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The North Carolina native offers tours at the Oconaluftee Indian Village.
Joe Tennis
Jeremy Arch talks about the Oconaluftee Indian Village. The village stands adjacent to a playhouse hosting summer productions of the outdoor drama “Unto These Hills."
Jeremy Arch takes aim with a blowgun. Pointing a dart at a target, he skillfully scores a bull’s eye.
Yet, for Arch, this is more than sport; it’s a ritual of survival for the Cherokee—Arch’s ancestral tribe in the mountains of North Carolina.
Arch, 33, grew up going fishing in the creeks and loving all the country cooking in the Cherokee Qualla Boundary. And he respectfully learned from his elders the skills to survive: What he now demonstrates and explains as a guide for the Oconaluftee Indian Village.
“I’ve been immersed in this stuff my whole life,” Arch says. “I guess the hardest part was actually learning how to explain it to people.”
What Arch so entertainingly explains —and demonstrates—are the actual skills that are taught to the children of Cherokee “in elementary school, like the finger weaving, basket making, pottery,” Arch says. “Then, once we get into high school, we actually start taking carving classes and tool-making classes.”
It’s all part of tradition. “Ninth grade and on up, we’ll take carving classes,” Arch says. “So it’s not unusual for you to have your carving knife in your pocket that you got from your grandfather or from your dad.”
The Indian village is a close-knit community, Arch says, but it is common for Cherokee children to leave. “I moved away. I went off to the military.”
Arch served as a cavalry scout for the U.S. Army. “It was a lot of time in the dark, tripping over stuff,” he says with a smile.