When a person today thinks of Native Americans, the immediate image that emerges in one’s mind is the ‘typical Indian’, a person wearing a headdress of vibrant feathers and whom lives in a teepee. However, for members of the Cherokee Tribe this depiction could not be further from the truth or more offensive to the people of today or those who came before them (speakers). Throughout the book Blood Politics, Circe Sturm seeks to allow those outside the tribe to see the true race, culture and identity of the Cherokee people as both the past and present are explored. In the years before adventurers set foot on the soil of the “New World” looking for uncharted lands to settle, Cherokee tribes had already “occupied an area of almost 40,000 A person’s amount of Cherokee blood can depend on a multitude of traits such as one’s phenotype. The United States is known as being a melting pot of culture and ethnicities, and the modern Cherokee Nation is no different. Sturm recounts an occurrence from her time in Oklahoma with the Western Band Cherokee where her and another anthropologist friend were helping a group of older Cherokee women serve food after a church service. These women were measuring up both of the young women and asking about their heritage. Both women had a percentage of Cherokee blood, however; one looked more stereotypically Cherokee than the other, so the older women regarded her in a different way than the other whom looked less Cherokee (Sturm 111). Although “there is no universal standard of what a Cherokee should like”, some Cherokees feel that it is easier to understand another Cherokee if they are racialized in the same way, thus likely giving these people a deeper understanding as they have gone through similar adversities (Sturm 113). However, some continue to believe that one’s outward appearance has no meaning if a person is not able to participate in the Cherokee The Cherokee language, alike the culture, has greatly declined in the amount of fluent speakers. A Cherokee speaking man stated that, “the language is critical…it’s a God-given gift to be able to communicate and speak” (Sturm 121). The death of such a language would likely be the downfall of the rest of the culture, without speaking the native language, certain implications of why a task is done a certain way may be lost or misinterpreted. The Cherokee way of life and history of the tribe continues to impact generations of Cherokee today. Without the colorful history that the tribe has underwent, the many people living today would not know the important of living within the culture or speaking the native tongue. Without the knowledge of their ancestor’s hardships, the youth of today would likely disregard the past and only focus on the
O’Brien argues the multiple Indians who are put forth in histories as being the last of their tribe: Eunice Mahwee of the Pequots, Esther of the Royal Narragansetts. This phenomenon falsely narrates the disappearance of Indian people, being relegated to anonymity except for the “last of their kind.” These stories also discuss the purity of Indians, downplaying their current environment. Indians were only Indians if they had complete pure blood, one drop of anything other than their own tribe meant they were not Indians. The racist contradictions in this logic is pointed out by O’Brien. For whites, any claim to one “drop” of New England Puritan blood meant this person could claim to be a descendant of the Puritan Fathers. The children or grandchildren of the “last” Indians were not truly Indian because they did not grow up in a wigwam, or possess their native
Throughout the history of the United States, the discussion surrounding Native American relations has been fueled by prejudice and misunderstandings. In Andrew Jackson & His Indian Wars, Remini does not seek to excuse or exonerate Jackson. Consequently, Remini is more focused on analyzing what transpired and why. To support his central themes, Remini uses evidence spanning the entire spectrum of Jackson’s career. Beginning
What is a leader? According to the dictionary a leader is a "person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country." (Merriam Webster) Though that may be what the term leader is defined by, one would assume that it takes much more to be considered a "good" one. A leader, is in many cases the voice of the people, he is the one whom everyone looks to in a time of panic, the one whom the people entrust to make the hard decisions and the one whom is supposed to value his constituents wants and need. Unfortunately most leaders fall short of accomplishing the things they set out to do, "as principal chief during the 1830s John Ross faced the most critical period in Cherokee History, and somehow
“Quantie’s weak body shuddered from a blast of cold wind. Still, the proud wife of the Cherokee chief John Ross wrapped a woolen blanket around her shoulders and grabbed the reins.” Leading the final group of Cherokee Indians from their home lands, Chief John Ross thought of an old story that was told by the chiefs before him, of a place where the earth and sky met in the west, this was the place where death awaits. He could not help but fear that this place of death was where his beloved people were being taken after years of persecution and injustice at the hands of white Americans, the proud Indian people were being forced to vacate their lands, leaving behind their homes, businesses and almost everything they owned while traveling to an unknown place and an uncertain future. The Cherokee Indians suffered terrible indignities, sickness and death while being removed to the Indian territories west of the Mississippi, even though they maintained their culture and traditions, rebuilt their numbers and improved their living conditions by developing their own government, economy and social structure, they were never able to return to their previous greatness or escape the injustices of the American people.
Native American literature from the Southeastern United States is deeply rooted in the oral traditions of the various tribes that have historically called that region home. While the tribes most integrally associated with the Southeastern U.S. in the American popular mind--the FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole)--were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) from their ancestral territories in the American South, descendents of those tribes have created compelling literary works that have kept alive their tribal identities and histories by incorporating traditional themes and narrative elements. While reflecting profound awareness of the value of the Native American past, these literary works have also revealed knowing perspectives on the meaning of the modern world in the lives of contemporary Native Americans.
