Amanda Mabel Sequoyah Swimmer was an Eastern Band Cherokee potter.
13 Facts About Amanda Swimmer
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Amanda Swimmer was recognized in North Carolina for her contributions to the state's artistic and mountain heritage, and in 2018 she was named a Beloved Woman by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
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Amanda Swimmer's family was self-sufficient and grew all of its own food.
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Amanda Swimmer taught herself to form and fire pots after discovering a deposit of clay near her home in the Big Cove community.
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Amanda Swimmer sold her first pots to tourists brought to her home by a park ranger familiar with her work.
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At the age of 36, Amanda Swimmer began working at the Oconaluftee Indian Village, where Mabel Bigmeat taught her Cherokee pottery-building methods.
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Amanda Swimmer demonstrated pottery making at the village for more than 35 years, often building more than a thousand pots in a summer season.
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Amanda Swimmer was one of the first individuals to propose different uses and names for traditional Cherokee pottery.
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Amanda Swimmer was instrumental in reviving historic Cherokee pottery techniques that had fallen into disuse in North Carolina after the disruption of the mass Cherokee removal from their homelands to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River in 1839.
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Amanda Swimmer did not use a potter's wheel to create any of her work.
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Amanda Swimmer used various types of wood to fire it, and the final color of her pottery was determined by the type of wood that she used in firing.
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Amanda Swimmer was 16 when she married Luke Amanda Swimmer.
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Amanda Swimmer died at her home in Big Cove on November 23,2018, at the age of 97.