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If you ever wanted to know about Cherokee locations or other tribal locations just do a google search on the Cherokee (or other tribe) and maps of Indian territorys begining from 1607 to 1840. Also another good avenue for finding maps on where the Cherokee were located would be through County Formation Maps. These maps tend to show you the treaty years and the formation of the counties in chronological order from begining to end. Go to google type in, for instance, North Carolina County Formation Map. This will pull up some options for you and just run through them til you find a state, county, or historical society site.
Keep in mind also that Indians traveled along trading paths not just for trade, but also for employment on plantations and fur factories. The Indian slave trade is another issue to consider when dealing with location of Indian communities. Lots to ponder and search out but well worth any efforts.
The Cherokee generally were in the states western North Carolina, parts of Tennessee, northern Georgia, and Alabama, and portions of Kentucky as hunting grounds. I may have missed one state.
Thanks so much for the help, Collins. I will check out this information. It is more than plausible that Hannah Stevens was Cherokee. 🙂 Aileen
I have the 3 land cession maps for the cherokee.
I also have the indian maps for Alabama and georgia.
I have the Indian removal maps as well….shows the paths they had to take.
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d193/nerflight/cne1791.jpg
That is the 1791 Cherokee lands…the part to the left is the land they had in 1791….the part to the right was what land the Cherokee gave up.
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d193/nerflight/cherokeeterritorymap.jpg
Thats a closer map
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d193/nerflight/1REMOVAL.jpg
Indian removal map (for the indian removal act).
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d193/nerflight/cherokeenationdistrict.gif
The oklahoma map of where Cherokee was to be moved to during the removal.
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d193/nerflight/1NEW-MAP.jpg
Another removal map..showing different stops along the way.
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d193/nerflight/cne1838.jpg
Cherokee territory for 1838…right before the removal.
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d193/nerflight/1818al.jpg
1818 indian map of Alabama.
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d193/nerflight/xfultcol.jpg
Fulton county Ga indian map….as of yet I have not been able to make this map out to well…this is where I live so I’ve been trying to understand it.
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d193/nerflight/creekindianmap.jpg
Creek indian land cession map..shows what they gave up and when they gave it up.
http://s35.photobucket.com/albums/d193/nerflight/?action=view¤t=usa1.jpg
Thats a old USA map….may not be able to read it…I have a larger version of it though.
I’ll add more stuff latter if needed….some of the cherokee instead of going to oklahoma went to a different state and some went up in the moutnains of NC. I have to look thru my stuff to find the exact location of the one group…they went somewhere like ohio or kentuckey or something like that….
Ga-Nc Collins…Thanks so much for the maps! They gave me some needed perspective. My g-g-g grandmother, Hannah Stephens (Stevens?) would have been married to Freelin Collins in 1836 or 37. If she was indeed Cherokee, that would have been right before the removal. She is always listed as FWP on the census records, but then again, so is Freelin and his parents , who were probably Saponi (at least in part). They were living in Southern Kentucky, a place where at least some Cherokee took refuge after the removal. I just wish there was a way that I could more accurately track down her heritage, parents etc., but I suppose that is lost to history, like so many other things. Thanks again for your generous help! 🙂 Aileen
Sorry I need to restate something on Robert K. Thomas. I am uncertain if he was a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. He was a Cherokee descedant born in Kentucky. He did alot of work on the Cherokee and with the Cherokee. He wrote alot of really great things.
There is a site that is dedicated to him since he died in 1991, and they graciously have collected his writings offering them to the public to read for free. They are a must read to be sure.
