The Cherokee Creation Story: Fully Sovereignty And Conflict

Fully Sovereignty and Conflict The Cherokee “creation story” as described by Sarah Steele asserts that it was the efforts of the “great buzzard from Halun’lati” which, tired from his flight to the Cherokee land to see if it was dried, flapped his wings and thereby made the mountains and hills and valleys. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the Cherokee were a “numerous and strong people who controlled an immense area of land, spanning from the western parts of modern-day Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina well into Georgia, Kentucky, and Alabama.” Attached as Appendix A is a listing of important dates in the history of the Cherokee Nation. This listing demonstrates that beginning in 1629, the Cherokee came into increased contact

By the seventeenth century, the subsistence base of the Cherokee had been narrowed to the point where they resembled European peasants more than either their grandparents or their English neighbors. Though they were a proud people, no less a personage than Henry Clay recognized that the Cherokee were banished from their native homes, their right of self-government destroyed, and their forced removal west of the Mississippi River was likely to be only a temporary solution to the “problem” that they

However, by 1828, the Cherokee were “staunch allies of the Americans, having assisted them in their negotiations with the Seminoles and other tribes and having provided men to fight under the command of General Andrew Jackson against the Creeks”. At the same time, many state and federal authorities had designs on the Cherokee lands as part of the plan for western expansion and issues of sovereignty were a consideration as state and federal legislatures tried to cope with a tribal government that had its own laws and courts despite being located inside state and national boundaries. A series of treaties resulted in the removal of Cherokees from areas such as Georgia to western territories such as Oklahoma in the newly acquired Louisiana Territory. In 1817, a treaty signed made exchange for land in Arkansas. Old settlers begin voluntary migration and establish a government there. In 1828, they were forced to move into Indian Territory. Moreover, ongoing cases, most notably ‘Cherokee Nation v. Georgia’ caused further problems to the Cherokees as they were being deprived of their own land. It was a United States Supreme Court case in 1831. The Cherokee nation demanded a federal judicial order against laws passed by the state of Georgia which deprived them of their rights within the boundaries. The Supreme Court didn’t really hear the case on its merit. Because of the Cherokee