Citizens! The boldness of the Chief of Challenges has NEVER been questioned, as I never cease My eternal quest to find recipes of genuine authenticity and provenance for all of TFD Nation! However, the truth is that outside of Native Americans (properly called First Nations), South American and African tribal groups, Aborigines and highly isolated rural communities, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to find this Holy Grail! The reason is that so many ingredients we assume are native – tomatoes in Italian cuisine, chili peppers in Sichuan cuisine, potatoes in Irish cooking, etc. – are in fact ALL imported ingredients from South America brought over in the 1600’s! Even in the aforementioned communities, they have adapted items like wheat, potatoes and more into their diets from Europeans. Today’s recipe for Cherokee poyha is one that I have striven to keep AUTHENTIC in the genuine sense of the term!
The Cherokee Nation (Cherokee: ᏣᎳᎩᎯ ᎠᏰᎵ Tsalagihi Ayeli or ᏣᎳᎩᏰᎵ Tsalagiyehli) is the largest of three federally recognized tribes of Cherokees in the United States. It includes people descended from members of the Old Cherokee Nation who relocated, due to increasing pressure, from the Southeast to Indian Territory and Cherokees who were forced to relocate on the Trail of Tears. The tribe also includes descendants of Cherokee Freedmen and Natchez Nation. As of 2024, over 466,000 people were enrolled in the Cherokee Nation. Headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the Cherokee Nation has a reservation spanning 14 counties in the northeastern corner of Oklahoma. These are Adair, Cherokee, Craig, Delaware, Mayes, McIntosh, Muskogee, Nowata, Ottawa, Rogers, Sequoyah, Tulsa, Wagoner, and Washington counties. There are also small, original Cherokee populations still remaining in both North Carolina and Georgia.
Of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes, the Cherokee Nation and the UKB have headquarters in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The UKB are mostly descendants of “Old Settlers”, Cherokee who migrated to Arkansas and Oklahoma about 1817 prior to Indian Removal. They are related to the Cherokee who were later forcibly relocated there in the 1830s under the Indian Removal Act. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is on the Qualla Boundary in western North Carolina; their ancestors resisted or avoided relocation, remaining in the area.
Today, Cherokee (ᏣᎳᎩ ᎦᏬᏂᎯᏍᏗ, Tsalagi Gawonihisdi [dʒalaˈɡî ɡawónihisˈdî]) is an endangered to moribund Iroquoian language and the native language of the Cherokee people. Ethnologue states that there were 1,520 Cherokee speakers out of 376,000 Cherokee in 2018, while a tally by the three Cherokee tribes in 2019 recorded ~2,100 speakers. Before the development of the Cherokee syllabary in the 1820s, Cherokee was an oral language only. The Cherokee syllabary is a syllabary invented by Sequoyah to write the Cherokee language in the late 1810s and early 1820s.
His creation of the syllabary is particularly noteworthy in that he could not previously read any script. Sequoyah had some contact with English literacy and the Roman alphabet through his proximity to Fort Loundon, where he engaged in trade with Europeans. He was exposed to English literacy through his white father. His limited understanding of the Roman alphabet, including the ability to recognize the letters of his name, may have aided him in the creation of the Cherokee syllabary. The number of Cherokee speakers is sadly today in intense decline – about 8 fluent speakers die each month, and only a handful of people under 40 are fluent. The dialect of Cherokee in Oklahoma is “definitely endangered”, and the one in North Carolina is “severely endangered” according to UNESCO. The Lower dialect, formerly spoken on the South Carolina–Georgia border, has been extinct since about 1900.
The history of the Cherokee is one stained by sorrow and tears – specifically, the “Trail of Tears”, which is described in detail in this excerpt from culturalsurvival.org:
The Cherokees and The Trail Where They Cried or the Trail of Tears.
By almost any account, including historian Grant Foreman’s, the Trail of Tears is a story of insidious greed and broken treaties on the pert of the white settlers and the United States government. The Cherokee people were forced to embark on a long, bitter and costly journey far away from their homeland despite their best efforts to peacefully coexist with Europeans. As one of the so-called “Five Civilized Tribes,” Cherokees exhibited a remarkable acceptance of the Europeans, allowing intermarriage with them and the attainment of positions of power within the tribe for mixed-bloods. The Cherokees consciously adopted “civilized” lifestyles that included permanent agricultural settlement with churches and schools, elected tribal governments, a tribal constitution, a Cherokee syllabary introducing literacy to most members of the tribe, and the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix.
