The Cherokee Native American tribes were and are some of the most socially and culturally advanced Native American tribes to exist in modern times. Since the first point of contact in the early 16th century with European settlers, the Cherokees have proven strength and perseverance over centuries of mistreatment. Forced (and unforced) cultural assimilation of Cherokees to European explorers and modern American culture has, in many ways, deculturized the Cherokee Nation over time. After marching over 1,000 miles on the “Trail of Tears” to a designated Native American territory in Oklahoma (the tribe’s final destination, until it became a state of the United States), thousands lost their lives along the way and in internment camps without choice. The Cherokee lifestyle and culture has been permanently altered through the effects of globalization; the history and future of the Cherokee Nation remains changed forever as a result of continual mistreatment, inequalities and disparities reinforced over time, historical theft without proper compensation, and once, again, globalization over time.
For hundreds of years, the Cherokee tribes occupied the mountainous region of the South, spanning from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. The empire of the Cherokee can be traced all the way back to 800 A.D., to their ancestors, the Mississippian people (King & Dobbs, 2017). The Mississippian Period lasted over 800 years and saw the creation of the most advanced societies to exist in North America at the time.
Like almost all early civilizations, these early North Americans relied on hunting, gathering, and agriculture to survive. The widespread basin of the Mississippi River offered rich soil the Mississippian people to cultivate. Therefore, these early ancestors typically grew small gardens and planted crops like beans, sunflowers, corn, and squash as a primary source of food. They also gathered wild plants and fruits grown naturally outside of their communities. However, their diets were not entirely vegetarian; they feasted on small animals and rodents, turkeys, deer, shellfish, fish, and turtles (King & Dobbs, 2017).
Similar to many future Native American tribes, the Mississippian people were organized into societies based on chiefdom, a unique societal construct centralizing social rank in structure. Typically, there were two groups of people in Mississippian society: the elite and the commoners. The elite were usually considered wealthier and more powerful than average, having family members in high social rank. They were excused from struggles of food production and trade; the commoners provided for them while they lived lavish, more comfortable lives due to their superior status. These inequalities persisted and expanded over time in the Mississippian Period, centralizing in locations like Cartersville, Georgia: a future region of the Cherokees (King & Dobbs, 2017).
Before Spanish settlers infiltrated North America and Native American tribes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Cherokee Nation had similar societal structure to the Mississippian people. Social rank still heavily revolved around chiefdom. However, the Cherokees were a much larger, advanced group of people. Therefore, chiefdoms came in different ranks among different clans and groups spread across the what is now the Southeastern United States. Residents of Cherokee populations would attend meetings about the wellbeing and concerns of the town. Cherokee women also had input in these town meetings, which was a very unusual concept for the time, considering where the rest of the world was at with gender equality. Essentially, the Cherokee Nation’s organization simulated a simplified concept of modern American government (Cherokee Nation, 2017).
For nearly 150 years, relations with invading settlers remained minimal. As the late 1600s approached, trade and tensions increased among the Cherokee Nation and European settlers, particularly the English. The English manipulated trade among Cherokee towns, forcing them to compete with each other. This was possible since the Cherokee Nation had mainly local and town governance, rather than national to combat European settlers and their manipulation.
As demand for furs, goods, and crops increased, the entire Cherokee way of life changed; European capitalism placed importance on trade and profits, rather than the traditions that upheld their culture for centuries before. For example, Cherokee prophecies predicted that over-hunting of deer and other animals would lead to negative results, which is precisely what happened. The Cherokees turned greedy on trade with the Europeans for goods like clothing, blankets, and guns, which hurt them in return by exposing them to new diseases that spread through their towns. One of the worst breakouts occurred in 1738 when smallpox ravaged its way through the Cherokee Nation, killing about half of the 20,000 Cherokee people (Cherokee Nation, 2017).