http://works.bepress.com/robert_thomas/
I started to read some of the Thomas articles, and he is very cogent and intelligent in his observations. Thanks for sharing this! Aileen
Nation Population east of the Mississippi before removal treaty Removal treaty (year signed)
Years of major emigration Total number emigrated or forcibly removed Number stayed in Southeast Deaths during removal Deaths from warfare Choctaw 19,554 [7] Dancing Rabbit Creek (1830) 1831-1836 12,500 7,000 [8] 2,000-4,000+ (Cholera) n/a Creek 22,700 + 900 black slaves [9] Cusseta (1832) 1834-1837 19,600 [10] ? 3,500 (disease after removal)[11] ? (Second Creek War) Chickasaw 4,914 + 1,156 black slaves Pontotoc Creek (1832) 1837-1847 over 4,000 hundreds a few from disease n/a Cherokee 21,500 + 2,000 black slaves
New Echota (1835) 1836-1838 20,000 + 2,000 slaves 1,000 2,000-8,000 n/a Seminole 5,000 + fugitive slaves Payne’s Landing (1832) 1832-1842 2,833 [12] 250-500 [13] 700 (Second Seminole War) The above numbers may not be perfect…but gives a general idea.
Migration during the Settlement and Early Statehood Era
Cherokee migrated from their homeland to what became Arkansas from the 1780s to the 1820s. Their home territory in Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and western North and South Carolina had been threatened by the expansion of Euro-American settlement, and the Cherokee had lost numerous military and judicial battles with the newcomers. Cherokee had been exploring west of the Mississippi, and as many as a thousand reacted to the setbacks in their home territory by moving west into Spanish Louisiana out of the reach of the English colonies. The first Cherokee focus in Arkansas was the St. Francis River drainage and Crowley’s Ridge, with place names such as Doublehead Bluff in Cross County (named after a leader) and Big and Little Telico Creeks in St. Francis County (named after a major town in the homeland) bearing their imprint. Crow Creek in Cross County was probably not named after the bird but rather after the Crowtown Cherokee settlement. The Crowtown settlement was itself named after another homeland town. Early migrants who led parties of Cherokee families to eastern Arkansas included Connetoo (also known as John Hill), Unacata (also known as White Man Killer), William “Red-Headed Will” Webber, George Duvall, and Moses Price (also known as Wohsi).
The New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811–1812 disrupted these settlements. In June of 1812, Cherokee prophet Skawuaw (also known as the Swan) in a speech at Crowtown warned of further destruction for the Cherokee unless they gave up Anglo-American ways. In response to the quakes and this prophecy, many Cherokee abandoned eastern Arkansas and moved into the Arkansas River Valley west of what is now Little Rock (Pulaski County). This area of mountains and river valleys was similar to the foothills of the Appalachians that had been their homeland. There, unfortunately, they clashed with the Osage, who claimed the area as hunting grounds, and with American settlers moving across the Mississippi River. (Fort Smith in Sebastian County was later established to keep peace between the Cherokee and Osage.) Nonetheless, many groups of families came, along with parties that continued to drift west from the homeland. Major figures included Black Fox, Dutch, Spring Frog, Toluntuskee, and Takatoka. Some also eventually moved to the Red River area, including groups under Du-wa-li (also known as the Bowl) and later under Dutch.
Back in the homeland, increasing federal and state pressure on the remaining Cherokee led to the Turkeytown Treaty of July 8, 1817, in which land in the east was exchanged for land in northwest Arkansas, north of the Arkansas River and south of the White River. The goal of the Arkansas Cherokee was to protect their holdings and thereby create a new homeland in northwest Arkansas, although many of the Eastern Cherokee saw the treaty as a betrayal. The goal of the U.S. government was that all Cherokee would give up their native land and move to Arkansas. As many as 4000 may have done this, becoming known as the Western Cherokee. Emigrants included parties of families led by the principal chief John Jolly (brother to Tolluntuskee), Dick Justice (also known as Dek-keh the Just), the Glass, Walter “Wat” Webber, John Rogers, Tom Graves, John and David Brown, and, in 1829, Sequoyah (also known as George Gist or Guest), inventor of the Cherokee syllabary. The remaining 35,000 or so Cherokee stayed in the homeland.
