Proto-Iroquoian Divergence in the Late Archaic-Early Woodland Period Transition of the Appalachian Highlands

Divergence of proto-Iroquoians, resulting in the linguistic separation of Cherokee and Northern Iroquois, is estimated to have begun almost 4,000 years ago. Linguistic and molecular studies are consistent with a proto-Iroquoian homeland in the Appalachian Archaeological and ecological evidence support a hypothesis that proto-Iroquoia is represented by an Appalachian mast forest adaptation in the Terminal Late Archaic period. adaptation was characterized by (1) heavy dependence upon upland forest mast, (2) projectile point type distributions trending along the Appalachian axis, (3) evidence of significant participation of Appalachia in a wider regional economy involving export of valuable and geographically restricted lithic and perhaps subsistence resources, (4) the possibility of violent competition for control of these resources (as evidenced by the introduction of the bow and arrow), and (5) a preference for cremation of the dead. ProtoIroquoian divergence probably began with the shift from a strictly hunting and gathering subsistence pattern of the upland mast forest adaptation to a more sedentary adaptation enhanced by the gradual adoption of horticulture and its associated technology and sociocultural behaviors. Iroquoian speakers, at the time of European contact, resided in areas adjacent to Lakes Huron and Ontario (Northern Iroquois Group), the southern Appalachians (Cherokee Group), and eastern Virginia and North Carolina (Tuscarora Group) (Figure 1). David Zeisberger, observing the adoption of a treaty between the Cherokee and Six Nations Iroquois in 1768, was possibly the first to recognize the similarity between Cherokee and Northern Iroquois languages (Mithun 1979). In 1900 James Mooney, observing that the Cherokee Indians of the Appalachian Summit region speak an Iroquoian language, suggested that they must at one time have occupied contiguous territories, and that tradition and historical evidence concur in assigning the Cherokee as their early home the region about the headwaters of the (Mooney 1900:17). Arthur Parker (1916) suggested that the original territory of all Iroquois was the middle Mississippi Valley. In part, because of the observed linguistic relationship and geographic separation of the Cherokee and Northern Iroquois, early archaeological research in both the southern Appalachian Summit and the Northeast focused on ethnic origins. The question of Cherokee origins motivated the very earliest archaeology of the southern Appalachian region and persists in the present through the Cherokee Project of the Research Labs of Archaeology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (Ward and Davis 1999). Many of the first archaeologists working in the Southeast, favoring then-popular migration models, argued that the arrival of the Cherokee in the southern Appalachian region was just prior to or within the historic period (see Coe 1961 and Dickens 1979 for historical overviews of Cherokee origins research). Most, appears, were influenced by Mooney's (1900) recorded oral tradition, citing midwestern or Ohio Valley archaeological assemblages as ancestral to historic Cherokee. Coe (1961:59), however, argued that it seems hardly necessary to look for any recent migration of the Cherokee into their historic area. There is sufficient archaeological data to suggest that they were already occupying by the close of the Archaic Period. Dickens (1979:28) reiterates: This suggests, at the least, that Cherokee culture was the end product of a long, continuous, and multilinear development in the South Appalachian region. Dickens (1976, 1979, 1986), in support of Coe (1961), argued for an in situ development of historic Cherokee by recognizing a continuum of archaeological phases from at least the Middle Woodland Connestee through Mississippian Pisgah and into historic Qualla. More recent investigations, however, suggest that this interpretation may be overly simplistic (Moore 1986; Ward and Davis 1999; Whyte 2003). …

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