Despite their efforts to peacefully coexist, the Cherokees had become an obstacle to the “pioneers” of the expanding United States of America, especially after gold was discovered on Cherokee land in 1830. President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Bill of 1830 that was adopted after debate “abolished and took away all the rights, privileges, immunities, and franchises held, claimed or enjoyed by those persons called Indians within the chartered limits of that state by virtue of any form of policy, usages or customs existing among them.” In 1832, Reverend Samuel Worchester, a missionary to the Cherokees, won a case challenging the constitutionality of the Removal Act before the Supreme Court, but President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the ruling, thereby refusing to halt the forced migration.
Although small groups of tribal members and their families had their families had begun leaving voluntarily for the West as early as 1794, their numbers were few. Cherokee resistance to forced migration induced tactics against them that included bribery, threats, theft, and imprisonment. The oppression of the Cherokee culminated with the so-called Treaty of New Echota signed December 29, 1835. In the absence of the elected tribal representatives, Major John Ridge, a prominent Cherokee, violated tribal law and signed the document in the presence of as few as 300 (of over 17,000) members of the tribe.
Repeated protests to the federal government that the tribe would not abide by a treaty that they had not made included a protest signed by nearly 16,00 Cherokees. Nevertheless, after the deadline of May 23, 1838, government officials begin rounding up tribal members who had not left voluntarily, literally dragging them from their homes and abandoning, selling, and/or burning their possessions.
On a journey that sometimes took six months, groups of Cherokees were sent westward, by both land and water, throughout the summer and winter. Revolted by the meager and unfamiliar diet of corn meal and salt pork, crowed and exposed to disease and the elements as the result of hurried departure and inadequate provisions, many weakened and died during the journey. Due to the number of deaths, births, escapes, and the refusal of many to give the names of their families to their captors, the total number of people forced to migrate varies and is still disputed.
An estimated 4,000 Cherokees, approximately one-fourth of the group who made the journey, are believed to have died during the course of what has come to be known as “The Trail Where They Cried” of The Trail Of Tears. Grant Foreman relates a quote from a Georgia volunteer who later become a colonel in the Confederate services: “I fought through the civil war and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew.” The approximately 2,000 Cherokee who managed to elude capture or escape at various stages of the journey become the Eastern Band of Cherokees now centered around the Qualla Reservation in North Carolina. The Western Band of Cherokees settled in Indian Territory which become the state of Oklahoma in 1907. The tribe currently has more than 165,000 members with legally documented ancestry.
After Cherokee removal on the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee Nation existed in Indian Territory. After the American Civil War, the United States promised the Cherokee Nation “a permanent homeland” in an 1866 treaty. In exchange, the Cherokee Nation (and the other four of the Five Civilized Tribes) gave the United States parts of its western territory that were then organized into Oklahoma Territory. Unlike most reservations, the Cherokee Nation owned fee simple title to its lands, and they were not held in trust by the United States. While the General Allotment Act had exceptions for the Five Tribes, later acts forced the Cherokee Nation to allot its reservation to members.
In 1906, Congress enacted the Five Tribes Act which contemplated the dissolution of tribes, but also included a clause stating “the tribal existence and present tribal governments of [the Five Tribes] are hereby continued in full force and effect for all purposes authorized by law.” In the early 20th century, courts interpreted the legislation as having dissolved tribal governments, but by the late 1970s courts shifted their interpretations to finding tribal government had never been disestablished. After the near dissolution of the tribal government of the Cherokee Nation in the 1900s and the death of William Charles Rogers in 1917, the Federal government began to appoint chiefs to the Cherokee Nation in 1919. The service time for each appointed chief was so brief that it became known as “Chief for a Day”. Six men fell under this category, the first being A. B. Cunningham, who served from November 8 to November 25.
In the 1930s, the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration worked to improve conditions by supporting the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which encouraged tribes to reconstitute their governments and write constitutions. On August 8, 1938, the tribe convened a general convention in Fairfield, Oklahoma to elect a Chief. They chose J. B. Milam as principal chief. President Franklin D. Roosevelt confirmed the election in 1941. W. W. Keeler was appointed chief in 1949. After the U.S. government under President Richard Nixon had adopted a self-determination policy, the nation was able to rebuild its government. The people elected W. W. Keeler as chief. Keeler, who was also the president of Phillips Petroleum, was succeeded by Ross Swimmer. In 1975, the tribe drafted a constitution, under the name Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, which was ratified on June 26, 1976. In 1985, Wilma Mankiller was elected as the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation.
