Cherokee IndiansEssay Preview: Cherokee IndiansReport this essayCherokee NationBefore invasion of the Americans onto Cherokee territory, the Cherokee lived in peace and harmony. Keetoowah is the name of the ancient Cherokee town in the eastern homelands, said to be the “Mother Town” of the people (Conley 18). Many of the Cherokee Indians originated here according to the traditions. They referred themselves as Ani-Kituwagi, meaning Keetoowah People, or Ani-yunwi-ya, the Real People (Conley 27). The fertile lands of the Keetoowah were filled of many resources, but as the population grew too large for the town, many people had moved out and built new towns. Overtime, many towns were built one after another. Soon, there were approximately 200 scattered tribes over vast areas that consisted of a number of politically independent tribes comprised of a war chief and peace chief as there government (King 95). Each tribe was politically independent due to the fact they didnt want a powerful central government; the idea that any one person had supreme power. Thus, tribes were held together by a common culture, language, and tradition.
Tradition played an important role in Cherokee clans. It made sure certain elements of a culture from generation to generation were passed down. Such as, the traditional matrilineal Cherokee family structure, which means descent, is traced through the female line (Conley 24). The children belonged to the mother and her family clan. There was not any relatedness with the father and hes family clan. This family structure provided a safe and secure environment for women and children. Also, it meant the man lived in the wifes house, surrounded by her clans people, so he would not dare to abuse her unless he wanted a tribal beating. Women were largely incorporated into the tribes. Not only was she the head of her domain with mutually respected power and authority, she had equal say in the affairs of war and peace. She was also in charge of the household and nourishment of her family (Lehochy). The women were involved in many functions of daily life. It seems as if the women were the tribe, but not for long.
Years after the first American contact, European traders living amongst would marry Cherokee women. European traders could not accept that fact of tracing descent through the female line, but slowly the clan system gave into the European style bilateral family, which traced descent through both male and female(Conley 25). The Cherokee were not too happy with this movement. It jeopardized the Cherokees clan traditional ways of a matrilineal family structure carried on for many centuries. Nevertheless, the Cherokees could do nothing about it.
Before the first known contacts, life of the Cherokee nation had grown and thrived for many years in the southeastern United States in the lower Appalachian Mountains in states such as: Georgia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, and parts of Kentucky and Alabama. However, the first recorded contact with outsiders was Hernado De Soto in his expedition of 1540, in search of gold throughout the Cherokee county (Martin). Mr. Soto found no trace of gold and returned empty handed. The Spanish explorers noticed the Cherokee village they encountered was practically deserted. Many of the tribes would flee from the sight of the unknown. About 100 years later, Abraham Wood, a Virginian, sent two men, James Needham and Gabriel Arthur in 1673 to establish trade (Martin). One of the traders begun to establish his home among the Cherokee Indians, which didnt last for long before he was killed. Even though many explorers tried to establish trades, life of the traditional Cherokee remained unchanged as late as 1710, which is marked as the beginning of Cherokee trade with the whites (Trail of Tears). The white mans influential politics came slowly through Cherokee Country, but dramatic. From the period 1540-1786, white expansion was taking place and the cession of Cherokee lands on the colonies in exchanged for traded goods (Trail of Tears). This caused many confrontations among the Cherokees. They saw a common reoccurring trait developing, which led to war to solve the problems.
