Cherokee Foodways in North Carolina

My people have always accepted these gifts of God and that’s why they can get along on what some folks think is so little.

Aggie Ross (EBCI) [1]

If [visitors] are looking for Cherokee food, they’re all going to be disappointed because it’s just beans and potatoes and corn bread like everybody else has eaten forever…Of course, if you grew up eating it, it’s really, really good.

Teresa Williamson (EBCI), co-owner of Granny’s Kitchen [2]

Cherokee foodways are foundational to Appalachian cuisine. 

Many of the dishes we often associate with the South, in fact—from stewed greens to grits, cornbread, and succotash—are rooted in the ways eastern Cherokee have thought about, cultivated, prepared, and celebrated food for at least a millennium, if not longer.

Long before the introduction of pork, dairy, and molasses by white settlers—or okra, black-eyed peas, and black sesame seeds from enslaved Africans and their descendants—Cherokee communities cultivated maize (zea mays), squash (cucurbita pepo), and the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) and strategically harvested wild greens, ramps, mushrooms, apples, blackberries, and nuts (Purcell 2022, p. 19; Stokes and Atkins-Sayre 2024). They hunted wild turkey, squirrel, bear, and deer in season and caught speckled trout in the rivers. If Appalachian cuisine is having its culinary moment—evidenced by award-winning cookbooks, documentaries, and upscale dining experiences—it owes much to the history of indigenous foodways.

White settlers to North America first learned to make hominy from American Indian groups they met. In the South, it was (and is) a common staple. Here is a newspaper clipping for hominy that a white North Carolinian woman, Susan M. Avery, saved in her home recipe book sometime between 1868 and 1886.

Historically, a critical component of Cherokee cuisine was their ability to make hominy. Hominy is dried corn that has been treated with an alkaline solution (traditionally made from water and wood ash), which removes the outer hull and makes the corn’s amino acid content (especially niacin) easier for the body to access. This process is known as nixtamalization, a term that comes from the Nahuatl words for “ashes” (nextali) and “unformed corn dough (tamalli), and which likely originated in central America 1200-1500 years ago (Betzenhauser and Evans 2025, Briggs 2015). Hominy is fundamental to Cherokee and southern foodways, but as medical science now knows, this humble ingredient is about much more than taste: it is essential to the health of corn-based food cultures. A diet high in unprocessed maize can lead to a debilitating niacin deficiency known as pellagra, which can cause diarrhea, dermatitis, and dementia, and if left untreated, even death. During the early twentieth century, pellagra reached epidemic proportions among poor southern farmers, killing an average of 7,000 people every year between 1900 and 1930. A federal investigation into this frightening disorder eventually found that diets based on cheap, industrially-produced cornmeal—a mainstay for impoverished cotton farmers—to be the primary culprit. After 1937, Congress passed new laws requiring commercial flour, bread, and corn to be enriched with niacin, and as a result, pellagra is virtually unknown in the US (Clay, Schmick, and Troesken 2019). Cherokee communities do not appear to have suffered from pellagra historically, however, thanks to their knowledge of nixtamalization and the inclusion of other nutrient-rich foods in their diets.

In addition to local foods, the Cherokee also borrowed from other foodways as they saw fit. With the arrival of the Spanish in Florida in the late 1500s and the British on the mid-Atlantic seaboard in the late 1600s, new foods and cooking tools slowly made their way inland, most often through other indigenous traders. The Cherokee, however, were quite selective in what they chose to adopt. Iron pots and utensils, for example, were highly desired. Sweet potatoes were also adopted fairly quickly, along with peaches, cowpeas, and watermelon. They were far less interested in European livestock, however, which could trample gardens, strip bark from trees, and disrupt well-tended hunting grounds (Purcell 2022). 

"Cherokee, Cherokee Indian Reservation, N.C. Eastern Entrance to Great Smoky Mountains National Park," postcard, 1931

Yet, federal removal did not spell the end of Cherokee people in North Carolina. With the support of non-indigenous allies, they bought back land in western North Carolina, creating what would become known as the “Qualla Boundary,” the EBCI homeland. Anthropologist and EBCI member Courtney Lewis explains: 

“Because of these hard-won battles for their homeland, Eastern Band citizens refer to their land base as the ‘Boundary’ rather than a ‘reservation.’ This reflects the distinction that EBCI land was not reserved for them as a result of some cession; rather, it is their own homeland, which they gained control of on their terms” (Lewis, 2019, p. 85).

While many women ground flour at home, families could also have their harvested corn processed at the local grist mill. "Grist mill in the Qualla Boundary," postcard, 1939.

Bruce Huskey’s Store, ca. 1956-1957

In another interview, Lily Wolfe recalled a common childhood meal she ate growing up in the 1930s:

In the spring time we would go pick our wild salad. We had elephant ears for supper. You make that like you’re going to make Chicken and Dumplings. The Dumplings part. Mom would boil a pot of water and put seasoning in it, grease, salt, and pepper, and drop the dumplings in it. That was a meal. Of course, it was fattening, but it was all we had to eat. I don’t regret it, not one bit. Because, by that way, it caused me to appreciate a lot of things in life, now. [5]

A supper of wild greens and elephant ears demonstrates the persistence of indigenous foodways alongside survival recipes born out of necessity. Elephant ears, like Indian fry bread, are low in nutritional value and not considered a traditional staple of Cherokee cuisine. Yet, this simple mix of flour, water, and animal fat was a way for families in the Qualla Boundary to make ends meet in difficult times. Moreover, the ability to include wild salad contributed to the continuation of historical foodways.