A new constitution was drafted in 1999 that included mechanisms for voters to remove officials from offices, changed the structure of the tribal council, and removed the need to ask the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ permission to amend the constitution. The tribe and Bureau of Indian Affairs negotiated changes to the new constitution, and it was ratified in 2003. Confusion resulted when the US Secretary of the Interior would not approve it. To overcome the impasse, the Cherokee Nation voted by referendum to amend its 1975/1976 Constitution “to remove Presidential approval authority,” allowing the tribe to independently ratify and amend its own constitution. As of August 9, 2007, the BIA gave the Cherokee Nation consent to amend its Constitution without approval from the Department of the Interior.
Today, the Cherokee Nation has survived all of these crises and is stronger now than ever – see this video about a Cherokee pow wow (gathering) from 2020:
Traditional Cherokee Food history is outlined on food.ebci-nsn.gov/cherokee-foodways/ (partially reproduced here):
ᏑᎾᎴ ᎠᎵᏍᏓᏴᏗ – A History of Cherokee Foods
ᎤᏓᎷᎸ ᎤᎾᏓᏍᎩᏌᏅ – Pre-Contact (pre-1540)
Although hunting was an important part of the pre-Contact diet, first and foremost, Cherokee people were agriculturists, basing many of our holidays upon the turning of the corn, the cycles of planting and harvesting, and the growing of our bulk crops of corn, beans, and squash. These cereals, legumes, and members of the gourd family all made meeting caloric needs much easier. The illusion of Native Americans being “foragers” couldn’t be further from the truth, and in fact, Cherokee lands were some of the more developed and intensely managed lands, with forests, waterways, and farmed fields all being given their due attention.
ᎠᎦᎵᏐᎢ ᎤᎾᏓᏍᎩᏌᏅ – Colonial Contact (1541-1770)
As Cherokee came into contact with Spain, and later Britain, traditional foods remained staples, but new foods began to arrive and to be integrated into the systems of Cherokee foodways. Fruits of European origin were transplanted into already extant orchards and forests nearby, the prevalence of wild hog made it a food that was available when no other meats could be found, and Charleston harbor began to import Western spices, rice, and beans from the harbor to trading posts. Yet, for all of this, at the towns of Chota and Setticoe in what is now Tennessee, Cherokee peoples were making large feasts of corn, beans, peas, and squash and newcomers such as cultivated varieties of potato, traditionally unavailable in Cherokee prior to contact.
ᎢᎬᏱ ᎤᎾᏓᏚᏕᏫᏛ ᏗᎦᏚᎿᎢ – American Period (1776-1840)
American traders and merchants flooded the frontier after the American Revolution and during. With them, they brought even more iron cookware, pans, instruments and devices Cherokee people were quick to adopt, and adapt to our traditional foodways. Game lands and forests that once supplied several towns were hewn down for roads, towns, European style farming, and cattle pasturage. Canebrakes and other native plants were used as easy silage for cattle and hogs, gnawing holes into maintained forests. Deer became more scarce, and the lack of pelts for trade impoverished both the Cherokees and American frontiersmen alike, making this an example of manmade climate change.
ᎤᏠᏯ ᏫᎾᎾᎵᏍᏗᏍᎩ – Acculturation and Removal (1835-1860)
As the Americans continued to encroach further into Cherokee lands, the once large and well supplied hunting grounds and managed forests were invaded, and cut down through pasturage, deforestation for timber, and development for European farming methods left hunting as an unsustainable practice for many displaced Cherokee people. Now no smaller in population than the previous century, but faced with only about a quarter of the land to work with, European style orchards and hybridized Cherokee-American farmsteads became the norm.
Gristmills and farmhouses replaced the older mortars and production methods, the importing and manufacture of metal tools and goods became the standard, and traditional foodways now had to share and mingle in their existence with the new fangled American cookeries that now inundated the frontier. Cherokee farmers turned to pasture to replace the meat lost from the vanishing forests, but still replied upon the remaining woods for the occasional bear or deer.
ᎤᎶᏐᏅ ᏗᏲᎯᏍᏗ ᏗᎨᏥᎾᏝᎢ – Post-War Changes (1860-1920)
One of the best primary source documents for making traditional Cherokee foods is Aggie Ross’s Bean Bread Recipe, with fresh meal corn, pounded in a Kanona, a traditional mortar for grinding meal. Nixtamalization, or the process of using wood ashes or lye to turn corn meal into hominy corn , has been a method of preparation of corn since before contact, but it shows the resilience of our traditions that the Cherokee method was and remains preserved in our community before and after removal. The lack of salt in the meal is to keep it held together, and Aggie notes specifically that using freshly ground meal corn is highly preferred, with unbolted cornmeal “tasting poorly.”
