num_pages: 512
description: Riveting...Engrossing...Mr. Sedgwicks subtitle calls the Cherokee story an American Epic and indeed it is. H. W. Brands The Wall Street JournalAn astonishing untold story from Americas pasta sweeping powerful and necessary work of history that reads like Gone with the Wind for the Cherokee.Blood Moon is the story of the century-long blood feud between two rival Cherokee chiefs from the early years of the United States through the infamous Trail of Tears and into the Civil War. The two mens mutual hatred while little remembered today shaped the tragic history of the tribe far more than anyone even the reviled President Andrew Jackson ever did. Their enmity would lead to war forced removal from their homeland and the devastation of a once-proud nation.It begins in the years after America wins its independence when the Cherokee rule expansive lands of the Southeast that encompass eight present-day states. With its own government language newspapers and religious traditions it is one of the most culturally and socially advanced Native American tribes in history. But over time this harmony is disrupted by white settlers who grow more invasive in both number and attitude.In the midst of this rising conflict two rival Cherokee chiefs different in every conceivable way emerge to fight for control of their peoples destiny. One of the men known as The Ridgeshort for He Who Walks on Mountaintopsis a fearsome warrior who speaks no English but whose exploits on the battlefield are legendary. The other John Ross is descended from Scottish traders and looks like a pale unimposing half-pint who wears modern clothes and speaks not a word of Cherokee. At first the two men are friends and allies. To protect their sacred landholdings from white encroachment they negotiate with almost every American president from George Washington through Abraham Lincoln. But as the threat to their land and their people grows more dire they break with each other on the subject of removal breeding a hatred that will lead to a bloody civil war within the Cherokee Nation the tragedy and heartbreak of the Trail of Tears and finally the two factions battling each other on opposite sides of the US Civil War.Through the eyes of these two primary characters John Sedgwick restores the Cherokee to their rightful place in American history in a dramatic saga of land pride honor and loss that informs much of the countrys mythic past today. It is a story populated with heroes and scoundrels of all varietiesmissionaries gold prospectors linguists journalists land thieves schoolteachers politicians and more. And at the center of it all are two proud men Ross and Ridge locked in a life-or-death struggle for the survival of their people.This propulsive narrative fueled by meticulous research in contemporary diaries and journals newspaper reports and eyewitness accountsand Sedgwicks own extensive travels within Cherokee lands from the Southeast to Oklahomabrings two towering figures back to life with reverence texture and humanity. The result is a richly evocative portrait of the Cherokee that is destined to become the defining book on this extraordinary people.
language: English
title: Blood Moon: An American Epic of War and Splendor in the Cherokee Nation
publisher: Simon & Schuster