Disease and manipulation angered the Cherokees; chiefs and leadership from across their nation met to discuss the tactics of the European settlers and trade. The more the Cherokees could combat division and exploitation, the more power they would maintain in their homeland. However, this resistance for power lasted only so long. Battles, fights, and warfare began erupting between the Cherokees and settlers in the mid-1700s. The Cherokees faced heavy consequences in response to their resistance of the English, despite a treaty of alliance signed in 1755 between the two groups. The Cherokee Nation would soon be destroyed by the English, their futures changing forever (Cherokee Nation, 2017).
Just four years later, in 1759, the English dismissed the idea of alliance with the Cherokees and began attacking their towns. Rather than siding with the English during the French and Indian War, the Cherokees (nearly 1000 warriors) sided with the French. The English was fighting the French over majority control of North America; they did not need further opposition, especially coming from the Cherokees. Although there was warfare and death coming from both sides of the French and Indian War, the English decimated and destroyed entire Cherokee towns (Boulware & Dobbs, 2017). Homes, crops, and belongings were stolen or burned; cattle were stolen or slaughtered. As many as five thousand Cherokees fled from their homes into the mountains, seeking refuge and safety from the English. Innocent men, women, and children were relentlessly killed until being forced into another treaty with the English in 1761, removing them from all war efforts aiding the French and opposing the English (Cherokee Nation, 2017).
By 1782, the Cherokee Nation’s strength and stability was destroyed forever. Another wave of smallpox swept through their population, killing the majority and leaving about 9000 survivors, the smallest population the Cherokees ever saw. By the end of 1783, the Cherokee Nation and its survival depended almost entirely on its interactions with the European settlers (Cherokee Nation, 2017).
Unfortunately, due to the importance of these interactions, the Cherokees would soon face some of the darkest parts of their history as the American Revolution began in 1776. Interestingly enough, most of the Cherokees that were involved in war efforts sided with the British during the American Revolution, largely due to the opposition of colonist expansion. Therefore, there was large enough support for the Cherokees to side with the British and attack southern states, like Georgia. In defense and retaliation, American colonists attacked the Cherokee people and their towns, whether they were neutral in war efforts or not. This led to further death and destruction of the Cherokees; however, it also led to closer, more beneficial relationships with the English and other Native American groups who opposed the American colonists. Despite the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution in 1783, many of t
he Cherokees continued waging war against the American colonists for over a decade more. After suffering even more loss as a nation through repetitive attacks they could not prevent, the Cherokee ended their resilience against the American colonists around the end of the 1700s.
Nevertheless, the Cherokees had to sacrifice much of their culture and homeland to maintain peace. They remained strong by centralizing power and working together, establishing a constitutional government in 1827. Through this establishment, the Cherokees were officially recognized as the Cherokee Nation. They had a functioning constitution, government, police force, as well as many other institutions similar to the ones established by colonists. But once again, despite the growing strength of the Cherokee Nation, they had greater struggles to come in the near future.
In December of 1835, a small minority of the Cherokee Nation signed the Treaty of New Echota without authorization from the principal chief, John Ross, or their government. This treaty was negotiated with a self-appointed Cherokee leader, Major Ridge, who claimed to represent all of the Cherokee Nation, while he only represented a small portion known as the Cherokee Treaty Party (Cherokee Nation, 2017). The Treaty of New Echota essentially sold all of Cherokee land to the United States for financial compensation, livestock, and other benefits (Cherokee Nation, 2017). When the rest of the Cherokee Nation, the majority, was informed, Chief Ross chartered a petition against their removal; this petition was strongly supported and signed by nearly 16,000 Cherokees (History.com Staff, 2009). Chief Ross stated:
“The instrument in question is not the act of our nation. We are not parties to its covenants; it has not received the sanction of our people.” (History.com Staff, 2009).
Despite the clear disapproval from the Cherokees on the Treaty of New Echota, it went on to President Andrew Jackson who signed it and sent it through the United States Senate, where it passed by one vote (History.com Staff, 2009). And although it passed, the Cherokee Nation refused to cooperate and leave their land.
