Welcome to the Hidden History of Texas. this is Episode 39 – The Cherokee – The  "Principal People”

Forced out of their ancestral homes in what is now the American Southeast by pressure from Anglo Europeans, the Cherokee, or as they call themselves the Ani-Yunwiya, or the principal people, came  to settle in what is now East Texas.

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Their ancestral lands included a large percentage of the southern Appalachian highlands, which included segments  of Virginia, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. They were an agricultural people and the similarities between their Iroquoian language and tribal  migration legends tend to indicate that the tribe originated further to the north of their traditional settled homeland.

It was approximately 1540 when Europeans first encountered the Cherokees, that was when Hernando De Soto’s party traveled through their lands. After that 1st and brief encounter it would be more than a hundred years before they had any additional significant interactions with Europeans. It was in the 1670s that prolonged contact between the Cherokees’ and the Europeans took place. The Cherokees  quickly adapted many of the basic and fundamental material elements of European culture to their own society. This tendency in turn led the Anglo Europeans  to call them, the "Five Civilized Tribes."

In response to their, what was a successful attempt to adapt to their Anglo-European neighbors, they established a constitutional government with a senate, a house of representatives, and an elected chief. In 1821, Sequoyah, AKA George Gist or George Guess, took the tribe’s spoken words and created a written language. The Cherokee placed a high value on education and in many instances-maintained schools for their children.

While it is true that the Cherokees did derive some advantages from interaction with Europeans, those advantages were far outweighed by the negative effects of that contact. Due to the European desire for territory and empire building, the Cherokee were often decimated by wars, epidemics due to the new diseases introduced by the Europeans, and food shortages. Put together these all caused the population to decline, the area of their territory reduced, and a general weakening of their  group identity.

In an attempt to maintain their culture, between the years 1790 and 1820, many Cherokees voluntarily migrated west of the Mississippi River. These peoples selttled in what is now Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. Eventually those who had tried to remain on their ancestral land in the Southeast were ultimately forced to move west due to the implementation of  the 1830 United States Indian removal policy. Between the years 1838 and 1839, 16,000 to 18,000 Cherokees were forcibly marched to their new home in northeastern Indian Territory. An estimated 4,000 individuals died on the march, which we now know as the Trail of Tears.

It was in 1807  when Cherokees were first reported in Texas, that took place when a small band, probably from one of the Arkansas settlements, established a village on the banks of the Red River. In the summer of that year, a delegation of Cherokees, Pascagoulas, Chickasaws, and Shawnees sought permission from Spanish officials in Nacogdoches, to permanently settle members of their tribes in that province. Hoping to use the group as a buffer against further expansion by the Americans, the Spanish authorities approved the request.

For the next few years a small number of Cherokees drifted in and out of Texas. Between 1812 and 1819, the population of Arkansas began to increase and once again the Cherokees were forced to migrate and more of them migrated into Southern Arkansas. But by 1820,  they could no longer avoid American competition for the land. At the same time Anglo-Americans had established seven settlements in the valley of the Red River, and the Cherokees decided to move even further south.