After the Trail of Tears
After the Trail of Tears

Author: William G. McLoughlin

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2014-07-01

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 146961734X

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This powerful narrative traces the social, cultural, and political history of the Cherokee Nation during the forty-year period after its members were forcibly removed from the southern Appalachians and resettled in what is now Oklahoma. In this master work, completed just before his death, William McLoughlin not only explains how the Cherokees rebuilt their lives and society, but also recounts their fight to govern themselves as a separate nation within the borders of the United States. Long regarded by whites as one of the 'civilized' tribes, the Cherokees had their own constitution (modeled after that of the United States), elected officials, and legal system. Once re-settled, they attempted to reestablish these institutions and continued their long struggle for self-government under their own laws--an idea that met with bitter opposition from frontier politicians, settlers, ranchers, and business leaders. After an extremely divisive fight within their own nation during the Civil War, Cherokees faced internal political conflicts as well as the destructive impact of an influx of new settlers and the expansion of the railroad. McLoughlin brings the story up to 1880, when the nation's fight for the right to govern itself ended in defeat at the hands of Congress.

Why Did Cherokees Move West?
Why Did Cherokees Move West?

Author: Judith Pinkerton Josephson

Publisher: Lerner Publications

Published: 2010-08-01

Total Pages: 52

ISBN-13: 0761363181

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On May 26, 1838, U.S. soldiers surrounded Cherokee villages across Georgia. The soldiers came to force Cherokee families to move to a new territory in Oklahoma. The Cherokees had little time to gather their belongings before being herded into camps. From there, 13,000 were forced on the thousand-mile journey to Oklahoma. They had little food and no shelter from the weather. Many—especially children—grew sick and died. The forced march became known as nunna-dual-tsuny—the Trail of Tears.

The Cherokees
The Cherokees

Author: Grace Steele Woodward

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 1963

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780806118154

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Of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians the Cherokees were early recognized as the greatest and the most civilized. Indeed, between 1540 and 1906 they reached a higher peak of civilization than any other North American Indian tribe. They invented a syllabary and developed an intricate government, including a system of courts of law. They published their own newspaper in both Cherokee and English and became noted as orators and statesmen. At the beginning the Cherokees’ conquest of civilization was agonizingly slow and uncertain. Warlords of the southern Appalachian Highlands, they were loath to expend their energies elsewhere. In the words of a British officer, "They are like the Devil’s pigg, they will neither lead nor drive." But, led or driven, the warlike and willful Cherokees, lingering in the Stone Age by choice at the turn of the eighteenth century, were forced by circumstances to transfer their concentration on war to problems posed by the white man. To cope with these unwelcome problems, they had to turn from the conquests of war to the conquest of civilization.