My Second Lesson . . . As told on paper by my loving teacher, "Country". I don't know where these words came from, except that they were given from her heart to mine. No one is claiming authorship, only that these are the things that I should know as one who is new to the circle. Territory of the Cherokee is recorded as The Appalachian Mountians and covers parts of eight states. Many were farmers both in towns and on their farms. Corn (maize), beans and squash were the main crops. Basket weaving is always passed from mother to daughter even today. Their first council was formed in 1809. In 1837 the Cherokee nation adopted a constituion. This meant it was run much like the Constituion of the United States. Sequoyah, born in Tennessee about 1775, invented the Cherokee alphabet and system of writing. It's always amazed me how well developed these people were; schools - Government system - courts - library etc. BROKEN TREATIES The state of Georgia wanted Cherokee land and wealth . . . old story to us. But when gold was found near New Echota the rush was on and the Cherokee out. December 23,1835, 79 Cherokee signed a treaty to move but later 15,964 signed a letter saying they would not leave their land. Here's were the Trail Of Tears began in 1838. Armed soldiers rolled (rounded) up the Cherokee. 8000 were jailed until boats could take them by river to Fort Gibson, in Indian Territory. They arrived in winter with little food, no warm clothing and land Creator meant for the underground spirits. Some voted to travel over land. They marched through Nashville, Tennessee and Hopkinsville, Kentucky. They stopped at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Their final stop was Fort Gibson. Seventeen thousand Cherokee began the march and 4,000 died along the route. The Western Cherokee nation is in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole were also moved to Indian Territory. They now are called the Five Civilized Tribes. Again in 1904 gas and oil was found on Cherokee land. They sent men to Congress to ask for an all Indian state calling it Sequoyah including Arkansas border to Oklahoma City. No deal. 1907 Oklahoma became a state and Indian Territory was part of it. There is also the Eastern Band of Cherokee. 60 Cherokee families lived in North Carolina. They joined 1,200 who escaped being sent west. Todays records state 9,000 from this band. The Western Band has 53,000 members. The Cherokee today keep their own rich culture alive in every thing they do and make sure the up coming children know their roots. A Brief History of the Trail of Tears Migration from the original Cherokee Nation began in the early 1800’s as Cherokees, wary of white encroachment, moved west and settled in other areas of the country. White resentment of the Cherokees had been building and reached a pinnacle after gold was discovered in Georgia, and immediately following the passage of the Cherokee Nation constitution, and establishment of a Cherokee Supreme Court. Possessed with ‘gold fever,’ and a thirst for expansion, the white communities turned on their Cherokee neighbors and the U.S. government decided it was time for the Cherokees to leave behind their farms, their land and their homes. A group known as the Old Settlers had moved in 1817 to lands given them in Arkansas where again they established a government and a peaceful way of life. Later, they too, were forced into Indian Territory. President Andrew Jackson, whose command and life was saved due to 500 Cherokee allies at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, unbelievably authorized the Indian Removal Act of 1830. In following the recommendation of President James Monroe in his final address to Congress in 1825, Jackson sanctioned an attitude that had persisted for many years among many white immigrants. Even Thomas Jefferson, who often cited the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy as the model for the U.S. Constitution, supported Indian Removal as early as 1802. The displacement of Native People was not wanting for eloquent opposition. Senators Daniel Webster and Henry Clay spoke out against removal. Reverend Samuel Worcester, missionary to the Cherokees, challenged Georgia’s attempt to estinguish Indian title to land in the state, winning the case before the Supreme Court. Worcester vs. Georgia, 1832, and Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, 1831, are considered the two most influential decisions in Indian law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled for Georgia in the 1831 case, but in Worcester vs. Georgia, the court affirmed Cherokee sovereignty. President Andrew Jackson defied the decision of the court and ordered the removal, an act of defiance that established the U.S. government’s precedent for the removal of many Native Americans from the ancestral homelands. The U.S. government used the Treaty of New Echota in 1835 to justify the removal. The treaty, illegally signed by about 100 Cherokees known as the Treaty Party, relinquished all lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for land in Indian Territory and the promise of money, livestock, various provisions and tools, and other benefits. When the pro-removal Cherokee leaders signed the Treaty of New Echota, they also signed their own death warrants. The Cherokee Naiton Council earlier had passed a law that called for the death penalty for anyone who agreed to give up tribal land. The signing and the removal led to better factionalism and the deaths of most of the Treaty Part leaders once in Indian Territory. Opposition to the removal was led by Chief John Ross, a mixed-blood of Scottish and one-eighth Cherokee descent. The Ross party and most Cherokees opposed the New Echota Treaty, but Georgia and the U.S. government prevailed and used it as justification to force almost all of the 17,000 Cherokees from their southeastern homeland. Under orders from President Jackson and in defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Army began enforcement of the Removal Act. More than 3,000 Cherokees were rounded up in the summer of 1838 and loaded onto boats that traveled the Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi and Arkansas Rivers into Indian Territory. Many were held in prison camps awaiting their fate. An estimated 4,000 died from hunger, exposure and disease. The journey became an eternal memory as the "trail where they cried" for the Cherokees and other removed tribes. Today, it is remembered as the "Trail of Tears." The Oklahoma Chapter of the Trail of Tears Association has begun the task of marking the graves of Trail survivors with bronze memorials. Info provided by the Cherokee Nation Cultural Resource Center. Since Country sent me the history above, I have learned a lot. TAKE THE STORY OF “Sequoyah” – he was really called Sogwili (Horse) and was not a mixed blood, as history tells you, but a full blood; a member of the Tsalagi Scribes – the ancient and secret society that knew the Tsalagi written language. The syllabary was brought to them by a people who walked out of the southwest to escape famine in very ancient times, carrying the marks inscribed on sheets of thin gold. Sequoyah and the other Scribes began teaching the written syllabary to the People in the early 1700s – their secret weapon against the Europeans, who could not decipher the marks they were seeing on trees, rocks, etc. Sequoyah was loyal to the Tsalagi/Aniyunwiwa ways, and it was the mixed bloods, the 'Cherokee' Grand Council patterned after the European governments, who tried and convicted him of witchcraft years later (after the split in the Cherokee Nation) and cut off his fingers and ears as the mark of a traitor. These were the same 'Cherokee' who sold the Tsalagi homeland to the Whites. Interesting how the history gets mangled. Here is my reference . . . THE SEQUOYAH MYTH by TRAVELLER BIRD a direct ancestor of George Guess/Sequoya. View My Guestbook Sign My Guestbook