Study Notes: The Cherokee Nation

Today the Cherokee Nation is the second largest Indian nation in the United States, and it is split into two main groups, the Western Band in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and the Eastern Band in Cherokee, North Carolina. Both groups are recognized by the federal government. There are an additional 30 groups trying to get recognition. By law, a person must be a direct blood descendant of a Dawes Act enrollee to be a member of the Cherokee Nation. Tribal membership is around 300,000. However, once this great tribe was united and lived somewhere around the Great Lakes region according to linguists because the Cherokee spoke an Iroquoian language. The Cherokee eventually migrated south and occupied parts of western Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. Between 1809 and 1821, Sequoyah developed the written form of the Cherokee language enabling the Cherokee to preserve their history and culture. Early Euro-American contacts described the Cherokee as one of the most advanced tribes. After the War of 1812 and the discovery of gold in Georgia during the 1830’s, white settlers wanted the Cherokee homelands and they began to push for relocation. President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 and ordered their removal in spite of the fact that 500 Cherokee allies saved his life and his command during the Battle of Horseshoe Bend back in 1814. Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a letter to President Martin Van Buren in 1836 supporting the Cherokee people. (See Emerson's Letter) Senators Daniel Webster and Henry Clay were also opposed to Indian removal. Eventually, Samuel Worchester, a minister and missionary to the Cherokees, took legal opposition to the Georgia dismissing title of Indian land all the way to the Supreme Court and won but could not stop the government’s removal of the Cherokee anyway. The Trail of Tears as it came to be known saw men, women, and children rounded up and forced to march over a thousand miles to Indian Territory in

Oklahoma. The long journey as depicted in the famous painting by Robert Lindeux (right), poor food or no food, disease, and ill treatment in the internment camps cost an estimated four thousand Cherokee their lives.

In 1839, the final group of Cherokee arrived in Indian Territory. They established a democratic form of government at their new capital, Tahlequah. It quickly became a center of business and cultural activity. The first newspaper in Indian Territory was The Cherokee Advocate printed in both Cherokee and English from 1844 until 1906. Not long after the first periodical, The Cherokee Messenger was published. The Cherokee people created an educational system of 144 elementary schools and two higher education institutions including the Cherokee Female Seminary, the first sendary school for females west of the Mississippi River. The Cherokee schools were so superior that white settlers on the border of the school system paid tuition for their children to attend. The period between the Indian Removal and the U.S. Civil War is often referred to as the Cherokee Golden Age.

According to William Penn Adair Cherokee diplomat, lawyer, and politician, things looked very depressing for the Cherokee at the beginning of the 1970 congressional session. Indian affairs in general and the Cherokee interests specifically were undergoing a period of turmoil and grievous uncertainty. Adair believed that “Members of Congress wanted to abolish the practice of making treaties with Indian tribes, this at a time when the Cherokees were tryiong to win approval for a new agreement. Some insisted that the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified a year and a half earlier, had given the Indians citizenship in the United States and that the tribes fell within state and federal jurisdiction rather than that of their own laws as a result.”[1] However, Adair and his colleagues found many in Washington, D.C. sympathetic to the Indians who desired to treat them honorably. So Adair lobbied Congress and mounted a marketing campaign to explain and defend Indian nationhood. Cherokee leaders realized their survival required the support of the United States but they had no desire to be wards of the government with no opportunity to forge their own destiny as a sovereign nation. Cherokee could eloquently explain their rights and the promises made to their tribe, but the allotment policy and the railroad eating up large chunks of land in the Oklahoma Indian Territory always trumped any progress Cherokee leaders hoped to make.

However, there are some success stories such as Rachel Caroline Eaton who graduated from the Cherokee Female Seminary. She is believed to be the first Indian woman to receive a Ph.D. in Oklahoma and the first woman county superintendant of schools in Oklahoma. “In 1921, her dissertation John Ross and the Cherokee Indians was published as a Cherokee history book. It is still used today for research by Cherokee historians.”[2] Callie, as she was known, wrote a second book The History of the Cherokee Indians that continued where the first book ended, but she died of breast cancer before it could be published and remains unpublished today. One of her poems illustrates her love of Cherokee history and tradition:

Let us be wise, in wisdom ever growing,
Steadfast and firm, the needful things to do;
Walk calm, serene whatever winds be blowing;
Attain the heights yet touch the lowly, too.

Let us be true; sincere in word, in thought, in action;
Free from all pettiness of soul and mind;
And fair, devoid of prejudice or faction,
Let us be wholly just, supremely kind.

We pride of race would cherish veneration
For ancient Knowledge, wisdom, legends, lore;
Would throw the torch each future generation
To grasp and pass, As in the days of yore.

We would hold aloft the banners of the Tribesmen,
Lest trailing they be trampled in the mire;
Signal, "Up Ye Peace Chiefs, War Chiefs!" to the Clansmen;
"Sunset! Come Twilight; Renew your Council Fire."

~ Dr. Rachel Caroline Eaton

Another successful Cherokee woman is Wilma Pearl Mankiller, the first woman chief of the Cherokee. Mankiller served out the end of Ross Swimmer’s term when he resigned to assume the position of head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1985. She was elected in 1987 with 56% of the vote, and again in 1991 with 82% of the vote. Until Mankiller was made chief, the Cherokee had been a male-dominant society. She made a return to traditional Cherokee culture and value system balancing the roles and responsibilities of both genders. Under Mankiller‘s leadership the Cherokee Nation Community Development was founded, the Sequoyah High School was revived, there was a population increase in citizenry from 55,000 to 156,000, and more financial and technical assistance provided to tribal members enabling them to open small businesses and experience economic independence.

Curious about Cherokee food and what they like to eat; here is what they might eat for their Thanksgiving meal.

Ken Masters is a Cherokee artist with many interests and talents including pottery, language, and music. You can see many photographs of the Cherokee people over 6 generations 130 years into the past; past and present warriors; and the Cherokee landscape on his website.

Demanding the Cherokee Nation: Indian Autonomy and American Culture 1830-1900. Andrew Denson. University of Nebraska Press. Lincoln, NE. 2004.

[1] Demanding the Cherokee Nation: Indian Autonomy and American Culture 1830-1900. Andrew Denson. University of Nebraska Press. Lincoln, NE. 2004. Pg. 1