From the time they established formal ties with Great Britain in 1730,
the Cherokees had a rocky relationship with white settlers. They found
grounds for dispute over trade practices, territorial control, and the
complicated loyalties among the various Indian tribes and European
powers. Over the years, the Cherokees struggled to maintain their
ancient traditions as the tribe was assimilated into the white man's
culture. Cherokee Voices uses the participants' own words to tell the
story of early Cherokee life. The selections were gathered from
journals, treaty records, and correspondence written by Cherokees or by
Europeans or Americans who knew them. The excerpts begin with the 1730
visit of Alexander Cuming, who appointed an "emperor" for the Cherokees.
Touching on matters as varied as the Cherokees' oral tradition, their
village life, their ball games, their treaties with white settlers,
their famous Cherokee Phoenix newspaper, and their education in
Christian mission schools, the chapters take readers from when the
Cherokees were dependent on European trade to when they became
self-sufficient farmers and tradesmen. Unlike most books about the
Cherokees, written in the third person by authors who lived years after
the events, this one recognizes that no one can speak more eloquently of
their lives, trials, and customs than the people themselves.
Vicki Rozema is the author of Footsteps of the Cherokees: A Guide to
the Eastern Homelands of the Cherokee Nation and Voices from the Trail
of Tears. The first edition of Footsteps of the Cherokees received an
Award of Merit from the Tennessee Historical Commission in 1996. Also an
acclaimed photographer, she is a history professor at the University of
Tennessee.
