The Cherokee diaspora
Subtitle: an indigenous history of migration, resettlement, and identity
By: Gregory D. Smithers
Series: The Lamar series in Western history; Lamar series in western history
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 358
ISBN-13: 9780300169607
Subjects: Historia; Government policy; Government relations; Cherokee Indians; Relocation; Cherokeser; History
Description: The Cherokee are one of the largest Native American tribes in the United States, with more than three hundred thousand people across the country claiming tribal membership and nearly one million people internationally professing to have at least one Cherokee Indian ancestor. In this revealing history of Cherokee migration and resettlement, Gregory Smithers uncovers the origins of the Cherokee Diaspora and explores how communities and individuals have negotiated their Cherokee identities, even when geographically removed from the Cherokee Nation headquartered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Beginning in the eighteenth century, the author transports the reader back in time to tell the poignant story of the Cherokee people migrating throughout North America, including their forced exile along the infamous Trail of Tears (1838-39). Smithers tells a remarkable story of courage, cultural innovation, and resilience, exploring the importance of migration and removal, land and tradition, culture and language in defining what it has meant to be Cherokee for a widely scattered people.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-345) and index.
Table of contents: title: Origins.; title: The origins of the Cherokee diaspora ;; title: Colonialism, Christianity, and Cherokee identity ;; title: Removal, reunion, and diaspora ;; title: Uncertain futures -- -- Diaspora.; title: War, division, and refugees ;; title: The "refugee business" ;; title: Cherokee freedmen ;; title: Diasporic horizons.