By Lauren Burgess

After finding the cave writings of the Cherokee people who lived in DeKalb County, Alabama almost 200 years ago, archaeologists and Cherokee scholars have deciphered the text, discovering a vast and rich history.

Near the city of Fort Payne and at the base of Lookout Mountain, Manitou Cave served as a tourist destination in the late 1800s and as a commercialized cave in the early ’60s. It served as a secret hideout for teenagers of the local area until 1979, when the cave was shut down and abandoned. 

The cave sat vacant for almost 40 years until Annette Reynolds step foot inside in 2015. Beneath the vandalism on the walls, she saw a history that must be preserved. She invited researchers, archaeologists, and scholars from the three recognized bands of the Cherokee tribe to translate the writings, discovering that it was the Cherokee Syllabary, or alphabet. 

“Sequoyah, in fact, lived here, in this area, and he was the one that created the Cherokee Syllabary which really saved the whole culture during their whole diaspora when they had lost all their territory in eight states and had a forced removal,” said Reynolds.

She continued, saying “Even though this assimilation process was taking place on the outside and in the town, and what it meant was to be civilized, there was a lot of criteria about not speaking your language, not following your spiritual traditions, not doing your ceremonies. They had a special place in this cave which they used in the form of prayer, a form of communication, a form of documenting history that in fact there was a group that kept their traditions alive and to me this is really so significant and empowering for the Cherokee people.”

Beau Carroll, an archaeologist from the Eastern Tribal Historic Preservation Office, spoke about the importance of these messages they left behind, saying “For a Cherokee just to go into a cave, it’s fairly dangerous. You’re going into another world where things live that are more powerful than you are. You’re pretty much invading their space coming in here. The places that they wrote, they’re not easy to get to, and it’s not like you can go to the hospital.”

He and the team were able to translate the syllabary and the writings. Portions of the writings explain the rules to stickball, a game played in ancient times to settle disputes between tribes without warfare. Other pieces of writing talk about medicinal practices so sacred that Carroll and the team declined to talk about them. 

However, Carroll did share the legend of how there was writing on the ceiling of the cave, saying “The guy that translated this stuff for me, he said a long time ago people could do a lot of things that people today can’t do, and he says just because you couldn’t get up there doesn’t mean they couldn’t, and I said ‘Well how did they get up there?’ and he said ‘well, they could fly.'”

Reynolds and Carroll both agreed that the sacred cave needed to be preserved, and in 2016, Reynolds made Manitou Cave a 501c3 non-profit organization, with no intention of opening it up to the public. Instead, the cave is used as a place to educate people about the history of the cave and the Cherokee people. 

“The mission is to respect and protect this historic, sacred site, through conservation and education so that the cave and the land and the water are preserved for visitors and the wildlife,” said Reynolds.