Cherokee

The Cherokee tells the story of the Cherokee people from early times to the present, including the Cherokee Nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma. The Cherokees had an early turbulent history dealing with the Spanish, French, and English invaders.

Voices of Cherokee Women is a compelling collection of first-person accounts by Cherokee women. It includes letters, diaries, newspaper articles, oral histories, ancient myths, and accounts by travelers, traders, and missionaries who encountered the Cherokees from the 16th century to the present. Among the stories told by these "voices" are those of Rebecca Neugin being carried as a child on the Trail of Tears; Mary Stapler Ross seeing her beautiful Rose Cottage burned to the ground during the Civil War; Hannah Hicks watching as marauders steal her food and split open her feather beds, scattering the feathers in the wind; and girls at the Cherokee Female Seminary studying the same curriculum as women at Mount Holyoke.

In response to the influx of white settlement after the Civil War, the Cherokee nation devised a regional development plan which allowed whites to establish farms and build towns while reinforcing Cherokee tribal sovereignty over the territory.