The Degradation and Elimination of the Cherokee Culture.
The Christian missions that were used to civilize, or, in my opinion cultivate and conform Cherokees were nothing but detrimental. The Natives believed that they had always been in the Americas, or rather what is now known as the Americas. While this belief may or may not have been known or accepted by the colonists, it did not change the fact that, first, the Natives were there before whites, and second, that the Natives had been completely self-sufficient for many decades. To try and change the Cherokee's way of life was arrogant and quite superficial of the Christian missions and the expected norms of the whites.
While some good had come of the missions, such as an expanded education, more effective farming and housing, more effective cloth-making techniques, and eventually a written language, it was far out-weighed by the harm. Through these missions, the Cherokees had learned to tend livestock rather than hunt and to plow fields using horses, which were not available before the arrival of whites. The education that the Cherokees had before the involvement of whites was only that of what they needed. Hunting, the making of clothes, farming, a crude justice system, and their own religious beliefs were all that was necessary. To be taught to hunt was essential to the Cherokees, and they did so very effectively without interference. To the Cherokees, the dances associated with rain, sickness, hunting, deities, and celebration were a form of balance. They danced in hopes and the belief that it would rain, for example, and if it did not, they believed that they had done something that needed to be atoned for. Their dances and "talk that cannot be .
understood" was their form of prayer and part of their religious belief system. Apart from religion, family was very important to the Cherokees. The culture of whites was more .