ᎾᏞᎬ ᏄᎵᏔᏂᏙᎸ – Twentieth Century Development (1920-1980)
Oral history is quintessentially Cherokee. To learn stories from our elders, and to pass along information that has been known for generations is what makes us natives. To know how to harvest ramps correctly, how to boil and clean wisi, or the memories we make getting rust on our fingers from picking sochan, all these things are native history and culture. There is no such thing as unimportant. To this end, the last recipe here is a bit of our modern luxuries mixed with our old foods, bringing a dish to the table that represents a bit of everywhere our food culture has been.
It’s with great hope that we can keep making food together as Cherokees and to keep our food alive for another thirty-five generations, as everyone who came before us has. If we stop doing it, that’s it and it will be gone. May we eat these foods together for many years to come.
Now – as to Poyha!
Poyha is basically a Cherokee meatloaf, and remember they are originally from the Eastern Seaboard – the white-tailed deer is a sacred animal to the Cherokee people and this was the original meat used in poyha. Deer gave Native Americans clothes and implements such as arrowheads and knives manufactured from deer antlers. Additionally, it was – of course – also a significant source of food. For this reason, venison is the primary component of poyha for Eastern Cherokee. Poyha is a dish that combines cornmeal with venison, wild onions, scallions, chokecherries, huckleberries, and other berries from the wild. Other Native American tribes also cook poyha, substituting bison for venison in the Plains and the Southwest versions. It is a derivative of pemmican, which is very similar in ingredients but was designed for long storage and as a trail food while hunting.
Today, poyha can include any number of non-native ingredients, but I have striven in My version to retain not just authenticity, but to make it a genuinely gourmet experience for all of TFD Nation! Trust Me, once you have tried My version of poyha, you may well give up on your classic meatloaf recipes (although I remain EXTREMELY fond of My unique meatloaf recipe as well as the “Crown o’ Gold” 1950’s version I updated over the years!
Virtually every ingredient in MY gourmet poyha is not only flavorful – it is genuinely NATIVE to the region and not only supremely delicious, but good for you as well! In My poyha for the ages, will need walnut oil (buy it here), frozen wild blueberries (available inexpensively in most supermarkets, please be sure to get WILD blueberries, not the domesticated version or buy them from here!), juniper berries (buy excellent quality ones from here), and rose hips powder (an amazing source of Vitamin C – buy it from here). Ground venison is – of course – the heart and soul of this recipe and you can easily buy it in many supermarkets today or from here. As venison is super-lean, you will need to grind in some bacon for fat and additional smoky flavor.
Citizens – poyha is not at all difficult to make and I know you will very much enjoy it over your next family (or Tribal) gathering!
Battle on – the Generalissimo
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The Hirshon Cherokee Gourmet Venison Pohya – ᎠᎭᏫᏯ ᎤᏓᏔᏅᎯ ᏎᎷ ᎦᏚ
Ingredients
- 7/8 lb. venison meat and 1/8 lb. artisinal thick-cut bacon, ground together (your butcher can do this for you)
- 1 Tbsp. of each of the following: chicken or Turkey fat (Turkey strongly preferred), bacon fat and walnut oil
- 4 scallions, chopped with white parts separated from the green or if available, 4 wild ramps (strongly preferred)
- 1 small red onion, chopped (optional but recommended)
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 cups frozen corn (you should only need to buy one bag)
- 1/2 cup fresh or frozen cranberries
- 1/2 cup frozen wild blueberries
- 1 tsp. freshly-ground juniper berries
- 2 tsp. freshly-ground rose hips
- 2 tsp. mustard powder
- 2 eggs
- kosher salt and pepper, to taste
- 1/4 cup cornmeal (TFD change, original was 1/2 cup)
- 1/4 cup walnut powder (optional TFD change, original was cornmeal)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 F. Heat chicken or turkey fat in a cast iron skillet over med-high heat. Add venison and bacon to cook. Stir to break up until the pink is mostly gone.
- Add the white parts from the scallions, red onion, and garlic. Cook until fragrant and the onions are softened. Transfer the mix to a large bowl.
- Add ⅓ of corn to bowl with venison.
- Combine the remaining corn with the cranberries and blueberries. Pulse in a food processor until roughly chopped but not pulverized. Transfer this to the bowl of venison, including any juice.
- Add the eggs, green scallion, salt, and pepper and all remaining ingredients except last Tbsp. of walnut oil, cornmeal and walnut meal. Stir. Add cornmeal and walnut meal and blend – try not to work the mixture too much.
- Wipe out the skillet. Add 1 Tbsp. bacon fat to coat the sides and the bottom. Scoop the venison mix into the skillet. Flatten with a spatula. Cover tightly with foil.
- Bake for 60 minutes. Remove from the oven and let rest for 10 minutes or more.
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