Cherokee Nation (1794–1907)


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 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.
It consisted of the Cherokee people of the Qualla Boundary and the southeastern United States; those who relocated voluntarily from the southeastern United States to the Indian Territory ; those who were forced by the Federal government of the United States to relocate by way of the Trail of Tears ; descendants of the Natchez, the Lenape and the Shawnee peoples, and, after the Civil War and emancipation of slaves, Cherokee Freedmen and their descendants.
The nation was recognized as a sovereign government until after the American Civil War. It was partially occupied by United States. In the late 19th century, following the Dawes Act, its communal land was broken up for allotment to individual households and the traditional government was disbanded in preparation for the admission of Oklahoma as a state in 1907. All the Cherokee were considered state and United States citizens.

History

The Cherokee called themselves the Ani-Yun' wiya. In their language; this meant "leading" or "principal" people. Before 1794, the Cherokee had no standing national government. Its people were decentralized and lived in bands and clans according to a matrilineal kinship system. The people lived in "towns" located in scattered autonomous tribal areas related by kinship throughout the southern Appalachia region. Various leaders were periodically appointed to represent the tribes to French, British and, later, United States authorities as was needed. The Cherokee knew this leader as "First Beloved Man" —or Uku. The English had translated this as "chief".
The chief's function was to serve as focal point for negotiations with the encroaching Europeans, such as the case of Hanging Maw, who was recognized as chief by the United States government, but not by the majority of Cherokee peoples.
At the end of the Cherokee–American wars, Little Turkey was recognized as "Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation" by all the towns. At that time, Cherokee communities existed in lands claimed by the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and the Overhill area, located in present-day eastern Tennessee. The break-away Chickamauga band, under chief Dragging Canoe, had retreated to and inhabited an area that would be the northeastern area of the future state of Alabama.

U.S. president George Washington sought to "civilize" the southeastern American Indians, through programs overseen by US Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins. Facilitated by the destruction of many Indian towns during the American Revolutionary War, U.S. land agents convinced many Native Americans to abandon their historic communal-land tenure and settle on isolated farmsteads. Over-harvesting by the deerskin trade had brought white-tailed deer in the region to the brink of extinction. Pig and cattle raising were introduced, and these replaced deer as the principal sources of meat. The Americans supplied the tribes with spinning wheels and cotton-seed, and men were taught to fence and plow the land. Women were instructed in weaving. Eventually, blacksmiths, gristmills and cotton plantations were established.
Succeeding Little Turkey as Principal Chief were Black Fox and Pathkiller, both former warriors of Dragging Canoe. "The separation", a phrase which the Cherokee used to describe the period after 1776 when the Chickamauga had removed themselves from the other tribes which were in close proximity to the Anglo-American settlements, officially ended at the reunification council of 1809.
Three important veterans of the Cherokee–American wars, James Vann and his two protégés, The Ridge and Charles R. Hicks, made up the 'Cherokee Triumvirate' —advocating acculturation of the people, formal education of the young, and the introduction of European-American farming methods. In 1801 they invited Moravian missionaries to their territory from North Carolina to teach Christianity and the 'arts of civilized life.' The Moravian, and later Congregationalist, missionaries also ran boarding schools. A select few students were chosen to be educated at the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions school in Connecticut.
These men continued to be leaders in the tribe. Hicks participated in the Red Stick War, a civil war between traditional and progressive Creek factions. This coincided with part of US involvement in the War of 1812. He was the de facto principal chief from 1813–1827.

Removal

In 1802, the U.S. federal government promised to extinguish Native American titles to internal Georgia lands in return for the state's formal cession of its unincorporated western claim. In 1815, the US government established a Cherokee Reservation in the Arkansaw district of the Missouri Territory and tried to convince the Cherokee to move there voluntarily. The reservation boundaries extended from north of the Arkansas River to the southern bank of the White River. The Cherokee who moved to this reservation became known as the "Old Settlers" or Western Cherokee.
''. The destination Indian Territory is depicted in light yellow-green.
By additional treaties signed with the U.S., in 1817 and 1819, the Cherokee exchanged remaining communal lands in Georgia for lands in the Arkansaw Territory west of the Mississippi River. A majority of the remaining Cherokee resisted these treaties and refused to leave their lands east of the Mississippi. Finally, in 1830, the United States Congress enacted the Indian Removal Act to bolster the treaties and forcibly free up title to the lands desired by the states. At this time, one-third of the remaining Native Americans left voluntarily, especially because now the act was being enforced by government troops and the Georgia militia.
Most of the settlements were established in the area around the western capital of Tahlontiskee.

Constitutional governments

The Cherokee Nation—East had first created electoral districts in 1817. By 1822, the Cherokee Supreme Court was founded. Lastly, the Cherokee Nation adopted a written constitution in 1827 creating a government with three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. The Principal Chief was elected by the National Council, which was the legislature of the Nation. A similar constitution was adopted by the Cherokee Nation—West in 1833.
The Constitution of the reunited Cherokee Nation was ratified at Tahlequah, Oklahoma on September 6, 1839, at the conclusion of "The Removal". The signing is commemorated every Labor Day weekend with the celebration of the Cherokee National Holiday.

Removal

Founded in 1838, Tahlequah was developed as the new capital of a united Cherokee Nation. (It was named after the historic Great Tellico, an important Cherokee town and cultural center in present-day Tennessee that was one of the largest Cherokee towns ever established. The mostly European-American settlement of Tellico Plains developed later at that site.

