Seasoning and the Sacred: Historical Use of Salt and Ashes among the Cherokee

The value of salt in the human diet and its enhancement of the palatability of food are well known, especially for predominantly agricultural peoples. For an inland, mountainous people, access to salt is often limited. Archaeological evidence suggests salt was processed from mineral springs in the ancestral Cherokee lands well before European contact. The ethnographic record depicts several plants that were burned and used as a salt substitute. Colonial accounts indicate salt as a trade item in the deer skin trade.  In their ethnomedical system the Cherokee had numerous restrictions on the use of salt which were extended to culinary ashes. There were also taboos associated with the type of wood ashes to be used in cooking and ramifications for actions that appeared to desecrate the sacred fire and associated ashes. All this points to a complex relationship to salt, a seasoning we take for granted today, and the minerals left behind when plant materials are burned.