Russell Thornton - The Cherokees: A Population History

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title	:	The Cherokees : A Population History Indians of the Southeast
author	:	Thornton, Russell.; Snipp, C. Matthew.; Breen, Nancy.
publisher	:	University of Nebraska Press
isbn10 | asin	:	0803294107
print isbn13	:	9780803294103
ebook isbn13	:	9780585307053
language	:	English
subject	Cherokee Indians--Population.
publication date	:	1990
lcc	:	E99.C5T48 1990eb
ddc	:	305.8/975
subject	:	Cherokee Indians--Population.

Page 1 Introduction This book is a population history of a great American Indian people of what is now the United States. It traces the Cherokees as a physical population from their first contacts with Europeans and Africans to their existence today. The Cherokees were and are a demographically amorphous population. Their origins remain a mystery, and a controversial one. Scholars have long argued the issues and have arrived at plausible hypotheses, but no one knows for sure how the Cherokees came into being, where they originated, or even when they first arrived on their traditional lands in the Southeast. Demographically defining today's Cherokees is equally perplexing. They now (1990) encompass some 8,500 to 9,000 enrolled members of the Eastern Band of Cherokees in North Carolina, some 90,000 in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and about 7,500 in the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma. The population also includes the 232,344 self-reported Cherokees in the 1980 United States census and those who will self-identify as Cherokee in the 1990 census. Many other peoplewhites, blacks, and othershave some degree of Cherokee ancestry but are not identified as Cherokees, at least for the census. In the twentieth century it is appropriate to consider the Cherokees as different populations rather than as a single peoplediverse populations defined by separate locations and criteria. The story I tell is often not a happy onecertainly not for the first several centuries after the Europeans and Africans arrived on Cherokee lands. More often than not it deals with misfortune, tragedy, sorrow, and death. It is the story of the Cherokees' struggle with demographic change as Europeans and Africans arrived upon American Indian land, colonized the original people, and supplanted Cherokees and other native populations. The demographic changes for the Cherokees, as for other American Indian peoples, included drastic

Page 10 linear development" (Dickens 1979:28; see also Lewis and Kneberg 1946:420, 1958:156). One archaeologist argued for a trilineal development of Cherokee culture in the Southeast, dating from A.D. 1000, as reflected in three early archaeological phases, primarily based on mound construction and ceramic forms: Early Etowah, Hiwassee Island, and Early Pisgah. According to Roy S. Dickens, Jr. (1979:12, fig. 3), the sequence of phases was Early Etowah ( A.D. 1000) to Late Etowah/Wilbanks ( A.D. 1250) to Early Lamar ( A.D. 1450) to Late Lamar Variations ( A.D. 1650); Hiwassee Island ( A.D. 1000) to Early Dallas ( A.D. 1250) to Late Dallas ( A.D. 1450) to Overhill ( A.D. 1650); and Early Pisgah ( A.D. 1000) to Late Pisgah ( A.D. 1250) to Early Qualla ( A.D. 1450) to Late Qualla (A.D. 1650). These lines continued to well into the 1800s, Dickens argued, reflected in (as I discuss in chaps. 2 and 3) three Cherokee divisions at that time: Lower Cherokee, Over-hill Cherokee, and Middle Cherokee (Dickens 1979:12, fig. 3, 28; also Dickens 1976; Keel 1976). 4 Issues of the Cherokee origins and migration are not yet settled, but most contemporary scholars favor the archaeological view of early Cherokee development in the Southeast (Fogelson 1978:10). Aboriginal Lands and Population However and whenever the Cherokees first became the Cherokees, it seems they were occupying southeastern lands at the time Europeans made their first recorded penetration there in 153943, during the expedition of Hernando de Soto.5 De Soto may have first encountered the Cherokees in the province of Chalaque (also Xalaque or Chelaque); this was originally thought to have been north of present-day Savannah, Georgia, but some contemporary scholars think it was somewhere west of Charlotte, North Carolina (Hudson, Smith, and DePratter 1984:73). First contact between De Soto and the Cherokees, however, might have occurred when he arrived at the village of Guasili, probably near present-day Marshall, North Carolina (Swanton [1946] 1979:110; Hudson, Smith, and DePratter 1984:74; also Swanton [1939] 1985).6 This was likely on May 29, 1540 (Hudson, Smith, and DePratter 1984:74). According to a report of the expedition, the Cherokees gave De Soto and his men three hundred little dogs and some corn as food, in addition to some tamemes, or Indians, to carry their loads. After spending some time gambling with dice, De Soto and his expedition left on May 31.

Page 100 Delawares, Munsees, and Shawnees At the end of the Civil War the Cherokee Nation signed a new treaty with the federal government on July 19, 1866. It voided the treaty of 1861 with the Confederate states and declared amnesty for all involved in the war. It also called for ceding lands to the United States in Kansas (the "Cherokee Strip"), lands formerly sold to the Cherokees under the treaty of 1835 (but this was not accomplished until the 1890s). Article 15 of the treaty stipulated the following: "The United States may settle any civilized Indians, friendly with the Cherokees and adjacent tribes, within the Cherokee country, on unoccupied lands east of 96, on such terms as may be agreed upon by any such tribe and the Cherokees, subject to the approval of the President of the United States" (Kappler 190479, 2:946; see also Institute for the Development of Indian Law, n.d.b:63). Article 16 allowed the United States to settle "friendly" Indians on Cherokee country west of 96 (Kappler 190479, 2:947; see also Institute for the Development of Indian Law, n.d.b:64). Under article 15 several tribes, then in Kansas, were eventually settled on Cherokee lands. (Some, e.g., the Sacs and the Foxes in Missouri, had sought relocation to Cherokee lands as early as 1857; see Abel 1915:36n.27). The first were the Delawares, including some Munsee-Delawares, about 1,000 of whom agreed to remove themselves to the new lands in 1867, having by then relocated to Kansas from the mid-Atlantic area. They sold their lands in Kansas to the Union Pacific Railroad Company (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1894a:44), moved to Indian Territory in the winter of 186768, and lost some population during the removal (see Mooney 1911:339). (Later about 300 left seeking better conditions but returned after two years [Wardell [1938] 1977:218].) They bought lands from the Cherokees and made an agreement with them specifying that the Delawares would become members of the Cherokee Nation, "and the children hereafter born of such Delawares so incorporated into the Cherokee Nation, shall in all respects be regarded as native Cherokees" (Institute for the Development of Indian Law, n.d.b:69). (Apparently, after the Delawares came to the Cherokee country in 1867, the tribes fought for some years, and many were killed [U.S. Bureau of the Census 1894a:47].) Also in 1867 another small group of Munsees (sometimes called Christian Indians) affiliated with the Delawares, who had been living with a group of Chippewas in present-day Franklin

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