Cherokee Pottery: People of One Fire

When potter Joel Queen begins an open-pit firing, he continues a tradition derived from eight generations of his Cherokee ancestors. The pottery firing process is slow and tedious, but it forges deep connections and award-winning results for Queen, a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, one of North Carolina’s eight state-recognized tribes.

On Friday, April 11, the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh opened Cherokee Pottery: People of One Fire, a traveling exhibit inspired by a partnership between artists from the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina and the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma. These potters look to traditional building, design and firing techniques for new creative interpretations. On view will be more than 80 objects that illustrate centuries of continuity and change in Cherokee pottery forms, designs and techniques. The exhibit will run through July 27, and admission is free.

“This is the first time a collection of pottery from all three federally recognized Cherokee tribal entities has been together for public viewing,” says Mickel Yantz, museum curator of Cherokee Heritage Center in Tahlequah, Okla. The exhibit is a collaboration among the Cherokee Heritage Center and the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, Cherokee Potters Guild, Research Laboratories of Archaeology at UNC-Chapel Hill, and Western Carolina University in North Carolina.

In addition to Queen, the exhibit features works by Elizabeth Bigmeat Smart, Amanda Swimmer and other members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Many scholars uphold that the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians has the longest continuing pottery tradition of any tribe in its original homeland in the United States. As are the Cherokee Nation and the United Keetowah Band of Cherokee Indians, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is federally recognized.

Pottery continues to be a vibrant part of Cherokee culture, despite centuries of dramatic changes. Enforcement of the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 resulted in the rounding up and removal of thousands of Cherokee in the Southeast to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. This “Trail of Tears” wrenched apart families and geographically severed the majority of the tribe from its homeland. 

Visitors to Cherokee Pottery: People of One Fire will observe how potters in North Carolina and Oklahoma are reconnecting their common cultural heritage by sharing pottery techniques derived from ancient tradition. Among the methods is the stamping technique, which involves pressing carved wooden paddles onto the unfired surface of a clay vessel to impress designs.

Works by master potters from the Cherokee Nation, such as Bill Glass Jr. and Jane Osti, feature traditional techniques with new interpretations. Osti, who has been honored as a Living Treasure of the Cherokee Nation, states, “Cherokee pottery is our greatest history, of how, where and when we lived before written time.”

Plan now to see this compelling exhibit of visually stunning and culturally significant pottery. Cherokee Pottery: People of One Fire was made possible with funding from the Cherokee Preservation Foundation. The exhibit is located in the museum’s permanent gallery Pleasing to the Eye: The Decorative Arts of North Carolina.
For more information about the museum, call 919-807-7900.

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