The Cherokees noticed their lands were decreasing due to treaties formed that minimize their territory. The Indians were clearly not going to stand around and let the Americans trample over them. Dragging Canoe, the war chief of the Cherokee Nation at the time of the Transylvania Treaty of 1775, rose up and said, “Such treaties maybe all right for men who are too old to hunt or fight. As for me, I have my young warriors about me. We will have our lands!” (Smith). Dragging Canoe made clear, the territories belonged to them. He would stand up for the Cherokee Nation and protect their lands. When the American Revolution broke out, a fraction of the Cherokee Nation, soon to be known as Chickamauga, sided with the British in an attempt to stop the Americans from advancing onto Indian land (Conley 36). Dragging Canoe was the leader of the Chickamauga. Throughout the 1780s and early 1790s, frontier armies were raised and sent against the Cherokees (King 13). The Cherokees could not hold off any longer. As a result, they lost the war losing more casualties
than Americans did. Unfortunately, with the war favoring the Americans over the Cherokees, it set the beginning of American demand for more land.With Americans victorious, many citizens were moving onto Cherokee land, demanding more and more from the Indians. They wanted to push the Cherokees out of their settlement. As early as 1802, President Thomas Jefferson formed a plan to move all Indians to locations west of the Mississippi River (Conley 36). This plan agitated many settlers. Nonetheless, this plan was ratified by congress. As early as 1802, the state of Georgia signed an agreement with President Thomas Jefferson, known as the Georgia Compact, or the 1802 Compact (Conley 46). Now, it gave Americans authority to dismiss Cherokee claims to their own lands and remove the Indians from within the boundaries of Georgia. Cherokee Indians feeling robbed, ignored the compact. Some believed southerners wanted them removed because they thought of them as being “Savages”
. American colonists, not surprisingly, were furious. Their efforts to move them onto more Cherokee land prompted an uprising by the Cherokees of the South. American Indians were driven out of their settlement by the U.S. Government, and many sought another source of their land (Indian Territory in Georgia and the Cherokees’ claims in the South). This was known as the Civil War. While fighting in their struggle to get their land back, many Cherokees, some with Indian reservations, demanded full rights and were eventually successful in obtaining land. As late as 1803, Governor Bynum declared that the United States were “the principal sovereign party to the affairs of North America.” In 1804, President William Tecumseh Sherman wrote to a Cherokee “that he cannot and will not allow a single person else to seize all the lands of the U.S. Indians in the South except for the Cherokee and the Sisaw Indians, who stand thus, which is their power, and cannot ever, from the people in North America, escape the power, or control, of the United States.” This was the beginning of the end for Cherokee people in the United States and their right to their own lands.In November 1757, the House of Representatives convened at Fort Smith on the southern Mississippi. This was the beginning of American resistance to the federal government. The Cherokee had a long history of taking on the federal government as the main political political force in the South without much in the way of Congressional support. During that time, the Cherokee Nation had developed an important and deep civil war, led by the Cherokee National Trust. The war’s main purpose was to stop Federal officials from seizing Cherokee lands. The militia that formed the Army under Gen. John Stennis, who was Governor of Virginia during the First World War, was called on to help defend against that invasion. The army was in active service against the Indians during this time, and the Cherokee Nation was in fact very strong enough to continue fighting.
The Americans occupied and occupied some of their lands in South Carolina. However, most of the Cherokee lands continued to be disputed throughout the early years of the Civil War. The following land transactions were of great concern for the Cherokees as they were concerned with the South. The treaty of 1819 provided that all Cherokee people had their own land in the South plus the right of possession of all of the Cherokee lands. The Treaty of 1827 established that the U.S. Government had the rights to all Cherokee’s lands, whether held by the U.S. Government as federal or state lands, and only to enforce the treaties of the Treaty of Fort Smith and that of General George Washburn. President George Washington had appointed a committee headed by John Brown Jones, the then Chairman of the United Nations Commission on Cherokee Relations. In 1822, John Adams became the first U.S. President for the Cherokees. Adams was known for his loyalty to the treaty of 1823. The 1823 Treaty of Fort Smith allowed the Cherokees to keep the lands that had been occupied by their government. To enforce treaty of 1828 Cherokee treaty of 1819 states that “all rights, or parts of a land, which have fallen to the Indians, shall remain as is, or shall hereafter be, subject of the Crown of a Cherokee or State, unless otherwise expressly provided therein, and by such other laws or laws of the States or subjects of any part of the United States, then on the said lands, it shall become an Indian title of the United States and in such other ways as the Constitution of that Government may prescribe; but any person holding any title to any such land whatsoever therein shall bear, or who as a subject of an Indian treaty commits or abides in any violation thereof, the same, then on his or her person, title to and to all Indians which shall