Cherokee
The Cherokee in 1817
When the Europeans began their invasion of the Americas, the Cherokee were an agricultural people whose villages could be found throughout the American Southeast. By […]
Cherokee
The Cherokee 200 Years Ago, 1819
The Cherokees, whose traditional name is Aniyvwiya (Real People), were a farming people whose aboriginal homeland spread across 40,000 square miles in the American Southeast. […]
Prison Camps & The Trail of Tears (Part 1)
Trail of Tears The Trail of Tears and the Middle Passage are journeys to the first of the concentration camps—Indian reservations and plantations—and the beginnings […]
Dissolving Cherokee Government
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, that great American visionary Thomas Jefferson proposed that Indian nations be moved to territories west of the Mississippi […]
The Cherokee Trail of Tears
By the first part of the nineteenth century, many non-Indians in the United States, particularly in the southern states, felt strongly that there should be […]
Dragging Canoe, Cherokee Leader
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the Cherokee were not a single political nation, but a linguistic and cultural grouping of about 50 villages. […]
Cherokee Government and the English
The primary unit of government among the Cherokee was the town. Each town—perhaps 50 at the time of first European contact—was autonomous. The government of […]
The Theft of the Cherokee Outlet
In 1836, under the terms of the Treaty of New Echota, the Cherokee were given a narrow strip of land some 225 miles long and […]
Preparing the Cherokee for Removal
Since its founding, the United States, and particularly the states that compose it, has been uncomfortable with having Indians nations within its boundaries. Motivated by […]
Cherokee Treaty Claims
By 1830, the American government had decided that American Indians had no place in the United States and passed legislation calling for their removal to […]