Any discussion of twentieth-century Eastern Cherokee food history, however, must acknowledge the tremendous work of Aggie Ross Lossiah (1880-1966). Born in 1880, she was the granddaughter of Chief John Ross (1790-1866), who had led the resistance against Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act before he himself was forced to emigrate (Chiltoskey, 1951, p. 42). Aggie Ross would go on to become a revered elder in the Qualla Boundary and a legendary cook and cultural entrepreneur. Fearing the loss of Cherokee foodways, she took to writing down her family recipes and those of other elderly Eastern Band citizens (The Smoky Mountain Times, 27 January 1966). 

An image of a 1950s home kitchen belonging to Dinah Welch, a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee and resident of Qualla Boundary, ca. 1955-1956

Many of these were featured in a 1951 recipe book, Cherokee Cooklore: Preparing Cherokee Foods, compiled by Mary Ulmer Chiltoskey in collaboration with Ross. [6] Alongside recipes for leather breeches, succotash, barbequed fish, sassafras tea, and dried apples—as well as a few surprising dishes like yellow-jacket soup—Cherokee Cooklore is also notable for its photographic essay documenting each step of Ross’s recipe for Tsu-Ya-Ga Du, or bean bread. Ross prepares bean-bread, she tells the reader, “just like my Cherokee granny made it when we lived in that cave on Tennessee River, only I have a few pots and pans like my old granny never had” (Chiltoskey, 1951, p. 2). 

Ross’s instructions began in the garden, amid rows of corn stalks and bean vines. They went on to show how to nixtamalize the corn with wood ash while waiting for freshly picked beans to boil over an open fire.  Once dried, Ross pounded the skinned corn into flour using a kanona, a traditional mortar and pestle. She then mixed the unsifted flour with the boiled beans to make a paste, which she molded into flattened dumplings called “broadswords,” wrapped them in cured corn blades, and boiled them.

"Street Scene, Cherokee, North Carolina," postcard, 1940-1960

Advertisement for 1948 Cherokee Fair (1948, September 30), The Cherokee Scout, page 7.

Cherokee Cuisine and Appalachian Tourism

The timing of Cherokee Cooklore corresponded with the golden era of Appalachian tourism of the post-WWII era. Since the late 1800s, the southern Appalachians had been an exclusive mountain haven for wealthy white families seeking to escape the summer heat of the neighboring lowlands, but this was to change in the twentieth century. Cherokee county was connected by railroad in 1909, followed by the first automobiles in 1914, which allowed greater access to more people and encouraged the opening of inns and restaurants. The tourism industry grew in fits and starts over the next several decades, reflecting the economic instability of the interwar years. However, the opening of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934, with its main entrance outside Cherokee, NC, laid the foundation for a post-war boom in local tourism (Starnes 2005). 

For many Eastern Band citizens, the growth in tourism and hospitality opened up new opportunities for business and cultural entrepreneurship. A major draw to Cherokee, N.C., was the annual Cherokee Indian Festival, a multi-day fair held every summer since 1914.

It featured games, agricultural shows, craft displays, musical performances, and—of course—lots and lots of food from Qualla Boundary chefs. A reporter for the Durham Morning Herald described the elaborate spread he witnessed at the 1949 Festival:

Spread out on a long table…were roast bear, venison, bison, speckled trout, mushrooms, raccoon and wild turkey. There were chestnut bread, bean bread, hominy bread, wild potato bread, flour corn bread, sweet potato bread and molasses bread. Vegetables included potatoes, corn, hominy, beans, wild greens, pumpkin, succotash, artichoke and ramps. The drinks included sumac-ade, a delicious pink colored drink, sassafras tea, spicewood tea and hickorynut milk. Wild fruits included blackberries, huckleberries, strawberries, raspberries, elderberries, wild plum, fox grapes, opossum grapes, dewberries, and gooseberries (p. 67).

Cherokee Cooklore offered tourists a guide to many of the dishes they sampled at the Festival. For the southern tourist who purchased the book on holiday, many of the recipes and ingredients would have been familiar, like those for succotash (p. 59) and leather breeches (p. 51). Other recipes, however, would not have been accessible for the suburban chef. Certain ingredients like ramps, sochan, spicewood, and mushrooms only grew wild and could not be found in grocery stores. Many recipes for wild game would have been exotic to city folks, though certainly not to Appalachian tables.

Advertisement announcing the reopening of Granny’s Kitchen under new management, (1984, May 3), The Smoky Mountain Times, page 6.

Eastern Cherokee Foodways Today

The work of remembering, celebrating, and innovating Eastern Cherokee foodways continues today, through the work of chefs, restauranteurs, farmers, historians, and home cooks. The Cherokee Indian Festival, now (as of May 2025) in its 113th year, continues to serve up bean-bread and mustard greens to crowds of visitors from all across the South. 

For Cherokee households in North Carolina, the EBCI government Cherokee Tribal Food Program provides food relief and offers a wealth of information about Cherokee food history and cuisine on their website (https://food.ebci-nsn.gov/recipes/). Among dozens of recipes for traditional dishes, the Program pays homage to Aggie Ross Lossiah’s bean bread (https://food.ebci-nsn.gov/2022/09/27/aggie-rosss-bean-bread-dinner-with-fish-and-greens/). 

Meanwhile, in downtown Cherokee, the sign for Sequoyah Restaurant no longer stands, but one can sit down to a lunch of southern fare at Granny’s Kitchen, co-owned and operated by Sarah Beck’s granddaughter, Teresa Williamson (EBCI). Williamson grew up helping out in her grandmother’s restaurant alongside her uncles and cousins. “I grew up about a half of a mile up the road from Meemaw, later shortened to Ma, and saw her just about every day,” she recalls. “When my husband [Ray] and I decided to take over Granny’s Kitchen 41 years ago, she told me the apple didn’t fall far from the tree and wished us luck” (Teresa Williamson, email correspondence).