The Tsali Legend

The ethnohistorian binds himself with the same strictures of external and internal criticism as the documentary historian, but usually he has less concrete data to work with. He is often forced to rely wholly on informants (if the events were not documented), or wholly on documents (if the events occurred so far in the past that living informants have lost the tale). In the latter case, an event which loomed large for the society the ethnohistorian is studying may have seemed of little consequence to the writers of documents, who themselves belonged to other and politically dominant societies. Consequently, these events may be mentioned only very briefly. The Tsali tale is an exception to the rule of little data.1 It is well documented, as is shown below; it was important both to the Cherokee Indians who were eager to escape exile from the Southern Appalachian Mountains to Indian Territory in 1838, to the United States Army troops and other White Americans who were responsible for rounding up the whole tribe, and to Whites who came later to study the remnants of the tribe

Archaeology · Art · Historiography · Legend · Literature · Archaeology and Natural History · History

• Oral tradition in the pacific

  Patricia Mercer, P M Mercer•Journal of Pacific History•1979

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