The Cherokee Phoenix (Cherokee: ᏣᎳᎩ ᏧᎴᎯᏌᏅᎯ, romanized:Tsalagi Tsulehisanvhi) is the first newspaper published by Native Americans in the United States and the first published in a Native American language.[1][2] The first issue was published in English and Cherokee on February 21, 1828, in New Echota, capital of the Cherokee Nation (present-day Georgia). The paper continued until 1834. The Cherokee Phoenix was revived in the 20th century, and today it publishes both print and Internet versions.
Reconstruction of the original print shop located at New Echota, in which the Cherokee Phoenix was printed
In the mid-1820s the Cherokee tribe was being pressured by the government, and by Georgia in particular, to remove to new lands west of the Mississippi River, or to end their tribal government and surrender control of their traditional territory to the United States (US) government. The General Council of the Cherokee Nation established a newspaper, in collaboration with Samuel Worcester, a missionary, who cast the type for the Cherokee syllabary. The Council selected Elias Boudinot as the first editor.[3]
Named Galagina Oowatie (ᎦᎴᎩᎾ ᎤᏩᏘ) in the Cherokee language, Elias Boudinot was born in 1804 at Oothcaloga, Cherokee Nation, near present-day Chatsworth, Georgia.[3] He chose the name of Elias Boudinot after meeting the statesman, while on his way to the Foreign Mission School in Cornwall, Connecticut, where he graduated.[4] There Boudinot married Harriet Ruggles Gold, daughter of a prominent Congregational family. They returned to live at New Echota.[5]
Boudinot named the Cherokee Phoenix as a symbol of renewal, for the mythical bird that rose to new life from ashes of fire. The Nation founded the paper to gather support and to help keep members of the Cherokee Nation united and informed. The newspaper was printed in English and Cherokee, using the Cherokee syllabary developed in 1821 by Sequoyah. According to Langguth, those who could only read Cherokee received the paper free, while those who could read English paid according to a sliding scale:$2.50 a year if they paid in advance and $3.50 a year if they waited a year.[6] It served as the primary vehicle of communication among the many Cherokee townships that constituted the Cherokee Nation. The Nation occupied parts of what are now Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama and Georgia.[citation needed]
Bilingual notice in English and Cherokee, published in the Cherokee Phoenix, May 15, 1828.
The first issue appeared on February 21, 1828. It contained five columns on each of its four pages. The editor announced that, because translation between English and Cherokee was slow, initially the paper would print only three columns each week in the Cherokee language. The first issue covered a variety of subjects. Samuel Worcester wrote an article praising Sequoyah's invention of the syllabary, and Boudinot's first editorial criticized white settlers wanting Cherokee land. As the issue of removal attracted attention in the United States (US), the newspaper arranged a fund-raising and publicity tour, which attracted new subscribers from almost all areas of the US and Europe. Boudinot gradually published mostly in English, trying to reach that larger audience.[3]
In 1829, Boudinot renamed the Cherokee Phoenix as the Cherokee Phoenix and Indians' Advocate, reflecting his intention to influence an audience beyond the Cherokee. He addressed issues which Indians across the United States and its territories faced related to assimilation and removal from their traditional homelands. The paper no longer related solely to the Cherokee tribe. The paper also offered stories about debates over Indian removal and U.S. Supreme Court cases that affected Indian life.[7]
Boudinot believed removal was inevitable and that the Cherokee should protect their rights by treaty. He was allied with Major Ridge in this view. His views were opposed by the majority of the Cherokee, including Principal Chief John Ross, elected by the constitutional republic in 1828. Former allies in the Cherokee government turned against Boudinot and other "treaty advocates". Opponents attacked the men's loyalty and prevented their speaking in councils. Ross denounced Boudinot's "toleration of diversified views in the Cherokee Phoenix and forbade Boudinot from discussing pro-removal arguments in the paper. In protest, Boudinot resigned in the spring of 1832.[8] Ross' brother-in-law, Elijah Hicks, replaced Boudinot as editor.[9]
Elijah Hicks, an anti-removal Cherokee, replaced Boudinot as editor. When the federal government failed to pay the annuity to the Cherokee in 1834, the paper ceased publication. In August 1835 a contingent of the Georgia Guard took the printing press to prevent any further publication. The real objective was to prevent the newspaper from falling under the influence of John Ross.[10] The state militia was organized to police the Cherokee territory which the state had claimed.[3]
The Cherokee Phoenix published intermittently after Cherokee removal to Indian Territory. Since the late 20th century, it has been revived and is now published by the Cherokee Nation as a monthly broadsheet in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. The newspaper has since modernized, publishing on the Internet along with the print version.[11]
A digitized, searchable version of the paper is available through the University of Georgia libraries and the Digital Library of Georgia.[12] Transcriptions of the English-language portions of the 19th-century newspaper can be found at Western Carolina University's Hunter Library's Web site.[13]
Artists Jeff Marley and Frank Brannon completed a collaborative project on October 19, 2013, in which they printed using Cherokee syllabary type in the print shop at New Echota. This was the first time syllabary printing type was used at New Echota since 1835.[14]
↑ Wilkins, Thurman. Cherokee Tragedy: The Story of the Ridge Family and the Decimation of a People, pp. 235–237, 242–244. London: The Macmillan Company, 1970.
The Cherokee people are one of the Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands of the United States. Prior to the 18th century, they were concentrated in their homelands, in towns along river valleys of what is now southwestern North Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, edges of western South Carolina, northern Georgia and northeastern Alabama consisting of around 40,000 square miles.
