Rivercane Basket & Bird Man, By Muralist Lori Reed

This is a river cane basket weave design. This design carries on our traditions of basket weaving and the continuance of our young people who continue to learn our history and culture. The names of the designs are the “noon day sun” and the “stairway to heaven” or “cross on the hill”. The colors represent our natural materials used to dye our splints. Yellow represents the yellowroot. Onyx represents our butternut bark dye, which could become a black color. The toasted chestnut represents the bloodroot dye, which can range between orange and red. 

The upper part is the bird man. The Cherokee people believe in seven directions: the four cardinal directions and the upper, middle and lower levels. The bird man represents the upper level. He is a representative of the hawk, usually a warrior. The bird man is also a symbol of healthy families and strong family lines. 

Our culture is rich with many stories honoring the plants and creatures of this land as helpers and guides of the Cherokee people.

With Hearts and Hands We Renew the Fire, by Muralist Lori Reed

This is a Cherokee story. We have a long history in this land. Our villages covered eight states at one time, mainly by waterways. 

Each year, we put out the fire in our homes, cleaned out our hearths, and went to the council house to get an ember from the ever-burning fire. We took it home to start our new fire for the year. This ritual is represented now by the fire colors: blues, reds, oranges, yellows, and white. 

Water has always been an important part of our lives. Not only did it provide life-giving sustenance, but also means of transportation. Spiritually, it offered cleansing, protection, and the breaking up of bad medicine. This is represented by the water design, found on old pottery made by Southeastern tribes.

The Cherokee have been weavers for a long time. Our oldest known material was the river cane, an indigenous plant that is similar to the bamboo that was imported from Asia. It was used for mats and walls in our houses, along with bedding. We then began to weave baskets for carrying water, produce and storage. The spider is known for weaving his web and we learned to weave from the spider, kananesgi. 

We have made use of natural clay that is found in our area. We made pots for water, for serving food and cooking. Our cooking pots were said to be as big as three feet wide at one point. We learned how to make pottery from the mud dauber.

Our baskets and colors are made from natural materials like River Cane, White Oak, Honeysuckle vines, and Maple. Cornbead is a plant that has its own story of origin from the removal of the Southeastern and Cherokee tribes. It is said that as our people were traveling along the way from our homelands to the Indian Territory in Oklahoma that as our people cried for their lost homes, family members and way of life, they asked the creator for a sign of hope. Where our peoples' teardrops fell, up sprang the Cornbead plant, also known as Job's Tears. We use the plants' seeds in our necklaces as a symbol of this horrific event in our history, but also as a sign of resilience, strength and perseverance of our people to survive.