet the settlers' desire for more farmland overcame their admiration. They demanded that the indians go. The president Jackson responded by signing the Indian Removal Act of 1830, setting the stage of a tragic saga - the killing exodus along the TRAIL OF TEARS to what later became Oklahoma.
                  A minority faction of Cherokee agreed to emigration of the entire nation by signing the treathy of New Echota in 1835. But news of calamities suffered by other tribes being forced west strengthened the resolve of some cherokee to stay on their ancestral land.
                   Despite a U.S.Supreme Court ruling that allowed the Cherokee to remain, most were rounded up by soldiers and detained in concentration camps.
                   A thousand or more others fled into the Great Smoky Mountains and became the ancestors of today's Eastern Band. Following distraous relocations by river under military control, principal chief John Ross negotiated with Gen.Winfield Scott to permit the Cherokee to conduct their own removal overland.   Beginning in August 1838, the remaining detainess - 12.000 in all - set out in 13 ragtag parties. By the time the last exiled Cherokee arrived in Oklahoma in 1839, the forced march had claimed as many as 4.000 lives.

                Adding a golden moment to their memory books, cheerleaders launch a parking-lot pep rally before Sequoyah High School homecaming game. Originally an orphanage housing indian children who lost parents during the civil war, the school serves some 300 Native American boarding and day students who take courses degned with an indian perspective.

Down to the smallest flutter of sacred eagle feathers, a chile learns a Cherokee dance from his grandfather.The elder fashions buckskin and buffalo hide into fancy Plains dress;
Traditional Cherokee dress was simpler and earthier in color.
"We mix upour indian regalia and customs a lot, says the Cherokee,"but we've still got our old ways.

Sporting a haircut in praise of pro basketball idol
Shaquille O'Neal, at far right is proof that pop culture is making inroads into Snowbird North Carolina, among the most isolated and traditional of Cherokee communities.
                      Two brothers wear mohawks, a hairstyle borrowed from the Iroquois of the Northeast.
               Yet, for the boys custom stops there.
They don't like the traditional food we eat like bean, bread, mustard geens and corn meal, says their aunt, they'd rather eat at McDonald's.



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