Oklahoma

When the missionaries commenced work among the Cherokees at the beginning of the nineteenth century they found a condition awaiting them that was never presented to the Christian workers by a heathen people. Within less than three quarters of a century before, Christian Priber, ex-Jesuit had identified himself with this tribe, became one of them, learned their language, related to them the biblical stories, which the tribesmen had retained and remembered in infinite detail, although they had entirely forgotten Priber and the source of the stories. The sturdy Scotch and English countryman had also insidiously imbued the people with many … Read more

Officers of the Cherokee Nation, September 9, 1839 to June 30, 1908. The anomaly of a fully constitutional government with all of the concomitant expenses of executive, legislative, judicial and educational departments; being in existence for fifty-nine years, self-sustaining, without direct personal taxes, would seem at first thought, Utopian and impossible. But this was the condition presented by the Cherokee Nation from September 6, 1839 to July 1, 1898. A contented and satisfied communal government in which personal land titles were nonexistent; livestock, had free range, universally attended free schools with free text books, were the center of each annuities … Read more

Trouble with the Chicamaugas, Attack at Knoxville. Mussel Shoals Massacre, Removal to Arkansas, First Printed Laws. The first treaty between the United States and the Cherokees was made at Hopewell on the Keowee River on November 28, 1875, between “Benjamin Hawkins, Andrew Pickens, Joseph Martin and Lachlan McIntosh, Commissioners Plenipotentiary of the United States and the Headmen and Warriors of all the Cherokees.” The Commissioners were among the most distinguished men of the southern part of the republic. Pickens and McIntosh had been brigadier generals of militia in the revolution; Martin and Hawkins had held honorable positions both in military … Read more