Because the Cherokee owned the territory together in fee simple—that is, they were given the land as a group instead of in individual parcels—rather than it being managed for them by the U.S. government, the Arkansas land was not considered a reservation. The Western Cherokee established scattered family farmsteads and farms complete with cattle and some even with African-American slaves. The dispersed families were organized in traditional “towns,” spread out along tributaries on the north side of the Arkansas River, places such as Galla Creek, Illinois Bayou, Piney Creek, Spadra Creek, Horsehead Creek, and Mulberry River (from Pope County to Franklin County respectively), as well as Dutch Creek and Spring Creek south of the river (in Yell County). Others settled in the hills and valleys farther into the Ozarks.
As settlers moved into the area these forts were built for the express purpose of housing the Cherokee before their removal. Sources list the following forts (Counties are listed based on present political boundaries):
- Fort Newnan (Talking Rock Fort)
- Fort Buffington (East of Canton)
- Fort Sixes (Camp Hinar Sixes)
- Fort Campbell
- Fort Scudders (Fort Eaton, Frogtown)
- Fort Dahlonega (or Fort Embry)
- Fort Chastain
- Fort Cumming (LaFayette)
- Fort Hoskins
- Camp (Fort) Gilmer
- Fort Hetzel (East Ellijay)
- Fort New Echota (Fort Wool)
- Fort Rome
- Fort Cedartown
- Fort Means (Kingston)
Among the other Cherokee Removal Forts were Fort Red Clay, Fort Cass (about four miles south of present-day Charleston), Fort Marr in Old Fort, all in Tennessee and Fort Butler in Murphy, North Carolina.
In 1848, a group of Cherokee set out on an expedition to California, looking for new settlement lands. The expedition followed the Arkansas River upstream to Rocky Mountains in present-day Colorado, then followed the base of mountains northward into present-day Wyoming, before turning westward. The route become known as the Cherokee Trail or the Rocky Mountain Trail, starting from Fort Smith, Arkansas that also extended northward to Montana all the way to the Canadian border near Cut Bank, Montana.
The group, which undertook gold prospecting in California, returned along the same route the following year, noticing placer gold deposits in tributaries of the South Platte. The discovery went unnoticed for a decade but eventually became one of the primary sources of the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush of 1859 and other gold rushes across the western U.S. in the 1860s.
Not all of the eastern Cherokees were removed on the Trail of Tears. William Holland Thomas, a white store owner and state legislator from Jackson County, North Carolina, helped over 600 Cherokee from Qualla Town (the site of modern-day Cherokee, North Carolina) obtain North Carolina citizenship. As citizens, they were exempt from forced removal to the west. In addition, over 400 other Cherokee hid from Federal troops in the remote Snowbird Mountains of neighboring Graham County, North Carolina, under the leadership of Tsali. Together, these groups were the basis for what is now known as the Eastern Band of Cherokees.
Out of gratitude to Thomas, these Western North Carolina Cherokees served in the American Civil War as part of Thomas’s Legion. Thomas’s Legion consisted of infantry, cavalry, and artillery. The legion mustered approximately 2,000 men of both Cherokee and white origin, fighting primarily in Virginia, where their battle record was outstanding.[17] Thomas’s Legion was the last Confederate unit in the eastern theater of the war to surrender after capturing Waynesville, North Carolina on May 9, 1865. They agreed to cease hostilities on the condition of being allowed to retain their arms for hunting. This, together with Stand Watie The chief of the Southern Cherokee Nation.’s surrender of western forces on July 23, 1865, gave the Cherokees the distinction of being the very last Confederates to capitulate in both theaters of the Civil War. In Oklahoma, the Dawes Act of 1887 broke up the tribal land base. Under the Curtis Act of 1898, Cherokee courts and governmental systems were abolished by the U.S. Federal Government.
The Western Cherokee’s settled in the Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas area along with the Delawares. When the federal government sent the group to Oklahoma after the Trail of Tears era, they were told to proceed to Montana to the Indian Agent for further assignment. Many parted and went to other states such as Texas and some down into Mexico. After meeting with the Indian Agent in Montana the Delawares were told nothing would be done for them. They settled in the Treasure Valley area of Idaho and Oregon and now some are in various parts of the United States. Some Western Cherokees stayed in the Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Texas area and now are in all parts of the United States
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