I am not familiar with this specific story, nor do I have knowledge of any Cherokee teachings outside what is published in the field. I can, however, discuss the transitions in the U.S. Southeast that saw the collapse of Mississippian cultures and the rise of coalescent societies like the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, and Chickasaw. Oral histories from these coalesced nations, and the historic accounts of the chiefdoms that persisted into the historic period like the Natchez, help us understand the Mississippian worldview, and how that culture transformed in the years following contact.
Around 1000CE complex chiefdoms arose throughout the eastern portion of North America, with the seat of power organized around large mound complexes. Cahokia, one of the earliest, largest, and most well-known of these Mississippian chiefdoms, boasted over a hundred earthen mounds spread out over six square miles, and was estimated to be the home of more than twenty thousand people. Cahokia was part of the Early Mississippian period, and for the next seven centuries a cyclic pattern of consolidation, mound complex development, and then abandonment of the site characterized power ebbs and flows across the Southeast.
Combining archaeology, oral history, and early historic records we can piece together Mississippian cosmology, and perhaps understand the intricacies of your question. Chiefdoms varied in size throughout the Southeast, from smaller mound complexes, to larger paramount chiefdoms, where the chief of chiefs held sway. Chiefs held the power to extract tribute, usually food or labor, from comonomers and lesser chiefs, and the office appears to be hereditary. Elites demanded extreme deference in the presence of commoners, and enslaved captives from other nations. Isotopic analysis of skeletal remains show elites consumed more protein than commoners, indicating increased access to limited resources, and their burials contain far more trade goods.
In exchange for their preferential status, elites resided on the summit of large earthen mounds and acted as intermediaries between the spiritual worlds and the commoners. The Mississippian cosmos contained three tiers; the Upper World, the Lower World, and This World. The Upper World was a place of purity and order, home of spiritually important birds like raptors and spiritual being like Sun, Moon, and Thunder. In the Lower World lived amphibians and snakes, monsters like the Great Serpent and the Underwater Panther, and was a world of disorder and fertility. This World was the home of humans. Powerful individuals could travel between these worlds, and it was the role of the chiefdom to maintain order (Snyder).
The legitimacy of the chief depended on their ability to provide for commoners, and their ability to maintain control in a volatile world. If a chief was unable to protect their people, or even themselves, they lost legitimacy and the mound complex would be abandoned. Scholars believe the cyclic pattern of complexes rising and falling indicate those dynasties that rose to power, but were unable to maintain their position, either through warfare or environmental insults like drought or famine.
For the first few centuries following European contact the cyclic pattern of Mississippian mound complexes continued. Early Spanish explorers describe densely populated settlements surrounding monumental earthen mounds with micos (chiefs) able to control sufficient numbers of fighters to decimate the Narvaez entrada in Florida, and push Soto around the Southeast. While these early Spanish incursions might have destabilized a few chiefdoms, like Chicaza in Mississippi and Tascalusa in Alabama, stability continued, and some chiefdoms like the Caddo, Natchez, and Apalachee continued until the eighteenth century. Your question indicates a massacre and uprising, either of which could have been sufficient cause to undermine the authority of a chief and cause the abandonment a mound complex.
The arrival of English settlers in the South, and the emergence of the Native slave trade shattered the Southeast. While earlier scholars originally thought epidemic disease prompted societal collapse in the Southeast, we now know a combination of factors linked to the deerskin and slave trade reshaped the region. Between 1685 and 1715 highly conservative estimates indicate the English, and their Native allies, enslaved 24,000-51,000 Indians and shipped them to plantations in the Caribbean. The slave trade set off a refugee crisis. Survivors tried to flee into the heart of the continent, displacing existing nations and sparking further conflict, and Spanish allied mission Indians fled south to the Keys where they begged for ship passage to Cuba to escape the slavers. Disease followed the slaving trails inland, prompting the first large verifiable smallpox epidemic in the late 1600s. A combination of slaving raids, warfare, disease, territorial displacement, and social upheaval shattered the Southeast.
From this shatterzone previously distinct populations began to consolidate and form coalescent societies. The Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Choctaws grew in power as alliances of strength and convenience allowed formerly disperse groups to stand against European encroachment. The story of Cherokee origins is complex, and linked to this shatterzone created by the slave, deerskin, and firearm trade. Cherokee oral history recorded in the 19th century states they initially lived in what is now southwestern Virginia and eastern Tennessee. Around the 1640s they were pushed out of the region by raiders from the Haudenosaunee Five Nations, who raided south for captives. The proto-Cherokee were also under pressure from Siouan speakers to the east, armed from trade with colonial Virginia, and from their previous neighbors the Catawaba (see Rittermeister's edit below). Pushed west into the mountains near the Broad River, the Iroquoian-speakers began coalescing as what we know as the Cherokee (Kelton). When nations like the Westo outlived their usefulness to Virginians and were enslaved, the Cherokee took their place as trading partners, exchanging slaves and deerskins with Virginians in exchange for firearms, and raiding/displacing nations throughout eastern Tennessee as well as northern Alabama and Georgia. By the 18th century the Cherokee displaced the original Muskogean inhabitants of middle Tennessee.
