Cherokee Healing

1834 - Domestic Event

The Eastern Band of Cherokee has lived in North Carolina for thousands of years. Like most North Carolinians, the Cherokee now have access to modern health care. Still, many retain traditional philosophies that have shaped their culture for centuries, including viewpoints about health and healing.

In the traditional Cherokee view, all people, animals and plants are one living being called the Great Life. For humans, the Great Life exists in the harmony of body, mind and spirit. If a person’s harmony with nature or other people is disrupted, sickness results. Then the person may consult a traditional healer.

Healers begin by looking for the causes of the illness. Besides asking questions of patients, their families and friends, they may use divination to diagnose the problem. This means going to a river or pond, reciting a formula and rolling three special beads that provide answers to the healers’ questions through their movements. Then the healer can decide what treatment is necessary to restore harmony.

Swimmer (1834 – 1899), a Cherokee healer who wrote down many of his sacred healing formulas.

Methods of Treatment

Cherokee healers have a variety of ways to treat physical and spiritual illness. For example, they use more than 700 different plants for healing. Some of their herbal medicines have recognized drug action, while others may be used for symbolic effect.

The medicines can be taken orally or in a Cherokee version of an injection. Healers use a scratching comb on the patient’s skin to the point of drawing blood, then rub the herbal medicine into the wounds. Or they might deliver the medicine by blowing it onto the skin through a blowing tube, followed by massage.

The flint blade of a scraper is sometimes used to draw blood in preparation for a cupping treatment, also used in traditional Chinese and other folk medicines. The healer creates a vacuum suction in a cup placed against the patient’s skin, pulling up the skin under the cup in a kind of acupressure.

Conjuring is a kind of magic involving words and ritual acts to help heal patients. But conjurers can also use their magic to harm a person by casting a spell. Then the spell can only be removed by another conjurer.

Many traditional Cherokee maintain health and balance through a daily practice called going to water. They wade into water at dawn and pray—a ritual that helps keep their thoughts and feelings centered and harmonious with man and nature.

Tools of a Cherokee healer (clockwise from upper right): turtle shell, scratching comb, rivercane scraper and blowing tube.

The Cherokee Sweat Lodge Ceremony

Cherokee healers say the sweat lodge ceremony has always been a part of traditional medicine. It provides a way for healers, patients and community members to join with the spirit world to improve a sick person’s health.

Healers build a sweat lodge near water if possible. They dig a pit in the center of the lodge, then cover the structure with blankets. They collect seven kinds of wood and build a fire outside the door, which faces east to the “Sun Land.” The lodge roof represents the back of a turtle, a sacred animal, while the fire represents the head.

To make the fire sacred, healers place plants—usually ginseng and Indian tobacco—in the center of the fire with a trail leading inside the lodge. That way, spirits from all around will be attracted to the fire, follow the spirit trail and enter the lodge.

Next, the healers collect seven special rocks to lay in the fire. After being heated to red hot, the rocks are placed in the lodge’s center pit. The healers then lead members of the community into the lodge, pour water on the rocks and sing songs received from the spirits. Everyone in the lodge prays and asks the patient to get well. Afterwards, all participants leave the lodge and bathe in the nearby water.

Amy Walker, a medicine person from Cherokee, NC, describes the ceremony this way:

“When you go into the lodge, it represents the same thing as going back into the mother’s womb. ’Cause we go in there without any clothes on, and whenever we sit on the earth we get all muddy and connected to the earth again. And so whenever we crawl out it’s like we’re a new person. Born again. Cleansed. And no longer carrying a lot of the garbage that we took in with us.”

Cherokee healers say the sweat lodge ceremony has always been a part of traditional medicine.