The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees

James Mooney (1861-1921) was an American ethnographer who lived for several years among the Cherokee. He worked on major studies of Southeastern Indians, as well as those on the Great Plains. In 1885 he began working with the Bureau of American Ethnology at Washington, D. C. The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1885-1886 contains selected from a collection of about six hundred, obtained on the Cherokee reservation in North Carolina. Subjects include medicine, love, hunting, fishing, war, self-protection, destruction of enemies, witchcraft, the crops, the council, the ball play. They formulas embody almost the whole of the ancient religion of the Cherokees.