Cherokee Religion was Zoroasterism

 

This is an important piece of data and conforms to my expectations regarding global cultural sharing that took place during the high Atlantean Age between 2500 BC through 1159BC.  Please note that we have reason to expect continued links both well before and long after.  What was lost however was the pressing economic rational of the metal trade.


Our problem by the by will not be lack of evidence so much but eyes and ears willing to see and hear. This also hugely explains the apparent snippets of ancient Asian culture that inspired the ten lost tribes of Israel enthusiams of the nineteenth century.  Unfortunately our historians still resolutely ignore the mountains of evidence supporting the now massive Bronze Age Atlantean presence in North America and globally as well.  Every where we find a pyramid, it says hello.


What we badly need to do is to uncover a library of documents.  They were the inventors of the bronze alloy scroll  so this is not even an utter impossibility.  Certainly i have seen hints of such out there and we do have Joseph Smith's famous tale to reconsider.  Divine translation assistance is also no longer taboo as i now know better on that.   What i have read of the Book of Mormon does read as a local narrative of tribal woe neither unfamiliar nor particularly unique.  Yet it is something that would be so recorded it that option existed.


However this is not about to happen unless every scholar get on side and digs up the evidence we already have collected.  We have to accept that is is possible and that a thousand years is an awful long time for continuous activity that leads to an awful lot of intermarriage.

People of One Fire Research Update

January 21, 2015

This memo will be of most interest to our Cherokee and South Carolina researchers, but has implications for other tribes.

The focus of this month's research project is a comprehensive study of maps and archives in the 18th century that pertain to the Etowah River Valley.  However, as has happened many times before, new understandings have spun out of this process of deductive analysis that has implications for other researchers.

There is no doubt about it.  The religion practiced by the Cherokees in the 18th century contained all the essential elements of Zoroastrianism.

When the American Revolution broke out,  James Adair planted his Chickasaw-Jewish wife and their children on Oothlooga Creek in northwest Georgia near her Chickasaw town birthplaces . . . which was probably Ustanauli.   Ustanauli was NOT an ethnic Cherokee town, as all Cherokee history web sites state. . 

While reading the writings of James Adair to see what he knew about the Etowah Valley, I stumbled across his description of Cherokee religion.   Adair was trying to prove that the ancestors of both the Cherokees and Creeks were the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel.  However, in his discussions of the Cherokees, he was really describing Zoroastrianism.

Adair stated that the origin of the Cherokee name is their word for fire - Chara - actually pronounced like Shara - combined with the Muskogee word for people, Ke.   What's odd about this statement is that most Cherokees and Creeks could not pronounce the "R" sound.  The Apalache in North Georgia could.

An important town appeared in the South Carolina Foothills in the early 17th century maps.  It was labeled either Sara or Zara.  Cherokees pronounced the word Shala. Muskogees pronounced the word, Jza-la.  Highland Apalaches pronounced the word,  Jza-ra. 

Zara means "fire" in the Zoroastrianism, Old Persian, Eastern Turkey, the Caucasus Region and northern Mesopotamia.  Zara means "light" in Hebrew.   Zara means "the pinnacle of everything" in Quaranic Arabic. 

Adair stated that the magi of the Cherokees were called Chara haggi or "fire priests".    A Zoroastrian fire priest is called a Zara-haggi.   (Pretty durn close!)  Of course, magi is literally the Zoroastrian word for a scholar of astronomy and astrology and is the source of the English word, magician.

Adair stated that the Cherokees considered fire and water sacred, as they were the two elements of the universe.  In the Cherokee religion, Lower Heaven was composed of fire.  Both beliefs are identical to that of Zoroastrianism.   Both the Cherokees and the Zoroastrians had a concept of a "Great Creator God" which is called, Ahura Mazda, in Zoroastrianism. Ahura would be pronounced , Yahula in Cherokee . . .  which is exactly what their word for the Creator God was.  Adair interpreted that word to be similar to YHWH ~ Yahweh, the Hebrew word for "lord."  

Both Zoroastrianism and Cherokee religion believed that fires were inhabited by demonic spirits.  .It was the responsibility of Zara haggi in Zoroastrian communities and Chara haggi in Cherokee communities to conjure and control these demonic spirits so that the demonic spirits would be forced to predict the future and give guidance to believers.

The man, who convinced the leaders of the Savannah River Tributary towns to switch sides in the Yamasee War is remember in history as Chara-te Haggi  or Fire People Priest. 

Conclusion:  The sudden appearance of the words Charakey and Charaqui on European maps of North America around 1717 may have initially represented a religious phenomenon rather than an ethnic one.  The fact is that none of the Cherokee villages shown on the earliest Europeans maps are Cherokee words. Even today, 95% of the Native American place names in Western North Carolina are either Muskogean, Itza Maya or Caribbean/South American words. Because few Cherokee scholars know these language, they assume that the words are just archaic Cherokee words. The Algonquin influence on the modern Cherokee language must have resulted from the massive deaths from the incessant wars and multiple small pox plagues that the Cherokees experienced from 1696 to 1794.  Adair stated that the number of Cherokee warriors dropped from around 6,000 to 2,300 as a direct result of the latter stages of the Creek-Cherokee War, when Muskogee armies destroyed all of their large towns.   

When did Zoroastrianism enter North America?  That is a good question, which I cannot answer.  Zoroastrianism dates back to at least 600 BC. Zoroastrian missionaries could have arrived at anytime after then.  It was the first monotheistic religion and had a major influence on Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  In 1500, a third of the people of the Ottoman Empire were Christians and about 15% were Zoroastrians. Several million Middle Eastern Christians and Zoroastrians were massacred, enslaved and deported during the next 150 years. Virtually all of the common soldiers and sailors in the Ottoman Army and Navy were conscripted Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians.  Someone needs to research that mystery. 

North Georgia:  According to both European maps and James Adair,  North Georgia was neither the territory of the Cherokee Alliance or the Muskogee Confederacy during the period between 1715 and 1776.  He said that almost 200 miles separated the towns of the two alliances.  The town names that are showing up in North Georgia on maps of that period represent peoples, who have been forgotten by the history books. 

Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner