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Mud in the Blood: The Next Generation of Cherokee Potters [1]
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Date: 2025-06-12
[Series note: People have been making pottery in the mountains of western North Carolina for thousands of years. This Living Traditions series focuses on the contemporary artists and makers who are maintaining pre-industrial pottery practices.]
Levi West (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) took his first pottery class on a whim. Less than three years later, he won first place in traditional pottery at the 112th Cherokee Indian Fair, which took place on the Qualla Boundary in western North Carolina in October of 2024.
He was excited to win the award, he told the Daily Yonder. But the real prize was beating his mentor, renowned potter Tara McCoy (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians), in the competition.
“I wanted to beat her, not because I want to be better than her, but to make her proud,” West said.
Levi West participated in the first Mud Daubers workshop in 2022. He said the program helped ignite a life-long passion for ceramics. (Photo by Anya Petrone Slepyan / The Daily Yonder)
West’s introduction to ceramics was through a traditional pottery program led by McCoy and supported by the Museum of the Cherokee People. Now in its fourth year, the workshop currently goes by the name Didanisisgi Gadagwatli, which is the Cherokee word for ‘mud dauber.’ It’s a nod to the story of how a wasp helped create the first Cherokee pot.
McCoy started this three-month intensive program because she was concerned about the decline in Cherokee potters who were actively making ceramics in the area.
“Tara set out to increase the number of ceramic artists in our community and make sure that pottery continued on for future generations,” explained Dakota Brown (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians), who oversees the program as director of education at the Museum of the Cherokee People. “To see how fast that has happened, just from her class, is crazy.”
Since 2022, more than 40 students have participated in the workshop. McCoy teaches her students a wide range of ceramics skills, including how to dig and process clay as well as traditional and contemporary methods of hand-building and firing pots.
For West, the program was transformative.
“What [Tara] did was really meaningful. I found something I love, and I’ll be doing this for the rest of my life,” he said. “I could never repay her for that.”
The Mud Daubers workshop is just one of several cultural and artistic programs run by the Museum of the Cherokee people. The museum hosts events related to Cherokee history, genealogy, and language, as well as other traditional crafts like basket weaving.
Brown believes that maintaining cultural traditions, from the Cherokee language to artistic practices, is an important responsibility for contemporary members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
“Because of colonization and systematic oppression, by all accounts Cherokee people shouldn’t have a culture. We should be absorbed into American identity,” Brown said. “But we do, because people fought for it. And that’s worth something.”
Visitors view an exhibition of pottery from the Mud Daubers workshop at the Museum of the Cherokee People. (Photo by Anya Petrone Slepyan / The Daily Yonder)
Pottery is especially symbolic because it is an art form that makes use of the land itself, Brown said.
“We as Cherokee people believe that we originated here. That we’re of this land and of this place. And this interconnected relationship that we have to land is the most important way that Cherokee art is done and created.”
According to curators at the Blowing Rock Art and History Museum, Cherokee potters have been producing ceramics for nearly 3,000 years.
Historical Cherokee potters used local clays which they formed by hand into thin-walled vessels. The clay was rolled into coils, which were joined together and then hit with a wooden paddle to strengthen and lengthen the walls of the pot. Engravings on the paddles were transmitted to the clay surface, serving to both decorate and strengthen the pieces. Once dried, the pots were heated into hard ceramic in the coals of an open fire, or in a pit dug into the earth.
Though much of the resulting pottery was highly decorative, fundamentally it was made to be used, Brown said. Cooking pots and storage containers were especially common, as well as ceramics with ceremonial purposes like effigy pots and fire pots.
“They were for use. And that’s one of the things that I think is beautiful about Cherokee pottery even today,” Brown said.
McCoy, who teaches the Mud Daubers workshop, is careful to impart her knowledge of historical methods and designs to her students. But she doesn’t stop there.
“Tara fully respects our ancestral practices when it comes to ceramics,” Brown said. “And at the exact same time, she’ll encourage somebody to completely go off the rails of what traditional Cherokee pottery is, and she allows them to not be stuck in this traditional way of making.”