Cherokee Nation districts in Indian Territory

After their people moved to Indian Territory, the Cherokee Nation organized, establishing nine districts for administrative purposes. Those were named:
The Cherokee National Capitol Building was constructed after the American Civil War, from 1867 to 1869. The brick building was designed by architect C. W. Goodlander in the 'late Italianate' style, which was unusual for this region. Originally it housed the nation's court as well as other offices.
This building was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1961 by the US Department of Interior.
Indications of Cherokee influence are easily found in and about Tahlequah. For instance, street signs appear in both the Cherokee language—in the syllabary alphabet created by Sequoyah —and in English.

Civil War and Reconstruction

Numerous skirmishes took place in the Trans-Mississippi area, which included the Cherokee Nation–West. There were seven officially recognized battles involving Native American units, who were either allied with the Confederate States of America or loyal to the United States government.
Several prominent members of the Cherokee Nation made contributions during the war: William Penn Adair, a Cherokee senator and diplomat, served as a Confederate colonel; Nimrod Jarrett Smith, Tsaladihi, a future Principal Chief of the Eastern Band, also served during the war; and hold-out Confederate Brig. General Stand Watie raided Union positions in the Indian Territory with his 1st Cherokee Mounted Rifles Regiment of the Army of Trans-Mississippi well after the Confederacy had abandoned the area. He became the last Confederate general to surrender—on June 25, 1865.
The main body of the Cherokee people had sided with the Confederacy during the American Civil War. After the war, the United States negotiated a new treaty with them, establishing peace and requiring them to emancipate their slaves and to offer them citizenship and territory within the reservation if the freedmen chose to stay with the tribe, as the US had done for enslaved African Americans. The area was made part of the reconstruction of the former Confederate States overseen by military officers and governors appointed by the federal government.
A 2020 study contrasted the successful distribution of free land to former slaves in the Cherokee Nation with the failure to give former slaves in the Confederacy free land. The study found that even though levels of inequality in 1860 were similar in the Cherokee Nation and the Confederacy, former black slaves prospered in the Cherokee Nation over the next decades. The Cherokee Nation had lower levels of racial inequality, higher incomes for blacks, higher literacy rates among blacks, and greater school attendance rates among blacks.

Nation's demise

President Benjamin Harrison September 19, 1890, stopped the leasing of land in the Cherokee Outlet to cattlemen. The lease income had supported the Cherokee Nation in its efforts to prevent further encroachments on tribal lands.
and Indian Territory, along with No Man's Land. The division of the two territories is shown with a heavy purple line. Together, these three areas would become the State of Oklahoma in 1907
From 1898–1906, beginning with the Curtis Act of 1898, the US federal government set about the dismantling of the Cherokee Nation's governmental and civic institutions, in preparation for the incorporation of the Indian Territory into the new state of Oklahoma. In response, the leaders of the Five Civilized Tribes sought to gain approval for a new State of Sequoyah in 1905 that would have a Native American constitution and government. The proposal received a cool reception in Congress and failed. The tribal government of the Cherokee Nation was dissolved in 1906. After this, the structure and function of the tribal government were not formally defined. The federal government occasionally designated chiefs of a provisional "Cherokee Nation", but usually just long enough to sign treaties.
As the shortcomings of the arrangement became increasingly evident to the Cherokee, a demand arose for the formation of a more permanent and accountable tribal government. New administrations at the federal level also recognized this issue, and the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration gained passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, encouraging tribes to re-establish governments and supporting more self-determination. The Cherokee convened a general convention on 8 August 1938 in Fairfield, Oklahoma, to elect a new Chief, and reconstitute a modern, Cherokee Nation, to be a "successor in interest" to the historic Cherokee Nation.

People

The Nation was made up of scattered peoples mostly living in the Cherokee Nation–West and the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians, and the Cherokee Nation–East ; these became the three federally recognized tribes of Cherokee in the 20th century.

Additional peoples

The Delaware

In 1866, some Delaware were relocated to the Cherokee Nation from Kansas, where they had been sent in the 1830s. Assigned to the northeast area of the Indian Territory, they united with the Cherokee Nation in 1867. The Delaware Tribes operated autonomously within the lands of the Cherokee Nation.

Natchez people

The Natchez are a Native American people who originally lived in the Natchez Bluffs area. The present-day city of Natchez, Mississippi developed in their former territory. By the mid-eighteenth century, the Natchez people were defeated by French colonists and dispersed from there. Many survivors had been sold into slavery in the West Indies. Others took refuge with allied tribes, one of which was the Cherokee.

The Shawnee

Known as the Loyal Shawnee or Cherokee Shawnee, one band of Shawnee people relocated to Indian Territory with the Seneca people in July 1831. The term "Loyal" came from their serving in the Union army during the American Civil War. European Americans encroached and settled on their lands after the war.
In 1869, the Cherokee Nation and Loyal Shawnee agreed that 722 of the Shawnee would be granted Cherokee citizenship. They settled in Craig and Rogers counties.

Swan Creek and Black River Chippewa

The Anishinaabe-speaking Swan Creek and Black River Chippewa bands were removed from southeast Michigan to Kansas in 1839. After Kansas became a state and the Civil War ended, European-American settlers pushed out the Native Americans. Like the Delaware, the two Chippewa bands were relocated to the Cherokee Nation in 1866. They were so few in number that they eventually merged with the Cherokee.

Cherokee Freedmen

The Cherokee Freedmen were former African American slaves who had been owned by citizens of the Cherokee Nation during the Antebellum Period. President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 that granted citizenship to all freedmen in the Confederate States, including those held by the Cherokee. In reaching peace with the Cherokee — who had sided with the Confederacy — the U.S. government required that they free their slaves and offer full Cherokee citizenship to those who wanted to stay with the nation. The freedmen were first guaranteed Cherokee citizenship under a treaty with the United States following the Civil War.

Notable Cherokee Nation citizens

This list of historic people includes only documented Cherokee living in, or born into, the original Cherokee Nation who are not mentioned in the main article: