In 1857 James Anderson Slover rode into Indian Territory as the first Southern Baptist missionary to the Cherokee Nation. As the Civil War began to divide the Cherokees along with the rest of the nation, Slover was caught up in one of the most intense dramas of his century. As a farmer, teacher, preacher and evangelist, observer of the Mexican War and the Civil War, contemporary commentator on slavery, and California pioneer, Slover played a small role in changing the face of the nation. It was in 1907, a year after he helped build shelters for people left homeless by the great San Francisco earthquake, that he began composing a record of his eventful life. The resulting book is a wonderful gift to any reader curious about the life and culture of nineteenth-century America. Slover tells of flatboating down rivers from Tennessee to Arkansas, "skedaddling" from the Union army in Indian Territory, and working his way up the West Coast to Oregon, preaching the gospel as he went and carving a new life for himself and his family time after time. His autobiography, encompassing eighty-three years of his life and spanning most of a century, gives us a vivid picture of a lost world and of how it was experienced by an ordinary man in extraordinary times.

Champions of the Cherokees is the story of two extraordinary Northern Baptist missionaries, father and son, who lived with the Cherokee Indians from 1821 to 1876. Told largely in the words of these outspoken and compassionate men, this is also a narrative of the Cherokees' sufferings at the hands of the United States government and white frontier dwellers. In addition, it is an analysis of the complexity of interracial relations in the United States, for the Cherokees adopted the white man's custom of black chattel slavery. This fascinating biography reveals the unusual extent to which Evan and John B. Jones challenged prevailing federal Indian policies: unlike most other missionaries, they supported the Indians' right to retain their own identity and national autonomy. William McLoughlin vividly describes the "trail of tears" over which the Cherokees and Evan Jones traveled eight hundred miles through the dead of winter--from Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and North Carolina to a new home in Oklahoma. He examines the difficulties that Jones encountered when, alone among all the missionaries, he expelled Cherokee slaveholders from his mission churches. This book depicts the Joneses' experiences during the Civil War, including their chaplaincy of two Cherokee regiments who fought with the Northern side. Finally, McLoughlin tells how these "champions of the Cherokees" were adopted into the Cherokee nation and helped them fight detribalization. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Demanding the Cherokee Nation examines nineteenth-century Cherokee political rhetoric in reassessing an enigma in American Indian history: the contradiction between the sovereignty of Indian nations and the political weakness of Indian communities. Drawing from a rich collection of petitions, appeals, newspaper editorials, and other public records, Andrew Denson describes the ways in which Cherokees represented their people and their nation to non-Indians after their forced removal to Indian Territory in the 1830s. He argues that Cherokee writings on nationhood document a decades-long effort by tribal leaders to find a new model for American Indian relations in which Indian nations could coexist with a modernizing United States. Most non-Natives in the nineteenth century assumed that American development and progress necessitated the end of tribal autonomy, and that at best the Indian nation was a transitional state for Native people on the path to assimilation. As Denson shows, however, Cherokee leaders articulated a variety of ways in which the Indian nation, as they defined it, belonged in the modern world. Tribal leaders responded to developments in the United States and adapted their defense of Indian autonomy to the great changes transforming American life in the middle and late nineteenth century, notably also providing cogent new justification for Indian nationhood within the context of emergent American industrialization.

Jesse Bushyhead was a detachment leader during the forced Indian removal on what has become known as the Trail of Tears. In this capacity, he was responsible for the safe conduct of more than 900 emigrants from Tennessee to Indian Territory in eastern Oklahoma. After the journey, Bushyhead was a principal participant in the formation of the new Cherokee government, providing stability in the turbulent and often internecine struggle between factions. And although without legal training, he served the new government as a chief justice of the Cherokee Supreme Court. Yet during these challenges, Bushyhead, also a Baptist minister, assisted missionary Evan Jones in establishing a vibrant Baptist presence among Cherokees. However, some aspects of Bushyhead's life are more complex. As an interpreter and member of the middle class, he was a key figure in bridging the gap between the white world and Cherokees. But the removal issue divided his tribe and family, resulting in the murders of two close family members. Bushyhead himself received several death threats. Finally, his views on slavery provoked negative responses from abolitionists within Baptist ranks and sparked the separation of denominational lines between North and South. Book jacket.

“The story of the Cherokee removal has been told many times, but never before has a single book given us such a sense of how it happened and what it meant, not only for Indians, but also for the future and soul of America.” —The Washington Post Five decades after the Revolutionary War, the United States approached a constitutional crisis. At its center stood two former military comrades locked in a struggle that tested the boundaries of our fledgling democracy. One man we recognize: Andrew Jackson—war hero, populist, and exemplar of the expanding South—whose first major initiative as president instigated the massive expulsion of Native Americans known as the Trail of Tears. The other is a half-forgotten figure: John Ross—a mixed-race Cherokee politician and diplomat—who used the United States’ own legal system and democratic ideals to oppose Jackson. Representing one of the Five Civilized Tribes who had adopted the ways of white settlers, Ross championed the tribes’ cause all the way to the Supreme Court, gaining allies like Senator Henry Clay, Chief Justice John Marshall, and even Davy Crockett. Ross and his allies made their case in the media, committed civil disobedience, and benefited from the first mass political action by American women. Their struggle contained ominous overtures of later events like the Civil War and defined the political culture for much that followed. Jacksonland is the work of renowned journalist Steve Inskeep, cohost of NPR’s Morning Edition, who offers a heart-stopping narrative masterpiece, a tragedy of American history that feels ripped from the headlines in its immediacy, drama, and relevance to our lives. Jacksonland is the story of America at a moment of transition, when the fate of states and nations was decided by the actions of two heroic yet tragically opposed men.

126 myths: sacred stories, animal myths, local legends, many more. Plus background on Cherokee history, notes on the myths and parallels. Features 20 maps and illustrations.

From Cannibals to Christ-Followers--A True Story In 1962, Don and Carol Richardson risked their lives to share the gospel with the Sawi people of New Guinea. Peace Child tells their unforgettable story of living among these headhunters and cannibals, who valued treachery through fattening victims with friendship before the slaughter. God gave Don and Carol the key to the Sawi hearts via a redemptive analogy from their own mythology. The "peace child" became the secret to unlocking a value system that had existed through generations. This analogy became a stepping-stone by which the gospel came into the Sawi culture and started both a spiritual and a social revolution from within. With an epilogue updating how the gospel has impacted the Sawi people, this missionary classic will inspire a new generation of readers who need to hear this remarkable story and the lessons it teaches us about communicating Christ in a meaningful way to those around us.