Cherokee Nation History

Acclaimed historians Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green paint a moving portrait of the infamous Trail of Tears. Despite protests from statesmen like Davy Crockett, Daniel Webster, and Henry Clay, a dubious 1838 treaty drove 17,000 mostly Christian Cherokee from their lush Appalachian homeland to barren plains beyond the Mississippi. For 4,000, this brutal forced march lead only to their deaths.

In this new bundle audiobook from Captivating History, you will discover the shocking and controversial history of the Native Americans.

A sixth-generation North Carolinian, highly-acclaimed author John Ehle grew up on former Cherokee hunting grounds. His experience as an accomplished novelist, combined with his extensive, meticulous research, culminates in this moving tragedy rich with historical detail.

Blood Moon is the story of the century-long blood feud between two rival Cherokee chiefs from the early years of the United States through the infamous Trail of Tears and into the Civil War. While little remembered today, their mutual hatred shaped the tragic history of the tribe far more than anyone, even the reviled President Andrew Jackson, ever did.

A baby, a black hired hand, a bay horse, a gun, and a neighbor have all gone missing in the same corner of the Cherokee Nation West. Cherokee America Singer, known as Check, is none too pleased with these developments. As a wealthy farmer, the mother of five boys, and the matriarch of her family, she's accustomed to wielding authority. And she's determined to find out what's going on.

A woman ahead of her time, Mary Breydon knew how to get things done. Raised on a Virginia plantation, she learned how to care for livestock, respect her workers, and keep good books. But after her husband is killed, Mary must provide for her young daughter by running a stage coach station on the Cherokee Trail. With the help of an Irish maid and a mysterious stranger, Mary faces challenges that even the men eagerly anticipating her failure would have a difficult time overcoming.

Most histories of the Cherokee nation focus on its encounters with Europeans, its conflicts with the U.S. government, and its expulsion from its lands during the Trail of Tears. This work, however, traces the origins of the Cherokee people to the third century B.C.E. and follows their migrations through the Americas to their homeland in the lower Appalachian Mountains.

For many generations, the Aniyunwiya (meaning the “real people” or “principal people”) lived in harmony with the land they inhabited. They worshipped their ancestors and believed that every living thing—people, animals, trees, and plants—had a spirit and an important place in the world.

One of the darkest and cruelest chapters in the history of the United States occurred when the nation’s young government decided to remove the native peoples from their lands in the name of profit. Having helped settlers for hundreds of years, five Native American tribes found it increasingly more difficult to relate to, and trust, the country that had once acted as their allies. The native peoples had fought alongside the Americans to gain freedom from England, the nation that the colonists deemed oppressive and unfair.

In Cherokee myth - as in other indigenous American traditions - the whole of creation is alive and able to communicate like humans and with the human beings who share their environment. Cherokee myths explain how the world came to be the way it is and imparts important lessons about Cherokee cultural values.

John Ross served the Cherokee Nation in a public capacity for nearly fifty years, thirty-eight as its constitutionally elected principal chief. Historian W. Dale Weeks describes Ross's efforts to protect the tribe's interests amid systematic attacks on indigenous culture throughout the nineteenth century. At the outset of the Civil War, Ross called for all Cherokees to remain neutral in a war they did not support—a position that became untenable when the US withdrew its forces from Indian Territory.

Most claims of Native American ancestry rest on the mother's ethnicity. This can be verified by a DNA test determining what type of mitochondrial DNA she passed to you. A hundred participants in DNA Consultants multi-phase Cherokee DNA Study did just that. What they had in common is they were previously rejected - by commercial firms, genealogy groups, government agencies and tribes. Their mitochondrial DNA was not classified as Native American. These are the "anomalous" Cherokee.

This unique audiobook introduces the listeners to the seven Cherokee clans, found in no other American Indian tribe. They are Wolf (Ani-Wahiya), Bird (Ani-Tsiskwa), Deer (Ani-Kawi), Twister (Ani-Gilohi), Wild Potato (Ani-Gotegewi), Panther (Ani-Sahoni) and Paint (Ani-Wodi). In each section of notes appear the etymology of the Cherokee name, synonyms and related clans, the clan's in-born strengths and character, mitochondrial DNA types, symbols and iconography, famous people, ceremonies, art and monuments.

In the world of Native Americans, oral communication takes the place of the written word in preserving their most valued “texts”. By a miracle of transmission, here is the earliest and most authenticated version of the story of the Cherokee people, from their origins in a land across the great waters to the coming of the white man.