The Cherokee 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.
The Indian Territory and the Indian Territories are terms that generally described an evolving land area set aside by the United States government for the relocation of Native Americans who held original Indian title to their land as a sovereign independent state. The tribes ceded land they occupied in exchange for land grants in 1803. The concept of an Indian Territory was an outcome of the U.S. federal government's 18th- and 19th-century policy of Indian removal. After the American Civil War (1861–1865), the policy of the U.S. government was one of assimilation.
The Trail of Tears was an ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of approximately 60,000 people of the "Five Civilized Tribes" between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. As part of the Indian removal, members of the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to newly designated Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River after the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. The Cherokee removal in 1838 was brought on by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega, Georgia, in 1828, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush.
Sequoyah County is a county located in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2020 census, the population was 39,281. The county seat is Sallisaw. Sequoyah County was created in 1907 when Oklahoma became a state. It was named after Sequoyah, who created the Cherokee syllabary and its written language.
Fort Smith is the third-most populous city in Arkansas and one of the two county seats of Sebastian County. As of the 2020 census, the population was 89,142. It is the principal city of the Fort Smith, Arkansas–Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 298,592 residents that encompasses the Arkansas counties of Crawford, Franklin, and Sebastian, and the Oklahoma counties of LeFlore and Sequoyah.
John Ross was the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1828 to 1866; he served longer in that position than any other person. Described as the Moses of his people, Ross influenced the nation through such tumultuous events as the relocation to Indian Territory and the American Civil War.
New Echota was the capital of the Cherokee Nation in the Southeast United States from 1825 until their forced removal in the late 1830s. New Echota is located in present-day Gordon County, in northwest Georgia, 3.68 miles 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.
Isaac Charles Parker, also known as “Hanging Judge” Parker, was an American politician and jurist. He served as a United States representative from Missouri and was appointed as the first United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, which also had jurisdiction over Indian Territory.
Fort Gibson is a historic military site next to the modern city of Fort Gibson, in Muskogee County Oklahoma. It guarded the American frontier in Indian Territory from 1824 to 1888. When it was constructed, the fort was farther west than any other military post in the United States. It formed part of the north–south chain of forts that was intended to maintain peace on the frontier of the American West and to protect the southwestern border of the Louisiana Purchase. The fort succeeded in its peacekeeping mission for more than 50 years, as no massacres or battles occurred there.
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.
The Goingsnake Massacre refers to the eleven victims of a fatal shootout on April 15, 1872, that broke out during a murder and assault trial in the Cherokee court in the Goingsnake District of the Cherokee Nation The dead included three Cherokee on the defendant's side, including his attorney and a brother; a US Deputy Marshal and four members of his federal posse, plus three relatives of the Cherokee murder victim. Another ten men were wounded, including both Cherokee and white men.
Fort Cass was a fort located on the Hiwassee River in present-day Charleston, Tennessee, that served as the military operational headquarters for the entire Cherokee removal, an forced migration of the Cherokee known as the Trail of Tears from their ancestral homelands in the Southeast to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Fort Cass housed a garrison of United States troops who watched over the largest concentration of internment camps where Cherokee were kept during the summer of 1838 before starting the main trek west to Indian Territory, and served as one of three emigration deports where the Cherokee began their journey west, the others of which were located at Ross's Landing in Chattanooga and Gunter's Landing near Guntersville, Alabama.
Ned Christie, also known as NeDe WaDe (ᏁᏕᏩᏕ), was a Cherokee statesman. Christie was a member of the executive council in the Cherokee Nation senate, and served as one of three advisers to Principal Chief Dennis Bushyhead. A member of the Keetoowah Society, Christie supported Cherokee sovereignty and tried to resist white encroachment.
Red Clay State Historic Park is a state park located in southern Bradley County, Tennessee, United States. The park was the site of the last capital of the Cherokee Nation in the eastern United States from 1832 to 1838 before the enforcement of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. This resulted in a forced migration of most of the Cherokee people to present-day Oklahoma known as the Cherokee removal. The site is considered sacred to the Cherokees, and includes the Blue Hole Spring, a large hydrological spring. It is also listed as an interpretive center along the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail.
John Leak Springston "Oo ne qua ti" ᎤᏁᏆᏘ (1844–1929), a Cherokee, is best known as an Indian activist; during his life he was a Cherokee Interpreter, Editor, Lawyer, and Keetoowah Revivalist. Springston was born in the fall of 1844 in Indian Territory near Lynch's Mill, five miles east of the present site of Spavinaw Dam in the state of Oklahoma. He was the son of Anderson Springston and Sallie Eliot, Cherokees who walked the Trail of Tears from Gunter's Landing, Alabama on the Tennessee River, some 600 miles to Indian Territory. After removal, Anderson practiced law in the Cherokee courts of the Delaware and Tahlequah Districts, and as a young boy, John received instruction in tribal law and Cherokee culture at his father’s side.
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.
The Cherokee Nation was a legal, autonomous, tribal government in North America recognized from 1794 to 1907. It was often referred to simply as "The Nation" by its inhabitants. The government was effectively disbanded in 1907, after its land rights had been extinguished, prior to the admission of Oklahoma as a state. During the late 20th century, the Cherokee people reorganized, instituting a government with sovereign jurisdiction known as the Cherokee Nation. On July 9, 2020, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation had never been disestablished in the years before allotment and Oklahoma Statehood.
The Judge Isaac C. Parker Federal Building, also known as the Fort Smith U.S. Post Office and Courthouse, in Fort Smith, Arkansas, was built in 1937 in Classical Revival style. It served historically as a courthouse of the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, and as a post office. It was renamed in 1996 for the famous "hanging judge" Isaac C. Parker, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.
Cherokee removal, part of the Trail of Tears, refers to the forced relocation between 1836 and 1839 of an estimated 16,000 members of the Cherokee Nation and 1,000–2,000 of their slaves; from their lands in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama to the Indian Territory in the then Western United States, and the resultant deaths along the way and at the end of the movement of an estimated 4,000 Cherokee and unknown number of slaves, although no records of these deaths have ever materialized. Many scholars believe these Indians absconded from the removal rather than died.
John Martin was a notable judge of the Cherokee Tribal Court. He was a highly educated member of the tribe, although he was only one-eighth Cherokee. A biographer describes him as blond, blue-eyed and a person who could easily pass for white. He had no formal training in law, but he was one of the first men appointed to serve as a judge on the Cherokee Tribal Court, which was established in 1822. After his term as judge ended in 1828, he was addressed as Judge Martin for the rest of his life. He also served the Cherokee Nation as Treasurer, He was also a member of the Cherokee Constitutional Convention that led to the formation of a real national government. In 1837, he removed from Georgia to Indian Territory, where he was elected as the first Chief Justice of the newly created Cherokee Supreme Court in 1839. He served until his death the following year.
