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.
The Cherokees: A Population History is the first full-length demographic study of an American Indian group from the protohistorical period to the present. Thornton shows the effects of disease, warfare, genocide, miscegenation, removal and relocation, and destruction of traditional lifeways on the Cherokees. He discusses their mysterious origins, their first contact with Europeans (prob-ably in 1540), and their fluctuation in population during the eighteenth century, when the Old World brought them smallpox. The toll taken by massive relocations in the following century, most notably the removal of the Cherokees from the Southeast to In-dian Territory, and by warfare, predating the American Revolution and including the Civil War, also enters into Thornton's calculations. He goes on to measure the resurgence of the Cherokees in the twentieth century, focusing on such population centers as North Carolina, Oklahoma, and California.
This collection of John Howard Payne's Papers is a significant recovery of firsthand political and social histories of Indigenous cultures, particularly the Cherokees, a southeastern tribe, whose ancestral lands included parts of the present-day states of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The papers enable readers to understand how the Cherokees and many other American Indians endured and persevered as they encountered forced removal in the 1830s due to the Indian Removal Act. The papers are also a source of cultural revitalization, elucidating the work of Sequoyah, a Cherokee genius, who in 1821 introduced his syllabary, a phonemic system with eighty-five symbols. John Howard Payne (1791-1852), an American actor, poet, and playwright, was so taken by the Cherokees' story that he lobbied Congress to forgo their removal and wrote articles in contemporary newspapers supporting Cherokees. In 1835 Payne journeyed to the Cherokee Nation and met with John Ross, Cherokee chief from 1828 to 1866, who found in Payne a colleague to assist him and other Cherokees with their cause against removal and in preserving their ancient social, spiritual, and political heritages. Payne gathered and recorded correspondence between Cherokees such as Ross, who was fluent in English, and U.S. officials. These papers include multiple correspondences, ratified and unratified treaties, contemporary newspaper articles, and resolutions sent to Congress appealing for justice for the Cherokees. Payne also assembled letters and writings by New England Congregationalist missionaries who resided in mission stations throughout the Cherokee Nation. Available in print for the first time, this remarkable repository of information provides a fuller understanding of the political climates Cherokees encountered throughout the early to mid-nineteenth century.
In The Cherokees and Christianity, William G. McLoughlin examines how the process of religious acculturation worked within the Cherokee Nation during the nineteenth century. More concerned with Cherokee "Christianization" than Cherokee "civilization," these eleven essays cover the various stages of cultural confrontation with Christian imperialism. The first section of the book explores the reactions of the Cherokee to the inevitable clash between Christian missionaries and their own religious leaders, as well as their many and varied responses to slavery. In part two, McLoughlin explores the crucial problem of racism that divided the southern part of North America into red, white and black long before 1776 and considers the ways in which the Cherokees either adapted Christianity to their own needs or rejected it as inimical to their identity.
In 1801 the Moravians, a Pietist German-speaking group from Central Europe, founded the Springplace Mission at a site in present-day northwestern Georgia. The Moravians remained among the Cherokees for more than thirty years, longer than any other Christian group. John and Anna Rosina Gambold served at the mission from 1805 until Anna's death in 1821. Anna, the principal author of the diaries, chronicles the intimate details of Cherokee daily life for seventeen years. Anna describes mission life and what she heard and saw at Springplace: food preparation and consumption, transactions pertaining to land, Cherokee body ornaments, conjuring, Cherokee law and punishment, Green Corn ceremonies, ball play, and matriarchal and marriage traditions. She similarly recounts stories she heard about rainmaking, the origins of the Cherokee people, and how she herself conversed with curious Cherokees about Christian images and fixtures. She also recalls earthquakes, conversions, notable visitors, annuity distributions, and illnesses. This abridged edition offers selected excerpts from the definitive edition of the Springplace diary, enabling significant themes and events of Cherokee culture and history to emerge. Anna's carefully recorded observations reveal the Cherokees' worldview and allow readers a glimpse into a time of change and upheaval for the tribe.
Established by the Cherokee Nation in 1851 in present-day eastern Oklahoma, the nondenominational Cherokee Female Seminary was one of the most important schools in the history of American Indian education. Devon Mihesuah explores its curriculum, faculty, administration, and educational philosophy. Recipient of a 1995 Critics' Choice Award of the American Educational Studies Association. 24 photos.
A sixth-generation North Carolinian, highly-acclaimed author John Ehle grew up on former Cherokee hunting grounds. His experience as an accomplished novelist, combined with his extensive, meticulous research, culminates in this moving tragedy rich with historical detail. The Cherokee are a proud, ancient civilization. For hundreds of years they believed themselves to be the "Principle People" residing at the center of the earth. But by the 18th century, some of their leaders believed it was necessary to adapt to European ways in order to survive. Those chiefs sealed the fate of their tribes in 1875 when they signed a treaty relinquishing their land east of the Mississippi in return for promises of wealth and better land. The U.S. government used the treaty to justify the eviction of the Cherokee nation in an exodus that the Cherokee will forever remember as the “trail where they cried.” The heroism and nobility of the Cherokee shine through this intricate story of American politics, ambition, and greed. B & W photographs
The five volumes in A History of the Book in America offer a sweeping chronicle of our country's print production and culture from colonial times to the end of the twentieth century. This interdisciplinary, collaborative work of scholarship examines the book trades as they have developed and spread throughout the United States; provides a history of U.S. literary cultures; investigates the practice of reading and, more broadly, the uses of literacy; and links literary culture with larger themes in American history. Now available for the first time, this complete Omnibus ebook contains all 5 volumes of this landmark work. Volume 1 The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World Edited by Hugh Amory and David D. Hall 664 pp., 51 illus. Volume 2 An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790-1840 Edited by Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelley 712 pp., 66 illus. Volume 3 The Industrial Book, 1840-1880 Edited by Scott E. Casper, Jeffrey D. Groves, Stephen W. Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship 560 pp., 43 illus. Volume 4 Print in Motion: The Expansion of Publishing and Reading in the United States, 1880-1940 Edited by Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway 688 pp., 74 illus. Volume 5 The Enduring Book: Print Culture in Postwar America Edited by David Paul Nord, Joan Shelley Rubin, and Michael Schudson 632 pp., 95 illus.