Students explore traditional Cherokee pottery techniques in the Mud Daubers workshop, led by renowned Cherokee potter Tara McCoy. (Photos by Tyra Maney (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Diné), courtesy Museum of the Cherokee People)
Students explore traditional Cherokee pottery techniques in the Mud Daubers workshop, led by renowned Cherokee potter Tara McCoy. (Photos by Tyra Maney (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Diné), courtesy Museum of the Cherokee People)
Students explore traditional Cherokee pottery techniques in the Mud Daubers workshop, led by renowned Cherokee potter Tara McCoy. (Photos by Tyra Maney (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Diné), courtesy Museum of the Cherokee People)
This emphasis on innovation is so important to Brown because she said there’s often a pressure, especially from outsiders, to put Cherokee people and their art into “a box of something that’s Indian, or something that’s traditional.”
“And it’s so unfair because we’re a living people and we still want to create,” she continued. “That’s one of the signs of a living people is that culture changes over time.”
West agreed. “Some people think that Cherokee pottery is only this. You dig low-fire earthenware clay, you stamp it, you pit fire,” he said. “I do think it’s important that any Cherokee person that gets into pottery should learn the traditional way. And once you have that understanding, then it’s like, let’s push it farther. Let’s see what else we can do with it.”
Honoring Seven Generations
This balance of the past, present, and future is an important principle in Cherokee culture, according to Brown.
“I grew up hearing this my whole life from my dad, but there’s this concept that whatever you do as a Cherokee person, it’s not about you. It’s about honoring the seven generations that came before you, and then building for the seven generations that are going to come after you,” Brown said. “And Tara really does that with her class.”
At the age of 36, West is a proud representative of the next generation of Cherokee potters. He has already started assisting McCoy with her classes.
“I’m like the sidekick,” he said. “Whatever I learn, I come back and share it with whoever is willing to listen and learn. So it’s been full-circle to go from student to helper to hopefully teacher someday.”
West’s passion for ceramics is also tied to a sense of responsibility to his community. Like McCoy, he is invested in sustaining the practice of traditional pottery.
“There was a time in our history that Cherokees, all we did was pottery. It was a part of our everyday lives. Today after contact and after boarding schools and assimilation and separation from other tribes, we’ve lost all that knowledge,” he said. “So there’s this passion and this sense of urgency [among my generation] to learn and to bring all these things back.”
On a patch of land in the Qualla Boundary, West has started building what he hopes will become a community art compound. The project is supported by a number of local organizations including the Center for Native Health, the Ray Kinsland Leadership Institute, the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, South Arts, and staff from the University of North Carolina Asheville.
Levi West displays his maker’s signature on the bottom of his prize-winning pot. West is helping to develop a community art space for pottery and other traditional crafts. (Photo by Anya Petrone Slepyan / The Daily Yonder)
A small wood-fire kiln, which allows potters to fire clay to a higher temperature than the traditional method of pit-firing, is half-way completed. West believes incorporating high-fired materials and other post-industrial methods is an evolution of traditional pottery, rather than a departure from it.
“You do want to hold true to those traditional ways,” he said. “But there are traditional aspects in the contemporary stuff, and there would be no contemporary stuff without traditional stuff, is my thought.”
West also plans to have areas for processing clay dug from the surrounding land, as well as a space for pit firing. This “clay paradise” will also host materials for other crafts, like river cane for basket weaving and native plants for natural dyes.
West hopes the compound will play a role in community efforts to maintain traditional crafts, as well as inspire new artistic innovations.
“It’s not just learning about pottery and clay, but all of it. If we’re all doing our part, then it will all come back to us,” he said.
West gestured to the green field surrounding him. “Here is the dream.”
This article is part of the Living Traditions project, featuring an assortment of stories and podcasts about folklife in central Appalachia. Read More Living Traditions Sign up for email alerts.
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