Essay About Civilized Tribes And Ancestors Of The Present-Day Eastern Band

Trail of Tears
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Trail of Tears
Trial of Tears and the Five Civilized Tribes During the early years of 1800s,
valuable gold deposits were discovered in tribal lands, which by previous
cessions had been reduced to about seven million acres in northwest Georgia,
eastern Tennessee, and southwest North Carolina. In 1819 Georgia
appealed to the U.S. government to remove the Cherokee from Georgia
lands. When the appeal failed, attempts were made to purchase the territory.
Meanwhile, in 1820 the Cherokee established a governmental system
modeled on that of the United States, with an elected principal chief, a
senate, and a house of representatives. Because of this system, the Cherokee
were included as one of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes. The other four
tribes were the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and the Seminoles. In 1832 the
Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Georgia legislation was
unconstitutional; federal authorities, following Jacksons policy of Native
American removal, ignored the decision. About five hundred leading
Cherokee agreed in 1835 to cede the tribal territory in exchange for
$5,700,000 and land in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Their action was
repudiated by more than nine-tenths of the tribe, and several members of the
group were later assassinated. In 1838 federal troops began forcible evicting
the Cherokee. Approximately one thousand escaped to the North Carolina
Mountains, purchased land, and incorporated in that state; they were the
ancestors of the present-day Eastern Band. Most of the tribe, including the
Western Band, was driven west about eight hundred miles in a forced march,
known as the Trail of Tears. The march west included 18,000 to 20,000
people, of whom about 4000 perished through hunger, disease, and
exposure. The Cherokee are of the Iroquoian linguistic family. Their
economy, like that of the other southeastern tribes, was based on intensive
agriculture, mainly of corn, beans, and squash. Deer, bear, and elk were
hunted. The tribe was divided into seven matrilineal clans that were dispersed
in war and peace moieties (half-tribes). The people lived in numerous
permanent villages, some of which belonged to the war moiety, the rest to the
peace moiety. In the early 19th century, the Cherokee demonstrated unusual
adaptability to Western institutions, both in their governmental changes and in
their adoption of Western method of animal harvesting and farming. Public
schools were established and in the 1820s, a tribal member invented an
85-character syllable script for the Cherokee language. Widespread literacy
followed almost immediately. In 1828 the first Native American newspaper,
the Cherokee Phoenix, began publication. Today in Oklahoma, much of the
culture has remained the same. Their traditional crafts are most strongly
preserved by the Eastern Band where their basketry is considered to be
equal to or better than that of earlier times. In Oklahoma the Cherokee live
both on and off the reservation, scattered in urban centers and in isolated
rural regions. Their occupations range form fishing to industrial labor to
business management. In North Carolina, farming, forestry, factory work,
and tourism are sources of income. As of 1990 there were 308,132
Cherokee descendants in the United States. Another member of the five
tribes is the Seminoles, a Native American tribe of the Muskogean language
family. Most now live in Oklahoma and southern Florida. The Seminole tribe
developed in the 18th century from members of the Creed Confederacy,
mostly Creeks and Hitchiti, who raided and eventually settled in Florida.
After the United States acquired Florida in 1819, the territorial governor,
Andrew Jackson, initiated a vigorous policy of tribal removal to open the land
for white settlers. After the capture of their leader Osceola in 1837 and the
end of the Second Seminole War in 1842, several