David Cozzo - River Heroes

Partial Transcript: My name is David Cozzo. I'm an ethnobotanist, and I have been the project director for the revitalization of traditional Cherokee artisan resources for the last almost fourteen years. I work out of the Cooperative Extension Office. I'm an area specialized agent. My specialty is Cherokee—is preserving Cherokee artisan resources.

Partial Transcript: Well, I have a background in Cherokee ethnobotany. So this was a really nice transition. When I finished graduate school, I wasn't sure what the future would bring. And then I found out about this job. And we not only work with—specifically with artisan resources, we do work with wild foods. We do work with some of the culturally significant plants. So this just falls into it.
When you become an ethnobotanist, the concept of employment is pretty vague. And this allows me to actually use what I specialized in. And it's been good.

Partial Transcript: Well, you know, the river's—river's a pretty main component of Cherokee society. You started every day walking to the river, going to the river, ritual bathing, ritual plunge, the medicines in the water. It's a pretty major relationship. And, of course, your best cornfields would be in these riparian river bottoms. This is—this is where the good soil is in the mountains. And this—the river, even coming out of its banks, would rejuvenate that soil. That's where river cane sort of steps into the picture.
You know, if you—if you go down to along a riverside where there's been cane for a long time, you will see the sediment piled up three feet, like a natural levee at the side of the river. So, you know, you're—when—you know, archaeologists say that the Cherokees would move their villages every twenty to twenty-five years. Well, what happens is, when you move a village, is—you know—the succession plants come in. And one of these succession plants was river cane.
So when Europeans first got here, and they went down in these valleys, and they said, "Oh, there's river cane for hundreds of miles," well, that's what the English saw. That's what the British saw. When the Spanish came through, those were all cornfields. So when—when a village would move, the river cane would move into that village. And then, when people came back to that site, their—their agricultural fields had been rejuvenated by the sediment from the river cane. The river cane was a building material to recreate that village. So it was an integral part of the whole succession of leaving the village and coming back to it.

Partial Transcript: Well, we don't know a lot about—you know—the Native American environment. The Cherokee haven't had any river cane on their property in many years because it's—the best river cane is—you know—for a hundred years, has been down in Georgia, South Carolina. But culturally, as one of my professors said, it was the plastic of the Southeastern Native Americans. They made everything with it. They made their housing with it, fish traps, benches, knives, ritual, um—there's a list that John Swanton put up, and it goes on for more breath than I have. So it was an integral part of everything they did.
You know, of course, basketry and mats were very important. We look at mats now as a little something you hang on your wall, but it used to be walls. It used to be walls, floors, coverings of benches. The river cane mats, for the Cherokee, or for the southeastern tribes, are what—are what carpets were in—in the Middle East. They weren't something you put on your floor. They were your floor, you know. And they were everything to make your life a little more comfortable. They say those mats were woven so tightly that you could throw a few of them over you and it was a rain shelter. They were waterproof. Of course, the baskets—the same thing. They said they used to be able to weave baskets that were so tight they could haul water in them. And river cane was the—the primo material for Cherokee basketry.

Partial Transcript: Well, as a—as an ecological guardian, river cane is about as good as it gets. You know, when you look at a piece of river cane, what you see above ground is what's below ground. The rhizomes that are running throughout this place are a woven mat of half-inch, inch rhizomes that are just throughout this area. And then, it's got a fibrous root that goes with that. So it's almost impossible to wash it away.
When the river comes out of its banks—it's kind of breezy right now. We can walk a few feet into that cane, and all the wind stops. Well, that's the same thing that happened with water. So when water would come out of it's banks, it would just slow down through the cane, and all the sediment would come out of it. And they say up to 100 percent of the settlement—sediment comes out of it due to river cane.
Out here, at this property, in 2004, when they had massive flooding, the agricultural agent told me that where there was river cane, there was no erosion. Where there were gaps in the cane, there was erosion in the fields. So very important for that, very important for that, for just stabilizing those riverbanks.
And it's also—I mean, that whole idea of where the airflow is—that's why wildlife loves river cane, because there's an inversion layer in there where the air doesn't move. So in the wintertime, the critters would go in there. Cattle loved it. They say the carrier pigeon may have been involved with river cane. A whole lot of creatures would find comfort in the cane, in the on a cool day.

Partial Transcript: Oh, definitely. You know, because of all that underground portion, it's—it's hard to wash out the riverside. It doesn't—it just holds up. And even if it does get washed out underneath, the layer that's left will fall down again and just grow more cane.
You know, what—because of the underground structure of the cane, the rhizomes, and the roots, it's really difficult to wash out a riverbank when it's on it. And if it gets undercut at all, the cane just falls down and will start growing again in what's left. So you don't get the level of erosion you would get with other things. It's, they say, a thirty-meter—thirty-meter expanse of river cane is much better at preserving the river than thirty meters of forest.

