Let me tell you about a course I had a Penn State University as an anthropology/archeology major in my senior year. We had to pick a state - any state - and write a paper a week about that state from it's earliest prehistory through "contact" (1492) and one final paper interactions after "contact". I picked Tennessee because my grandfather was from there. I wrote about the flora, the fauna, the geology, the climate, the ecosystems, and the people who lived in that region...the Cherokee people. It was one of the fascinating exercises I have been through, and, at the end of the course, one of the most eye-opening.
30 years later, I still remember my disappointment and anger. As I remember it, the Cherokee did so much to become seamless members of the new society... they opened schools, churches, started building roads, started to use printing press, and even adopted constitution. They wore western dress, started western schools, initiated an alphabet and started teaching it in the schools along with reading and writing. The political backdrop involved the issues at that time...if Native Americans would be allowed to stop the expansion of the white man AND if the U.S. government would tolerate the previous treaties with Native Americans.
The Cherokee adopted their own constitution that protected the sovereignty of their land. However, gold was discovered in the area. The whites, of course, desired this land so the Cherokee were stripped of their ancestral lands and rights by the state, being displaced early in the 19th century. The tribe sued to win back their land and in the late 1820s, their case went before the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall rendered the state laws unconstitutional so the government had an obligation to exclude white intruders from the Indian land. President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce it and instead signed a law in 1830 to remove the Indians. During the winter of 1831, the Choctow tribe was the first one to start the Trail of Tears The government failed its promises to help the Native Americans move, and a lot of them died from epidemic diseases that were easy to catch during the winter. During the following decade, the U.S. government forcibly and shamefully relocated thousands of Cherokee to reservations in Oklahoma...thus the infamous Trail of Tears. At least 2,000 of the estimated 16,000 Cherokees who were forced westward on the trail are believed to have died en route. Those who resisted removal were bound in chains and marched in double-file.
A small group of Cherokee remained in the east due to either becoming U.S. citizens or fugitives. Eventually the government purchased reservation land at Cherokee, North Carolina (near Ashville) and allowed both groups of eastern Cherokee to settle on the reservation where they remain to this day.
And, what have we done lately for the original inhabitants of this country?
Michaele Glenn
Support Native American Art
http://www.support-native-american-art.com
A web site to increase awareness of the rich diversity of Native American arts and crafts, and to help in acquiring these works, either for yourself, or as gifts for those you love.
Source: www.ezinearticles.com
