THE CHEROKEE, An Ancient Culture, Rich in Tradition

 Long before Columbus discovered the "New World" or Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto first set foot in the Great Smoky Mountains, the Cherokee territory stretched from the Ohio River to the north, and southward into Georgia and Alabama. Their holdings extended over 135,000 square miles covering parts of what are now 8 states. Their vast territory was only surpassed by the depth of their culture and heritage, which dates back unnumbered generations. Their land holdings have long since disappeared, but today a strong pride keeps the past alive through renewed interest in the legends, stories, myths, language, and crafts of their ancestors.

 When de Soto first encountered the Cherokee in 1540 he found a unified, peaceful nation of people grouped into about 200 settlements or towns. Of Iroquoian lineage, they were a nation of farmers and hunters. Their life and culture greatly resembled that of the Creek and other southeastern tribes. The nation was composed of a confederacy of red and white towns, otherwise known as war and peace towns. The chiefs of the red towns were subordinated to a supreme war chief of the entire tribe, while the officials of the white towns were under the supreme peace chief of the tribe. The white towns were regarded as places of sanctuary where those who fled from blood avengers might find asylum.

 The Cherokee possessed a variety of stone implements including knives, axes and Celts. Skills such as basket weaving and pottery making were known, and maize, beans, and squash were cultivated. The art of hunting was well developed. Deer, bear, and elk furnished meat and clothing. Simple shelters were made from a framework of poles with coverings of bark and cane.

In 1650 their population was about 22,000, after a smallpox epidemic had reduced their number by nearly one-half.

In 1730, Sir Alexander Cuming, an emissary of King George II, conferred the title of emperor on Chief Moytoy at Tellico, Tennessee. In 1740 a party of Cherokee under Chief Kalanu, the Raven, took part in General James Oglethorpe's expedition against the Spaniards of St. Augustine, Florida. During the “French and Indian War”, Colonel George Washington complained of the unseasonable delay in obtaining aid from the Cherokee, noting that their friendship and assistance were well worth cultivating. In 1762, Ostenaco, a Cherokee warrior, visited London with a delegation of fellow tribesmen and received an audience with George III. A subsequent visit by a Cherokee delegation to London in 1765 resulted in the arrival among the Cherokee of John Hammerer, the first white teacher.

The attitude of the Cherokee was a matter of great concern during the American Revolution (1775-1783). Although opinion was divided, the tribe tended to favor the king against the colonists. This attitude persisted even after the conclusion of peace, and in the treaty of 1793 between Spain and the southern natives, the Cherokee nation requested the Spanish king to admit it under his immediate protection, as the Chickasaw, Alibamu and Choctaw had been previously admitted.

President Washington informed the Cherokee that they would be used as an experiment in “Indian education and that the future of all other Indian tribes and their dealings with the federal government would depend on their example”. In accordance with this policy, Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, set up loans in 1799 to educate Cherokee youth.

 About 1800, the Cherokee began to adopt the economic and political structure of the white settlers. They adopted agricultural ideas, animal husbandry, log cabin homes, and weaving from the whites. Some owned large plantations and kept slaves ( see Black Indians ). Others had small-scale farms. The tribe also established a republican form of government called the Cherokee Nation. In 1821, a Cherokee named Sequoyah introduced a system of writing he had developed for the Cherokee language. The Cherokee syllabary (pictures that represent words) quickly became a part of daily life. Sequoyah's chief aim was to record ancient trial culture in a permanent form. Going beyond that, almost the entire tribe became literate within a short time. A written constitution was adopted, and religious literature flourished, including translations from the Christian scriptures. A Cherokee newspaper called The Phoenix began publication in New Echota, Georgia, on February 21, 1828, and was circulated throughout the territory.

 Pressure on the Cherokee in Georgia by white settlers grew rapidly, and the whites demanded that the government move all Cherokees in the southeastern U.S. to areas west of the Mississippi River. The Cherokee issue was hotly debated in Congress for many years.

Speeches on behalf of the Cherokee by Henry Clay, Davy Crockett, Daniel Webster, and other prominent statesmen fell on deaf ears. After the War of 1812, with the victorious U.S. secure in its borders, federal policy turned to the “removal of the Indians” west of the Mississippi River to the so-called Great American Desert, where, supposedly, no white man would ever want to live. President Andrew Jackson, whose life had been ironically saved by Cherokee chief Junaluska at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1812, was the one who signed the “Indian Removal Act” on May 28, 1830. It gave him the power to exchange land west of the Mississippi for the southeastern territory of the Five Civilized Tribes: the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles.

In 1835, some members of the tribe agreed to move west in a treaty they signed with the government. but most Cherokee, led by Chief John Ross, also called Cooweescoowee or Large White Bird, opposed the treaty.

The removal policy also led to a clash between Jackson and the U.S. Supreme Court, which had ruled in favor of the right of the Cherokees to retain their lands in Georgia. Jackson refused to enforce the Court's decision, and beginning in the spring of 1837 and continuing through the fall of 1838, the Cherokee people, like the other tribes before them, were forced westward. They were rounded up and corralled into hastily constructed stockades.

