John Rogers | |
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Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation West | |
In office December 1838 –July 12, 1839 [lower-alpha 1] | |
Preceded by | John Jolly |
Succeeded by | John Brown (disputed) John Looney (disputed) Position disestablished |
Personal details | |
Born | 1779 Burke County,Georgia |
Died | June 12,1846 Washington D.C. |
Relatives | William Charles Rogers (grandson) John Jolly (half-sister's brother/step-uncle) [lower-alpha 2] |
John Rogers was the last elected Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation West elected in December 1838 by the faction of Old Settlers [lower-alpha 3] who rejected the Cherokee Nation constitution of 1839.
Rogers was the son of John Rogers and Elizabeth Due (née Emory) and a relative of previous Cherokee Nation West principal chiefs John Jolly. He was born in Burke County,Georgia,in 1779. He commanded a Cherokee unit during the Creek War under General Andrew Jackson,reaching the rank of captain. He married Elizabeth Coody. William Charles Rogers was his grandson. [2]
Rogers left with the Old Settlers and first settled in Dardanelle,Arkansas,and later Mulberry,Arkansas. He was a member of the December 1827 delegation to Washington,D.C.,and signed the Treaty of Washington of 6 May 1828. In December 1838 he was elected chief by the faction of Old Settlers who rejected the Cherokee Nation constitution of 1839. Rogers opposed John Ross's efforts to liquidate the Cherokee Nation West,but Ross succeeded in creating a constitution to unite the Cherokee Nation West and Cherokee Nation East. Rogers,in order to avoid signing the new agreement of union between the two groups,traveled to Mexico City during its signing in 1840. Rogers had operated a salt works near Salina,Oklahoma,since 1830,but in October 1843,all salt works were nationalized in the Cherokee Nation. In 1846,he traveled to Washington,D.C.,to advocate for Old Settler rights,where he died on June 12,1846. [2]
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Dianna Rogers was an Old Settler Cherokee who emigrated from Tennesee to the Arkansas Territory in 1817. Her first husband was killed in the Osage wars with the Cherokee people. Forced to move further west in 1828 into what would become Indian Territory her extended family, which included John Rogers and John Jolly, lived in what is now the northeastern part of Oklahoma, along the Arkansas border. In 1829, she married Sam Houston and operated a trading post with him near Fort Gibson. She also tended their small farm and the slaves who assisted them. After Houston left for Texas in 1833, Dianna remarried. She left no living children. Many myths and fanciful stories have been told of her and Houston's relationship, their meeting, and eventual parting, but very little is actually known. A body purported to be hers, but disputed by several historians, was exhumed and buried at the Fort Gibson National Cemetery in 1904. The tombstone bears the name Talahina, which according to legal documents and historians' analysis was never her name.