Myths of the Cherokees

"I Have Now Made a Path to Virginia": Outacite Ostenaco and the Cherokee-Virginia Alliance in the French and Indian War

“…Spaniards and French both encouraged Creek Indians to war with the Cherokees, but the decisive battle of Taliwa in 1754 wrested a large territory away from the Upper Creeks and gave the Cherokees a buffer against their traditional southern nemesis throughout most of the French and Indian War. 9 At various times before 1750, colonial authorities in Virginia, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and New York attempted to get the northern Indians and southern Indians to make peace with one another. The authorities had varying degrees of success, so by 1753 the Cherokees were not overtly embroiled in hostilities with the Senecas and Delawares to the north, or with traditional enemies, the Catawbas and Tuscaroras, to the east.…”

“…11 Like many Eastern Woodland Amerindian peoples of the eighteenth century, the Cherokees did not have an easily identifiable national government. 12 Much like the British colonies, clusters of Cherokee settlements, separated by geographical obstacles, were loosely confederated. Most British agents closely associated with the Cherokees recognized three major groupings of settlements: the Lower, Middle, and Upper or Over Hill Cherokee towns.…”

Talking stones: Cherokee syllabary in Manitou Cave, Alabama

“…Not all refugees had the same view of Cherokee-U.S. relations, however. Heated debates arose between those who wanted to avoid political and social interaction with whites, and those who believed that appeasement and assimilation were the only ways to survive (Mooney 1900;Perdue & Green 2007: 91-115). The issue of Cherokee land rights culminated in 1830 when U.S. President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which mandated ethnic cleansing of Native People from east of the Mississippi River.…”

“…Born in what is today Tennessee prior to the American War of Independence, Sequoyah moved with his mother to Willstown at the turn of the nineteenth century (McKenny & Hall 1848). In 1813, he joined Andrew Jackson's U.S. Army at the Chickamauga settlement of Turkeytown and fought rebelling Creek Indians at Horseshoe Bend (Mooney 1900). In an 1828 treaty between the U.S. and Cherokee Old Settlers from Arkansas, Sequoyah is named as George Guess.…”

The Reduction of a Self‐Sufficient People to Poverty and Welfare Dependence: An Analysis of the Causes of Cherokee Indian Underdevelopment

“…In many cases, on turning back for one last look as they crossed the ridge, they saw their homes in flames, fired by the lawless rabble that followed on the heels of the soldiers to loot and pillage. So keen were these outlaws on the scent that in some instances they were driving off the cattle and other stock of the Indians before the soldiers had fairly started their owners in the other direction (10).…”