The Cherokees, unlike many other Native American groups, such as the Seminoles, decided to attempt legal action rather than going straight to warfare against the United States. Their many lawsuits would go through court without success; even the infamous Cherokee Nation v. Georgia lawsuit of 1831, which reached the Supreme Court, could not do anything to help the Cherokees (History.com Staff, 2009) (Boulware & Dobbs, 2017). They continued resisting; however, their strongest efforts could only protect them for a little while.
By 1838, only 2,000 Cherokees cooperated with the United States and abandoned the place they knew as home. President Martin Van Buren was in office and grew angry over the lack of compliance among Native Americans. Therefore, he directed General Winfield Scott, along with about 7,000 soldiers, to hasten the Cherokee Nation’s removal. The catastrophic, merciless removal process the Cherokee Nation and other southeastern Native American groups experienced would go on to scar the history of the United States. Like most historic tragedies, it has a name that brings chills its descendants: the “Trail of Tears” (Cherokee Nation, 2017).
The Trail of Tears, originally known as the “trail where they cried” by the Cherokee Nation, is considered to be one of the darkest moments in American history (Cherokee Nation, 2017). From 1838 through 1839, it is estimated that, in total, 100,000 Native American people were forcibly removed from their homes, during a period known as the “Removal Era” (Pauls, 2017). The soldiers sent along with General Winfield Scott didn’t simply remove all of the Cherokees from their homes at bayonet gunpoint; the soldiers also stole, destroyed, or burned all of the Cherokees’ possessions and homes. After witnessing the horrors of their previous lives being violently ripped from their hands and being destroyed, the Cherokees were intentionally divided and sent to internment camps (similar to the Nazi’s concentration camps), where they suffered further losses from anywhere of a few weeks to six months. A direct quote from a soldier who witnessed this process, Private John G. Burnett, in Captain Abraham McClellan’s Company, really paints the picture of how horrible it objectively was:
“I saw the helpless Cherokees arrested and dragged from their homes, and driven at the bayonet point into the stockades. And in the chill of a drizzling rain on an October morning I saw them loaded like cattle or sheep into six hundred and forty-five wagons and started toward the west…. On the morning of November the 17th we encountered a terrific sleet and snow storm with freezing temperatures and from that day until we reached the end of the fateful journey on March the 26th 1839, the sufferings of the Cherokees were awful. The trail of the exiles was a trail of death. They had to sleep in the wagons and on the ground without fire. And I have known as many as twenty-two of them to die in one night of pneumonia due to ill treatment, cold and exposure…” (rabbi, 2010).
The Cherokee Nation was divided sent to sixteen different internment camps, split from much of their friends and family while suffering unimaginable losses. Internment camps were originally military forts, but were modified into prisons and death camps while the Cherokees and other Native American tribes awaited the day they were forced to march West. The Cherokees were held at different camps for as long as six months at Fort Hetzel, which had no sanitation or restroom facilities and little-to-no nourishment provided. The camps were filled with sickness and disease, abuse and murder, as well as sexual assault on Cherokee women who were too weak and powerless to defend themselves by prisoner soldiers (in forts like Fort New Echota) (rabbi, 2010). After experiencing endless starvation and dehydration, murder, rape, death to disease, death to the elements, and division from their previous lives as a whole, the survivors of internment camps were finally allowed to leave and travel West. Little did the Cherokees know, the worst part of their journey was yet to come.
The Cherokees left the internment camps weak, sick with illnesses, and without the belongings they needed to give them an advantage on the journey they would have ahead. Many of the Cherokees were loaded onto boats like cattle and took a river routes, where they would not receive any food or supplies until they arrived to Indian Territory. However, many of the Native American groups took the journey on land; they were forced to walk on foot or if they were lucky, they rode in wagons. There were four main routes: the “Northern” route, the water routes on rivers, the “Bell” route, and the “Benge” route (Whitaker, 2004). The land routes required crossing frozen rivers or waiting until they were able to cross. The Cherokees forced to use land routes also could not go into any towns along the way, otherwise their illnesses of whooping cough, cholera, typhus, and other fatal infections (made possible by United States soldiers, United States Government, and European settlers) might possibly spread to white people, which the government considered a major concern (History.com Staff, 2009). In the freezing winter of January 1839, approximately two-thirds of the Cherokees were stuck between rivers, waiting to be ferried across, battling the elements for survival (rabbi, 2010).
