The Water Carriers: A Journey Through Cherokee History and the Secret Life of Rivers

An illuminating journey through Cherokee history and an ancient tradition that can change how we understand our world.

The history of the Cherokee people is an epic story of survival and creativity. A tale usually told through the lens of Cherokee resistance to land-hungry colonists and the removal policy of Andrew Jackson, it is that and so much more. Cherokee history connects us to deep time, to Indigenous environmental knowledge, and the future of a continent.

The Water Carriers—or ama danhtsisi, in Cherokee—is a journey into worlds formed in the mists of “time immemorial.” Award-winning historian Gregory Smithers transports readers back to forgotten epochs when Southern Appalachia’s mountains soared as high as the Alps of Europe, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and ancient oceans receded to make way for rivers. In Southern Appalachia, rivers, which Cherokees called Long Person—or Ganvhidv Yvwi—moved the earth and excavated mountains to reveal fertile valleys. Smithers highlights how Long Person drew Cherokees and their Indigenous ancestors to the water’s edge where they nurtured an enduring bond with the river.

From their first tentative steps in small hunting and gathering bands to bustling aquapelagos—communities forged along rivers—The Water Carriers is a deeply-researched and elegantly written history that illuminates the importance of water carrier traditions in Cherokee history. In the The Water Carriers, life pulses from mountaintops to distant seas, and Cherokees remind us of a simple yet profoundly urgent truth: ama gvnida—“water is life.”