For the first time, the voices of Eastern Band Cherokee women receive their proper due. A watershed event, this book unearths three centuries of previously unknown and largely ignored speeches, letters, and other writings from Eastern Band Cherokee women. Like other Native American tribes, the Cherokees endured numerous hardships at the hands of the United States government. As their heritage came under assault, so did their desire to keep their traditions. The Eastern Band Cherokees were no exception, and at the forefront of their struggle were their women. Eastern Band Cherokee Women analyzes how the women of the Eastern Band served as honored members of the tribe, occupying both positions of leadership and respect. Carney shows how in the early 1800s women leaders, such as Beloved Nancy Ward, battled to retain her people’s heritage and sovereignty. Other women, such as Catharine Brown, a mission school student, discovered the power of the written word and thereby made themselves heard just as eloquently. Carney traces the voices of these women through the twentieth century, describing how Cherokees such as Marie Junaluska and Joyce Dugan have preserved a culture threatened by an increasingly homogenous society. This book is a fitting testament to their contributions. Eastern Band Cherokee Women stands out by demonstrating the overwhelming importance of women to the preservation of the Eastern Band. From passionate speeches to articulately drafted personal letters, Carney helps readers explore the many nuances of these timeless voices.

Much has been written about the forced removal of thousands of Cherokee Indians to present-day Oklahoma in the 1830s. Many of them died on the Trail of Tears. But until recently historians have largely ignored the tribal remnant that avoided removal and remained in North Carolina. John R. Finger shifts attention to the Eastern Band of Cherokees, descended from that remnant and now numbering almost ten thousand, most of whom live on a reservation adjacent to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Cherokee Americans is, ironically, the first comprehensive account of the twentieth-century experience of a band that is known to and photographed by millions of tourists.This book is a sequel to The Eastern Band of Cherokees, 18191900 (1984) by John R. Finger, who is a professor of history at the University of Tennessee.

This volume presents the story of the Eastern Band of Cherokees during the nineteenth century. This group - the tribal remnant in North Carolina that escaped removal in the 1830's - found their fortitude and resilience continually tested as they struggled with a variety of problems, including the upheavals of the Civil War and Reconstruction, internal divisiveness, white encroachment on their lands, and a poorly defined relationship with the state and federal governments. Yet despite such stresses and a selective adaptation in the face of social and economic changes, the Eastern Cherokees retained a sense of tribal identity as they stood at the threshold of the twentieth century.

Theda Perdue examines the roles and responsibilities of Cherokee women during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a time of intense cultural change. While building on the research of earlier historians, she develops a uniquely complex view of the effects of contact on Native gender relations, arguing that Cherokee conceptions of gender persisted long after contact. Maintaining traditional gender roles actually allowed Cherokee women and men to adapt to new circumstances and adopt new industries and practices.

"American Indian women have traditionally played vital roles in social hierarchies, including at the family, clan, and tribal levels. In the Cherokee Nation, specifically, women and men are considered equal contributors to the culture. With this study we learn that three key historical events in the 19th and early 20th centuries-removal, the Civil War, and allotment of their lands-forced a radical renegotiation of gender roles and relations in Cherokee society."--Back cover.

In this innovative study, Sarah Hill illuminates the history of Southeastern Cherokee women by examining changes in their basketry. She explores how the incorporation of each new material used in their craft occurred in the context of lived experience, ecological processes, social conditions, economic circumstances, and historical eras. 110 illustrations. 6 maps.

Today, a fraction of the Cherokee people remains in their traditional homeland in the southern Appalachians. Most Cherokees were forcibly relocated to eastern Oklahoma in the early nineteenth century. In 1830 the U.S. government shifted its policy from one of trying to assimilate American Indians to one of relocating them and proceeded to drive seventeen thousand Cherokee people west of the Mississippi. The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears recounts this moment in American history and considers its impact on the Cherokee, on U.S.-Indian relations, and on contemporary society. Guggenheim Fellowship-winning historian Theda Perdue and coauthor Michael D. Green explain the various and sometimes competing interests that resulted in the Cherokee?s expulsion, follow the exiles along the Trail of Tears, and chronicle their difficult years in the West after removal.