Although over 1,000 Cherokees avoided being sent to internment camps and sought refuge in new North Carolinian communities, approximately 15,000 Cherokees were subject to internment camps and the Trail of Tears (Boulware & Dobbs, 2017). Out of those 15,000, historians estimate that over 5,000 Cherokees died throughout the entire process, before any of them would have ever reaching the Native Amer
ican territories in Oklahoma (Pauls, 2017). The bodies of Native Americans who died along the way were abandoned at their homes, disposed of in the camps and never seen again, and left behind on the trail during their journey West. Nevertheless, just over three years after the Treaty of New Echota was signed, the majority of the Cherokee Nation, now anywhere from 10,000 to 12,000 people, was relocated to a land entirely new to them, the Cherokee territory in Oklahoma (Cherokee Nation, 2017).
After the Cherokee Nation regrouped the remaining majority of their population in Oklahoma, the nation as a whole was very divided by the Treaty Party, who signed the Treaty of New Echota. Although there were only 350 people who supported the treaty of the original 17,000 Cherokees, there was a bitter split between the Treaty Party and its opposition. Therefore, when the rest of the Cherokee Nation forcibly arrived to Oklahoma, after suffering immense loss over a treaty they never supported, it was not long until violence erupted. The anger of the Cherokee Nation that was inflicted on the Treaty Party was seemingly justified; they murdered many of the treaty’s supporters, as well as the Treaty Party’s leadership. Major Ridge, the leader of the treaty, John Ridge, and Elias Boudinot were all killed for the roles they played in the suffering of the Cherokee Nation.
While these assassinations essentially silenced the Treaty Party, it still took time for the Cherokee Nation to heal. The two main groups of Cherokees in Oklahoma were the Western Cherokees and the Eastern Cherokees. They remained split on issues such as changing government and organization, the Treaty Party (who sided with Western Cherokees), and even the civil war, where 3,000 Cherokees were enlisted in the Confederacy and 1,000 Cherokees were enlisted in the Union (Sultzman, 2017).
Even though the United States Government assured the Cherokee Nation their land in Oklahoma would remain untouched and designated for the Cherokees, Oklahoma became an official state in 1907 in the United States; their land was once again stolen from them; their new home is taken from them (History.com Staff, 2009).
The repeated theft of land and abuse of the Cherokee Nation is well represented from the beginning of European settlers landing in North America to modern day. Since 2014, September 15 (the last day Cherokees arrived in Oklahoma) is designated as the official Trail of Tears Remembrance Day. It’s a day commemorating the lives lost on the Trail of Tears and encourages people to learn of where Native American tribes, especially the Cherokee Nation, have been in history, how they have unrightfully suffered, and persevered, while also still significantly disadvantaged in society.
However, there are certain advantages and government assistance offered to the Cherokee Nation. Similar to other Native American tribes, the Cherokees have access to free health care, which provides prescription drugs, eye-care, and hospitalization. Students who are Cherokee or Native American have some of the best access to free education, scholarships, grants, and loans to pay for their college and often go debt-free in education. Additionally, money from Cherokee-run casinos greatly benefits their nation as a whole (Tsai, 2007). Over $131.7 million is on employee payroll; most employees are Cherokee and, by law, are automatically prioritized for jobs over people who aren’t Cherokee. Casinos also share $81.2 million to create new jobs and opportunities for Cherokees, $34.8 million for elders, youths, and community services. In total, Cherokee-run casinos give so much back to the Cherokee Nation, spending over $441.2 million total to benefit them directly (Cherokee Casino, 2009).
