The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees

James Mooney (1861–1921) was an American ethnographer who lived for several years among the Cherokee. He did major studies of Southeastern Indians, as well as those on the Great Plains, most notably ethnographic studies of the Ghost Dance after Sitting Bull’s death in 1890, a widespread 19th-century religious movement among various Native American culture groups, and the Cherokee.

Mooney’s The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees (1891), published by the US Bureau of American Ethnology, includes sacred formulas selected from a collection of about six hundred, obtained on the Cherokee reservation in North Carolina in 1887 and 1888, and covering every subject pertaining to the daily life and thought of the Indian, including medicine, love, hunting, fishing, war, self-protection, destruction of enemies, witchcraft, the crops, the council, and more. Put simply, it covered nearly every aspect of the ancient religion embraced by the tribe. 

This edition of The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees is specially formatted with a Table of Contents.