While I do not know the specific story you mention, the elemental truths hold. Mississippian complexes were maintained by powerful elites, who would be deposed if they were unable to perform their duty to maintain order in a chaotic world. Nations like the Cherokee emerged from the remnants of the grand mound complexes, shattered either through environmental change, or the disastrous effects of the indigenous slave trade. It is entirely possible for oral history to bridge this gap between the two periods as populations responded to a dynamically changing U.S. Southeast.
Sources:
Ethridge and Shuck-Hall eds Mapping the Mississippian Shatterzone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the American South
Gallay The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670–1717
Kelton Epidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492-1715
Snyder Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America
I hope I'm not too late u/Xaminaf, but it's easy to give you all the information on the Ani-Kutani we can get in English on the internet, it comes from a single paper, Who were the Ani-Kutani? An Excursion into Cherokee Historical Thought, by Raymond Fogelson. So what are these sources?
The earliest reference is a dialogue between a Tsalagi (Cherokee) man and Teyoninhokarawen (or, John Horton) a Scottish-Mohawk-Cherokee man who was visiting in 1809 and wrote a journal. He quotes a man's recollection of a priesthood during the Green Corn Dance when he was younger (say mid-1700's).
I remember when I was a boy, that a venerable person presided at these feasts [Green Corn Dance], who preached in a kind of poetic strain, and in a dialect of which only a few words were intelligible to the younger part of the people: All that I ever could clearly comprehend was a few words in which they expressed, ‘We are emigrating into a strange country, and now move our encampments.’ In the completion of the ceremony, the fires were all extinguished, and lighted again after the ancient method of kindling fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together.
[Teyoninhokarawen, John Norton comments on this quote:] This system of religion appears to have been introduced at a very distant period. At a time when the people were assembled in the Council House, a man having entered there and extinguished the fire [and] began to sing, repeating these words: ‘I have been to the Country above, and have no returned from thence, with the commands of the Great Spirit whose abode is there.’ He then appointed several ceremonies, dances, and purifications to be observed, to obtain His [the Great Spirit’s] favor, or avert His anger. This person was joined by so many others in his office, their numbers greatly increased, their persons became sacred in the opinion of the people. They called themselves Anikanos.
But whatever might have been their doctrine, it does not appear to have been strict morality, or if it were, they must have exempted themselves from the observance of the doctrine which they taught. They indulged their evil passions, without the least regard to the rights of others, or the restraints of modesty and decorum. And the superstition and reverence in which they were held, exacted the strictest compliance to their will. They however carried their wickedness to such a height that the indignation of the people was roused, and hatred and detestation of their vices succeeding to the superstitious reverence they had formerly claimed, they were finally all put to death where ever they were found.
This is the general outline of what we know about the Ani-Kutani. At first, they're Anikanos, but the rest of the story is similar to all later accounts: an individual within the Green Corn Dance society or a Fire priest had a revelation and returned with new ceremonies and established these traditions. The priests in charge of this new system eventually became dictatorial and "indulged their evil passions", and became hated and a rebellion occurred and they were massacred. And what a great line, if they taught strict morality, they must've exempted themselves!
The next group of sources are from the 1820's. We have an 1823 book by John Haywood, "The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee. This is a brief reference to priests who became oppressive and were killed, and he'd gotten his information from Charles R. Hicks. We have a longer version in an 1826 letter by that Charles R. Hicks, who was elected Principle Chief the following year. In this letter, he says the Cherokees have three classes in society: 1) Head Man of the town, 2) Auhnecootauhnies (The Proud), and 3) Common people.
These Auh-ne-coo-tauh-nie, or Proud, profess themselves, as is stated by tradition, to be teachers of Heavenly knowledge from the Creation. And the manner of their introduction to the assembled people [at ceremonies] is represented to have been usually at night times, and when he [a priest] approached near them [the crowd] the light of their fires were extinguished, as it was well known to them when he [the priest] came near, by frequently [he was] repeating the words: Cul lungh lut tee Tauh che lo eh (I am come from above). And after been seated on [a seat] which had previously been prepared for him or them, then their fires were rekindled again [Green Corn Dance]. But there is no account given in what kind of a discourse was given to the people at such meetings.
And that this order of men had exercised their offices to an extent that it became disagreeable and oppressive to the people. For that their demands were to be complied with, be their nature what they may, who were dreaded [having] been considered to be bearer[s of] the heavenly message. That at last, their power was enhalienenated [annihilated] by the nation [stripped of their powers and privileges]; altho’ traditions differs in their statement, as some others state that they were extirpated [executed].
Perhaps both statement is true in part, as it is related that [a] very respectable headman had went to hunt a few days, and a younger brother and his wife, who is said to be very handsome, had accompanied him. And [they] met with two of the Auhnecootauhnies, who had demanded the surrender of this young woman. Upon which, her husband hesitated and would not give a direct reply to the demand of his wife. And that demand was repeated, but the young man continued silent. At which this Elder brother enquired if he loved his wife – who then had replied in the affirmative, upon which the elder brother & himself had drawn their bows and arrows & killed them both [the priests], and by this circumstance the power of the Auhnecootauhnies had been ever after annihilated through the nation…
So we get more of the story, a family confronted by two priests who demanded to abduct their relative to their faces! And what a story, "do you love your wife?" "Yes," and they draw their bows; it cinematic in this way, only because cinema plays on the sense of impact and drama first contained in traditional orality.