Nevertheless, there are some issues that plague the Native American population, notably the Cherokee Nation. For example, there is a major health crisis among the Native American population that is forgotten and often ignored by the United. For example, Native Americans are 177% more likely to die from diabetes, 500% more likely to die from tuberculosis, 82% more likely to commit suicide, and infant death is 60% more likely than that of the rest of the American population (nativepartnership.org, 2015). Additionally, Native Americans’ life expectancy is approximately 4.4 years shorter than the average life in the rest of the United States of America; unintentional injuries, homicide, and suicide rates are also much higher than average (Indian Health Service, 2017). Sadly, Native Americans are also disproportionately affected by issues like sexual assault, joblessness, mental health, and incarceration, too (nativepartnership.org, 2015).
Globalization is directly responsible for the history of the Cherokee Nation. To begin, globalization is what caused European exploration and settlers to infiltrate the Native American populations and homeland. When settlers arrived, they started the process of deculturization among the Cherokees. By trading with Native American groups, which emphasizes countless issues of consumerism, capitalism, and globalization, they found a way to manipulate and control Native Americans. A divide-and-conquer tactic was enacted on the Cherokees to gain control over them. However, when that method of control wasn’t completely successful, the European settlers intentionally spread disease and began attacking the Cherokees. It is easy to see the direct cause of these issues is the need for globalization to continually expand, destroying or deculturalizing any and all groups of people that challenge to get in its way.
As previously mentioned, the United States Government completely manipulated the Cherokees to steal their land, put them in internment camps, moved them across the United States to a territory completely foreign to them, and did not give them a choice or appropriate financial compensation over time. The United States Government saw a golden opportunity in all of the land that Native Americans had been living on for centuries. There was so much more potential for agriculture, for business, and for the expanding population growing and arriving on the shores of the United States of America. The government decided to prioritize globalization over the quality and existence of Native American life and culture; however, social justice and equality was entirely different centuries ago. And although time has passed, giving the Cherokees and Native Americans time to regrow and come back stronger than before, they have been disadvantaged by modern American society ever since the first settlers landed in the United States.
Without the effects of globalization, which would have prevented much of the distress Native Americans faced from initial contact with European settlers, the entire culture of the Cherokees and the United States would be very different. Perhaps, the Native American groups that have been continually victimized by the United States would still be the same to this very day, like tribes in South America and Australia that have resisted contact with modern civilization; the same tribes that have assumingly lived the same lifestyle and culture for centuries (Wallace, 2015). Perhaps, the Cherokees could have preserved their culture forever if it weren’t for the way they have suffered over time. Perhaps, everything could have been different if globalization did not play such an insidious role in the demise of Native American populations. Unfortunately, the world may never know.
The largest, most socially and culturally advanced Native American tribe to exist in modern American history wasn’t strong enough to withstand the power of globalization. Even the first few contacts with European settlers in the 16th century displayed manipulation and the quest for power, the quest for capitalism. The Cherokees suffered theft, war, and destruction of life and property before the United States stole their land from them in 1835. Over the course of the following five years after 1835, the Cherokees were forcibly removed
from the homes and sent to internment camps, places of horrendous suffering.
After being starved, sickened, and imprisoned for several months, the Cherokees left the camps and traveled over 1,200 miles in the middle of winter on the “Trail of Tears” to Oklahoma. They weren’t given proper supplies, food, medical treatment, or travel equipment for months; this neglect and abuse led to the mass deaths (essentially the genocide) of over 5,000 Cherokees. Even after living on the land given to them in Oklahoma, it was stolen back by the United States Government. No matter the solution they tried to find in the past (and even today) to preserve their culture and way of life over time, there was and is nothing that can survive past the effects of globalization. The Cherokees will always be a nation that did suffer, is suffering, and will suffer in the future due to a culture and ideology that they should have never fell victim to; the Cherokees will remain a nation changed, no matter the benefits or promise the future will give them.