Cherokee or Tsalagi is an endangered-to-moribund Iroquoian language and the native language of the Cherokee people. Ethnologue states that there were 1,520 Cherokee speakers out of 376,000 Cherokees in 2018, while a tally by the three Cherokee tribes in 2019 recorded about 2,100 speakers. The number of speakers is in decline. The Tahlequah Daily Press reported in 2019 that most speakers are elderly, about eight fluent speakers die each month, and that only five people under the age of 50 are fluent. The dialect of Cherokee in Oklahoma is "definitely endangered", and the one in North Carolina is "severely endangered" according to UNESCO. The Lower dialect, formerly spoken on the South Carolina–Georgia border, has been extinct since about 1900. The dire situation regarding the future of the two remaining dialects prompted the Tri-Council of Cherokee tribes to declare a state of emergency in June 2019, with a call to enhance revitalization efforts.
John Ross was the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 to 1866; he served longer in that position than any other person. Ross led the nation through such tumultuous events as forced removal to Indian Territory and the American Civil War.
Elias Boudinot was a writer, newspaper editor, and leader of the Cherokee Nation. He was a member of a prominent family, and was born and grew up in Cherokee territory, now part of present-day Georgia. Born to parents of mixed Cherokee and European ancestry and educated at the Foreign Mission School in Connecticut, he became one of several leaders who believed that acculturation was critical to Cherokee survival. He was influential in the period of removal to Indian Territory.
Elias Cornelius Boudinot was an American politician, lawyer, newspaper editor, and co-founder of the Arkansan who served as the delegate to the Confederate States House of Representatives representing the Cherokee Nation. Prior to this he served as an officer of the Confederate States Army in the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War. He was the first Native American lawyer permitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sequoyah, also known as George Gist or George Guess, was a Native American polymath and neographer of the Cherokee Nation.
Brigadier-General Stand Watie, also known as Standhope Uwatie and Isaac S. Watie, was a Cherokee politician who served as the second principal chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1862 to 1866. The Cherokee Nation allied with the Confederate States during the American Civil War, and he was subsequently the only Native American Confederate general officer. Watie commanded Indian forces in the Trans-Mississippi Theater, made up mostly of Cherokee, Muskogee, and Seminole. He was the last Confederate States Army general to surrender.
The Cherokee syllabary is a syllabary invented by Sequoyah in the late 1810s and early 1820s to write the Cherokee language. His creation of the syllabary is particularly noteworthy as he was illiterate until its creation. He first experimented with logograms, but his system later developed into the syllabary. In his system, each symbol represents a syllable rather than a single phoneme; the 85 characters provide a suitable method for writing Cherokee. The letters resemble characters from other scripts, such as Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Glagolitic, however, these are not used to represent the same sounds.
The Ridge, later known as Major Ridge was a Cherokee leader, a member of the tribal council, and a lawmaker. As a warrior, he fought in the Cherokee–American wars against American frontiersmen. Later, Major Ridge led the Cherokee in alliances with General Andrew Jackson and the United States in the Creek and Seminole wars of the early 19th century.
The Treaty of New Echota was a treaty signed on December 29, 1835, in New Echota, Georgia, by officials of the United States government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction, the Treaty Party.
New Echota was the capital of the Cherokee Nation in the Southeastern United States from 1825 until their forced removal in the late 1830s. New Echota is located in present-day Gordon County, in northwest Georgia, north of Calhoun. It is south of Resaca, next to present day New Town, known to the Cherokee as Ꭴꮝꮤꮎꮅ, Ustanali. The site has been preserved as a state park and a historic site. It was designated in 1973 as a National Historic Landmark District.
John Ridge, born Skah-tle-loh-skee, was from a prominent family of the Cherokee Nation, then located in present-day Georgia. He went to Cornwall, Connecticut, to study at the Foreign Mission School. He met Sarah Bird Northup, of a New England Yankee family, and they married in 1824. Soon after their return to New Echota in 1825, Ridge was chosen for the Cherokee National Council and became a leader in the tribe.
Samuel Austin Worcester, was an American missionary to the Cherokee, translator of the Bible, printer, and defender of the Cherokee sovereignty. He collaborated with Elias Boudinot (Cherokee) in Georgia to establish the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper, which was printed in both English and the Cherokee syllabary. The Cherokee gave Worcester the honorary name A-tse-nu-sti, which translates to "messenger" in English.
Cherokee history is the written and oral lore, traditions, and historical record maintained by the living Cherokee people and their ancestors. In the 21st century, leaders of the Cherokee people define themselves as those persons enrolled in one of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes: The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, The Cherokee Nation, and The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians.
Harriet Ruggles Gold Boudinot (1805–1836) was notable as the wife of Cherokee Elias Boudinot, who became a leader in the Cherokee Nation and editor of its newspaper The Cherokee Phoenix. Harriett was the youngest of fourteen children of Colonel Benjamin and Eleanor Gold of Cornwall, Connecticut; they were a prominent Congregationalist family of English descent.
The Brainerd Mission was a Christian mission to the Cherokee in present-day Chattanooga, Tennessee. The associated Brainerd Mission Cemetery is the only part that remains, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Cherokee is a member of the Iroquoian language family.
Frank Brannon is a book and paper artist, and the proprietor of Speakeasy Press.
The Cherokee language is the indigenous American Iroquoian language native to the Cherokee people. In 2019, the Tri-Council of Cherokee tribes declared a state of emergency for the language due to the threat of it going extinct, calling for the enhancement of revitalization programs.
Native American newspapers are news publications in the United States published by Native American people often for Native American audiences. The first such publication was the Cherokee Phoenix, started in 1828 by the Cherokee Nation. Although Native American people have always written for state and local newspapers, including the official publications of Native American boarding schools, periodicals produced by Native people themselves were relatively few and far between until the 20th century.
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