The Cherokees: In War and at Peace, 1670–1840

For several decades, historians plumbing the depths of Native American history have enriched our understanding of their culture, lives, and travails.  

The latest contribution to the history of the indigenous peoples of North America is the comprehensive history of nearly 600 pages, The Cherokees, by David Narrett, professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington, an enjoyable, enlightening, and captivating portrait of the Cherokee and how they faced the adversity and onslaught of struggle and change that threatened their very existence. Some 100 pages of end notes is a field day for lovers of sources. Narrett’s is military and diplomatic history of the highest quality. It is also American history.

After an introduction, the book is divided in four main parts, “Cherokees in the homeland and beyond 1670–1730,” “Cherokees, native people, and empires, 1730–1762, and “Upheavals and the will to live 1762–1795,” and a Conclusion which brings us up to and through the heartbreaking forced migration of the Cherokees in the 1830s known as the Trail of Tears. The first part is essential in understanding Cherokee culture, mentality, and their activities in both peace and war and their interactions with Europeans.

Although the subtitle In War and at Peace is accurate, it could easily have been “diplomacy in the face of survival.” Cherokee struggles were not only with encroaching European settlers, but with European nation-states—Britain, France, and Spain as well as evolving relations with other Native American groups—Creeks, Choctaws, Shawnees, Iroquois, and others—integral to shaping their diplomacy with colonials well before the birth of the United States.

Narrett’s book is not simply about what “Europeans did to Indians as victims of colonialism. It concerns the changing and often tumultuous relations between native peoples as they variously fought, made peace, or allied with one another in the light of new and often unprecedented challenges.” Narrett informs us, “the warrior-diplomat was commonplace in Native American societies, which undercuts stereotypes about wholly warlike ‘Indians’ that persist in popular culture to the present day.”

The great Cherokee chief of the 18th century, Attakullakulla, was an influential Cherokee leader renowned for his oratorical skills, and the reader will find him mentioned often in the history of the 1700s as he dominated Cherokee diplomacy.

And what about genocide, atrocities, and smallpox? Yes, they are part of the sordid history, but what Narrett brings to our attention is that there were sincere and good people on both sides who tried mightly to forge a peaceful way of living together, usually upset by uncontrolled settler advances. Narrett shows that the indigenous people probably suffered greatly by the fact that they were not a nation-state in the European sense, had no written language until 1809, and forging Native American alliances did not often survive the test of time and place. There is no lack of horrific white-on-Native American and Native American-on-white atrocities, many quite blood curdling. Fear and cruelty ruled history, interspersed with many kind and hopeful interludes.

In 1777 an extraordinary, unnamed Cherokee woman travelled as courier on a mission from Cherokee towns to Virginia's Fort Patrick Henry. It is thought that this trusted woman bearing important letters was Nan-ye-hi, a woman who became legendary in her own time. She first chastised the Americans: “you came and settled on our land and took it by main force. You know that women are always looked upon as nothing, but we are your mothers. You are our sons. Our cry is all for peace. Let it continue for we are your mothers. This peace must last forever. Let your women's sons be ours, and let our sons be yours. Let your women hear our words.” Nan-ye-hi’s talk was unprecedented.

The forced removal of the Cherokees in 1838–1839 was imposed by President Andrew Jackson's Treaty of the New Echota of 1835. The Cherokees’ migration to Arkansas 1800–1825 and the forced expulsion of Cherokees to Oklahoma which occurred under the presidency of Martin Van Buren began in 1837. Of the 13,000 Cherokees who were expelled 4000 died and many of the survivors struggled with starvation conditions on arrival. Known in Cherokee folklore as the Trail of Tears for a people exiled from their beloved and sacred land.

Although Narrett’s story is scholarly, readable, and well-researched, the swirling eddies of indigenous politics, wars, alliances, cultures, and life along with the constant battles on American soil of European imperial powers makes for a vast tangled web that Narrett does a good job of untangling, although it may leave you breathless. The important thing to keep in mind—not always emphasized by Narrett—is that you are reading an important American history. A history as important as that of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson.

Narrett’s book is to be recommended.