Partial Transcript: Well, the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, which is what I'm based out of, is—you know—it was set up when the casino came to town. And it's an independent foundation. It's independent from the tribe. But it's set up, and its three areas are economic development or workforce development, environmental preservation, and cultural preservation. So we've been funding projects that help secure river cane.
Well, actually, what they did was they started with cultural preservation. And they had all these basketry classes. But what they realized is that a lot of the materials that went into these baskets had been—they'd been a problem for decades. I mean, I've read—I've read, back in the 1890s James Mooney talks about the Cherokee going to Georgia to get river cane then. In the fifties, they used to go over to Kentucky to get river cane.
So it's hard. This is pretty small cane behind us. It's hard to get that good quality material for this. So my program was set up just to focus on that. So we can work with environmental groups. We can work with, you know, groups that were interested in rivers and land preservation and bringing that cultural element to it because people still need that.

Partial Transcript: Well, I'll tell you a story that they first—when I first got here, I was up at the Cherokee—the Oconaluftee Village, and I was talking to fellas there. And a lot of the traditions kind of get preserved there because people who know stuff work there. And this one fella told me—you know, you can see this dead cane. And this is cane that flowered last year. So it'll—you know—and sometimes just an odd one will flower. And this is what he told me. He said, "Every now and then in the cane patch, a female will come up." And he said, "It's a smaller cane." He said, "You never cut that cane. But when that happens, you can hear the cane in the back, all the male cane around it gets excited and starts rustling." So it's excited to have that woman in the cane break. But that was—that was just the one thing I was told when I first got here.
But one of the things that I want to stress is that when—when people, especially people who know how to harvest cane, when they come into a cane break, it's not a wholesale hacking. They're very selective. It's selective harvesting. And what happens is they want a four-year-old cane, a four-year-old and above.
So a cane—you can look at a stalk of cane—I can look at that and say that's—that's in its second year. I've learned that by going out with basket makers. They want cane that's a certain height, a certain diameter, you know, a certain height to the first branch, certain diameter, and a uniform color, which lets you know it's—it's at least four years old.
So they'll go into a cane break; they don't just cut everything. They pick and choose and—you know—they'll—they get one out of ten. So I'm never concerned about taking a group of basket makers out to harvest cane, that they're going to do any damage in a place. It actually—this needs thinning right now. It actually is—is working with the cane instead of at the cane.

Partial Transcript: We'll focus on this one right here. So when the basket makers go out to a cane break, they look for a stalk. So you want it, minimum, as big as your thumb. This one's a little undersized. But for what we have in this cane break, it's good. Now, the age of the cane—you see, this is called the clum leaf sheath. These sheaths start the whole way. And bamboo loses them all the first year. Cane keeps them for three years.
So the first year they come up, they're all attached. And you can see some of the newer cane still has a lot of that. The second year, they look like this, where they're starting to degrade. The third year, they fall off, and what you get is—is two-colored cane. So wherever the leaf sheath fell off, you get a light area and a darker—a uniform green above it. The fourth year, the whole stalk is one solid color. And when that happens, it's ready to be harvested. So if somebody comes out, and they see those sheaths on it, or they see—they see a bi-color like that, it's too young. And they tell me that the cane will be too brittle. They won't be able to use it.
The cane reaches its full height and full diameter the first year. It wasn't—it doesn't grow anymore. But what it does do is, the leaves on it get thicker and thicker and thicker, until you get, like, a squirrel-tail effect. Like, this is—this is small cane, but it's older than this, even though this is much bigger.
So when you're establishing river cane, you have to build your own canopy. You have to let the smaller cane grow out. And keeps feeding the rhizomes, feeding the rhizomes, feeding the rhizomes. And eventually, this cane has to reach up to a point where it goes over the other cane that's already there, to get any photosynthesis. So you can see—you can just look back and see various ages. You see stuff that's been here for a few years because it's real bushy. You see some, you know, stalks that look like they just shot up because they just did.
So this is really a new stalk. This is probably two years old. This'll be its third season. And then, you know, if it was big enough, next year it would be harvested for river cane.

Partial Transcript: So when I—when I first got out here, the first year I was here, 2005—it was the first summer. And we looked across the fields, and we could see spots where the river cane was turning purplish. And there were, like, three spots of that. And we said, "What's wrong with the cane?" They said, "What'd you do, Dave?" [laughs 0:16:07] "I didn't do anything. Well, it turned out it was going to flower. And that year, with three sections going to flower, we actually got seed at the third section. You need two—two separate places flowering and cross-pollination to get seed.
And you can see this probably went to flower last year. There's no sign there was seed here. But each of these, the end of these, would have a head of grain. And I came out with a bucket and would just run my hand over it, and it would rain grain. So I collected a bunch of it, and I made biscuits out of it. And you know those nice and light biscuits that just float off your plate? Mine didn't look like that. But, you know, they—NHL wants my recipe for hockey pucks. But it was very tasty.
And they start to flower in April. And the grain is mature in June. So I started looking into it, and there are historical records that the Cherokee could—could trigger a response to cause it to go to flower and go to seed, which would've been perfect timing because there's really nothing—you know—you've got your wild greens, but all your energy foods are gone by then. You've got stored corn, and you may have stored acorns, but your energy food is gone. So this would've been an ideal food for that.
The other thing that was eaten was the young stalks. When they first come up, they're basically bamboo shoots. This is our native bamboo. And when the shoots came up, they say people used to cut it and eat it like asparagus. It's a little tougher. So highly nutritious.
It was managed. We don't know as much about managing now because it hasn't been managed that way in generations. And it only takes one to lose that kind of knowledge.