The Native Americans of the southeast live in a variety of environments. The environments range from the southern Appalachian Mountains, to the Mississippi River valley, to the Louisiana and Alabama swamps, and the Florida wetlands. These environments were bountiful with various species of plant and animal life, enabling the Native American peoples to flourish. “Most of the Native Americans adopted large-scale agriculture after 900 A.D, and some also developed large towns and highly centralized social and political structures.” In the first half of the 1600s Europeans encountered these native peoples. Both cultures encountered new plants, animals, and diseases. However, the Indians received more diseases compared to the few new diseases to the Europeans. The new diseases resulted in a massive loss of Native Americans, including the Southeast Indians which had never encountered the new diseases. Three of the main tribes in the southeast were the Cherokee and the Creek. They were part of a group of southeast tribes that were removed from their lands. These tribes later became known as “The Five Civilized Tribes because of their progress and achievements.”
Cherokee Indians “Memorial of Protest of the Cherokee Nation, June 22, 1836” in The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents, ed. Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005), 87
advantage of the rich black soil for farming. Corn was their main source of food,
Pages one to sixty- nine in Indian From The Inside: Native American Philosophy and Cultural Renewal by Dennis McPherson and J. Douglas Rabb, provides the beginning of an in-depth analysis of Native American cultural philosophy. It also states the ways in which western perspective has played a role in our understanding of Native American culture and similarities between Western culture and Native American culture. The section of reading can be divided into three lenses. The first section focus is on the theoretical understanding of self in respect to the space around us. The second section provides a historical background into the relationship between Native Americans and British colonial power. The last section focus is on the affiliation of otherworldliness that exist between
In his essay, “The Indians’ Old World,” Neal Salisbury examined a recent shift in the telling of Native American history in North America. Until recently, much of American history, as it pertains to Native Americans; either focused on the decimation of their societies or excluded them completely from the discussion (Salisbury 25). Salisbury also contends that American history did not simply begin with the arrival of Europeans. This event was an episode of a long path towards America’s development (Salisbury 25). In pre-colonial America, Native Americans were not primitive savages, rather a developing people that possessed extraordinary skill in agriculture, hunting, and building and exhibited elaborate cultural and religious structures.
When the earliest explorers came to America, wherever they settled, they always influenced the culture of most native people. Cherokees like any other natives had their own culture and lived in an organized lifestyle. Early before the whites came, the Cherokees used to have a culture well organized that governed their aspect of life. Also, despite the white man’s influence, Cherokees had a form of education, language, economy, political systems and a lived in a geographical locality. The widespread impact of the white man prompted the Cherokees to change and integrate their lives to that of the white man. They did it by only adopting those elements that complimented their previous way of life. The Cherokees changed the following aspects of
Native American’s place in United States history is not as simple as the story of innocent peace loving people forced off their lands by racist white Americans in a never-ending quest to quench their thirst for more land. Accordingly, attempts to simplify the indigenous experience to nothing more than victims of white aggression during the colonial period, and beyond, does an injustice to Native American history. As a result, historians hoping to shed light on the true history of native people during this period have brought new perceptive to the role Indians played in their own history. Consequently, the theme of power and whom controlled it over the course of Native American/European contact is being presented in new ways. Examining the evolving
Natives were forcefully removed from their land in the 1800’s by America. In the 1820’s and 30’s Georgia issued a campaign to remove the Cherokees from their land. The Cherokee Indians were one of the largest tribes in America at the time. Originally the Cherokee’s were settled near the great lakes, but overtime they moved to the eastern portion of North America. After being threatened by American expansion, Cherokee leaders re-organized their government and adopted a constitution written by a convention, led by Chief John Ross (Cherokee Removal). In 1828 gold was discovered in their land. This made the Cherokee’s land even more desirable. During the spring and winter of 1838- 1839, 20,000 Cherokees were removed and began their journey to Oklahoma. Even if natives wished to assimilate into America, by law they were neither citizens nor could they hold property in the state they were in. Principal Chief, John Ross and Major Ridge were leaders of the Cherokee Nation. The Eastern band of Cherokee Indians lost many due to smallpox. It was a year later that a Treaty was signed for cession of Cherokee land in Texas. A small number of Cherokee Indians assimilated into Florida, in o...
Perdue stated that prior to America 's involvement in Cherokee society, Cherokee women had a voice in Cherokee government and they were respected. She mentioned that it was a Cherokee woman who wrote to Benjamin Franklin in contemplation of negotiating peace with the new American nations. This anecdote indicated traditional Cherokee women’s political status in Cherokee society and their involvement in deciding major decisions of the nation, and women were the leading roles in resisting American’s potential invasion. Perdue went on explaining that the political influence come from “their maternal biological role in procreation and their maternal role in Cherokee society, …” in which women were the major economic sources that support families and they were women who represented their kins in negotiating with American
These children, the offspring of Caucasian males and Cherokee females, would come to dominate the political, social, and economic sectors of the Cherokee Nation. They would become the biggest factor in the push for and defense of slavery within the Cherokee Nation as they no longer saw use of the older more traditional values. Values such as matriarchy, the role of women with regards to slavery, and land ownership. Though beliefs of benevolent masters persist to this day, there is little in the way of evidence to support it. Our understanding of this massive desire to delegitimize ancestral heritage is crucial as it helped move away the oversimplified European explanation. We were now accepting of a much more nuanced idea of cultural dissemination and