Cherokee inched closer to holding a referendum vote asking how widely available alcohol should be on tribal land with a vote during December’s Tribal Council meeting, but exactly what the implications of such a referendum might be is still unclear.

Note: This is the second of a two-part series about Christian Priber, an utopian socialist whose beliefs — including free love — caused him in the mid-1730s to “flee” from Germany and eventually into the Southern Appalachians, where he intended with the aid of the Cherokee, to establish a Kingdom of Paradise in which those beliefs could be implemented.

Seven tribal employees who were fired or demoted when former Principal Chief Patrick Lambert took office in 2015 have received a combined $698,000 in settlement payouts following a November agreement that Lambert made public this week.

Christianus Gottlieb Priber was born in Zittau, Germany, where he was the son of a beerhouse owner. In October 1722, Priber’s Doctor of Jurisprudence thesis (written in Latin) was published at Erfurt University in Erfurt, Germany, after which he returned home to practice law. In time, he became the German equivalent of a district attorney (Oberamts-Reigierungs-Advokat) for the government in the superior bailiwick that included Zittau. And in 1722 he married Christiane Dorothea Hoffman, with whom he had five children.

Pride-filled pandemonium reigned in Cherokee Saturday night, Dec. 8, as the victorious Cherokee Braves football team returned to town. Police cars and fire trucks from the Cherokee Police Department and Jackson County Sheriff’s Department flashed their lights and blared their horns in an escort that had met the buses all the way back at Balsam, and fireworks filled the air as fans already tired from the five-hour drive back from Raleigh cheered till they were hoarse.

In a split decision, the Cherokee Tribal Council voted Dec. 7 to remove a member of the Tribal Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission who had been appointed to the board during the Patrick Lambert administration.

In its two years of existence, the Fly Fishing Museum of the Southern Appalachians has shown a willingness to travel.

First, from the mind of fly fishing enthusiast Alen Baker to the wood-paneled space of the Cherokee Chamber of Commerce. Then to the sunny Swain County Chamber of Commerce building in downtown Bryson City. And, soon, to a new building on Bryson City’s Island Street, just across the road from the trout-stocked waters of the Tuckasegee River.

People sometimes wonder if the prehistoric Cherokees used any sort of poisons on their blowgun darts. These darts (slivers of black locust, hickory, or white oak) were from 10 to 20 inches long with thistledown tied at one end to form an air seal in the blowgun (a hollowed piece of cane cut to a length of seven to nine feet). The Cherokees were accurate with these weapons up to 40 or 60 feet, especially when shooting birds, but there is no evidence they used poisons of any sort on their darts.

The attorney who argued for the impeachment of former Principal Chief Patrick Lambert has been issued an order from the Cherokee Tribal Court requiring him to show the court why allegations against him from former Attorney General Danny Davis shouldn’t result in disciplinary action.

Before white settlers corrupted the name to Cullowhee, the land along the Tuckasegee River south of Sylva was known to the Cherokee people as “Joolth-cullah-whee,” or Judaculla’s place.