Over in the Heirloom forum, there is a 4 year, very neglected topic about Cherokee gardens. Earlier today, I responded to it and then thought the bean information might interest some people here on this forum. Here is a cropped copy and paste from the heirloom forum response:

... When it comes to beansÂthe most commonly seen is the Trail of Tears. This is a prolific drought tolerant highly productive bean producing decent quality green beans (when small) and high quality slim shiny black dry beans. Another good but much lesser known bean is PriceÂs Cherokee. This bean has been traced back to the 1830Âs, came over the Trail of Tears and later the family then moved to California (1920Âs) where it was later collected by the U.C. Davis Seed Saving Project of the 1980Âs. This is a nice cream colored dry bean of good production. A very good green bean is the Cherokee Greasy Bean, highly productive, has a white dry seed and is still grown in western North Carolina. A good dry bean of larger size is the October Bush Bean, a nice cream bean with purple flecking, great for shelly beans of dry beans. There are many good eastern Tennessee and Kentucky Cherokee heirlooms. Cherokee Cornfield is a good example, a beautiful mixture of seed types that has been traditionally grown together for hundreds of years. Then there is the Cherokee Butterbean, actually a true Runner bean (P. coccineus)...

Most of these items are very rare today, mostly still grown by isolated families or being preserved by seed savers.

Raises more questions than it answers for some I guess.

Blueflintcolor>