So began the "Trail of Tears," a 1,200 mile journey through the dead of winter to unfamiliar land in “Indian Territory”, later called Oklahoma.

Under the command of General Winfield Scott, over 600 wagons, steamers and keel boats moved about 16,000 Cherokee by land and by river. The infamous journey took between 104 and 189 days, and before they arrived in Oklahoma, torrential rains, ice storms, disease and broken heartedness had claimed the lives of at least 4,000 men, women, and children.

About 1,000 Cherokee escaped removal and remained in the Great Smoky Mountains, which form the boundary between Tennessee and North Carolina. Will Thomas, an adopted Cherokee, purchased 56,000 acres which eventually became the Qualla Boundary. The government let them stay and they became known as the Eastern Band of Cherokee. And so the Cherokee Nation was divided.

The Cherokee who went west were faced by controversies with the old settlers who had preceded them in the west. Feuds and murders rent the tribe as reprisals were made on those Cherokee who had signed the treaty of New Echota (December 29, 1835) earlier.

Chief John Ross became chief over the united tribe. Their capital was established at Tahlequah. They set up their own schools and churches. Then with the advent of the Civil War 20 years later, the tribe was rent again by new partisan groups and military devastation. Then in the late 1800s, Congress abolished the Cherokee Nation and opened much of the Cherokee land for resettlement by whites.

More than 20,000 Africans were adopted into the 5 civilized nationsbefore the end of the 19th century.  The Treaty of 1866 brought about the abolishment of Slavery in Indian Territory, and the adoption of the former slaves into 4 of the 5 nations. To learn more about the Cherokee Freedmen, click here.


The United States Government has been trying unsuccessfully to register Native American Indians for over a hundred years. The infamous Dawes Act of 1887 was the first such effort on a large-scale. The purported aim of the Act was to protect Indian property rights during the Oklahoma Land Rush. By registering, Indians were told, they would be allotted 160 acres of land per family in advance of the Land Rush and thus be restituted for 100 years of genocide against them.

The purpose of the Dawes Act, ostensibly to protect Indian welfare, was viewed with suspicion by many Indians hurt by government's clumsy relocation efforts of the past. Indians who had refused to submit to previous relocations refused to register on the Dawes Rolls for fear that they would be caught and punished.

The Dawes Act abolished tribal claims to land provided in the Treaty of 1850 (138 million acres).  The Act reallocated all of the Indian land into ¼ of a ‘section’ (150 acres) per ‘qualified’ family; to very person over 18, 1/8 of a section (75 acres), to all orphans under 18, 1/8 of a section.

The Dawes Act also required all persons over ½ blood quantum, to be ‘assigned’ a white overseer to manage the land and all legal affairs, as a person of ½ blood quantum was ‘incapable’ of managing his own affairs. Greed and corruption often led to the overseer obtaining title to the land in a few brutal years.

To get on the Dawes Rolls, Native Americans had to "anglicize" their names. ‘Rolling Thunder’ thus became Ron Thomas and so forth.  In order to ‘qualify’ a person’s parents had to have been registered on the Treaty Roll of 1850, and the applicant had to produce ‘proof’ of his parents registration numbers. If your grandparents were on the Treaty Roll, but your parents had died, moved, refused to change their names, or refused to sign, you were ’denied’ registration.

In order for an Intermarried White to be placed on the Dawes Rolls, they had to be married prior to 1875, and attend two or three interviews with the Indian Commission, with copies of their original marriage license, issued by the Cherokee Nation.

By limiting ‘qualified’ recipients of ‘free’ land, the government effectively ‘stole’ nearly 100 million acres, which was sold at huge profits during the Land Rush. It was found in Oklahoma, that Indian held land, which totaled 138 million acres in 1887 at the time the Dawes Act was signed into law, had been reduced to 47 million acres of land by 1934.

Tribal government was abolished in 1906 during the procedures leading to the establishment of the state of Oklahoma.

In 1934 the Dawes Act, and the Cherokee Nation was abolished. In 1954, the Cherokee Nation, in order to reestablish itself as a Federally Recognized Tribe, was required to amend it’s constitution. The amendments, forced upon them by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, required that;

Any person that voluntarily left the Cherokee Nation would forfeit their Cherokee citizenship.

Tribal membership was restricted to those people that could ‘prove’ direct descent from a person who was ‘accepted’ on the Final Dawes Rolls.

The Federal Government, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs, decides who is an Indian, based on ‘acceptable proof’. This ‘proof’ is limited to State issued birth and death certificates, showing your direct descent from a Dawes Roll registrant. Since states did not begin collecting this data until 1925, many of our ancestors were never issued ‘official’ state approved birth or death certificates. In addition, birth certificates were not ‘required’ until after World War II, when the Social Security Act was enforced.

Today, many Cherokee live in northeastern Oklahoma, where they have restored their tribal government.
 

Read here the 1975 Constitution of the Cherokee Nation, Oklahoma.

Check here the complete list of federally recognized Indian Tribes

In 1987 the U.S. Congress approved the recognition and development of the "Trail of Tears National Historic Trail."