A guide for tracing and honoring your Cherokee ancestors.

The Trail of Tears marked the low point in Cherokee history. The survivors of that deadly event set a new course, rebuilding their lives in an unfamiliar land. Their descendants have prospered in modern America but always remember their culture and past.

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. Using a combination of DNA analysis, historical research, and classical philology, it uncovers the Jewish and Eastern Mediterranean ancestry of the Cherokee and reveals that they originally spoke Greek before adopting the Iroquoian language of their Haudenosaunee allies while the two nations dwelt together in the Ohio Valley.

“He is wise; he has something to say. Let us call him ‘A-tse-nu-sti,’ the messenger.” This is the story of Reverend Samuel Austin Worcester (1798-1859), “messenger” and missionary to the Cherokees from 1825 to 1859 under the auspices of the American Board of Foreign Missions (Congregational). One of Worcester’s earliest accomplishments was to set Sequoyah’s alphabet in type so that he and Elias Boudinot could print the bilingual Cherokee Phoenix. After removal to Indian Territory, he helped establish the Cherokee Advocate, edited by William Ross, and issued almanacs, gospels, hymnals, bibles, and other books in the Cherokee, Creek, and Choctaw languages. He served the Cherokee in numerous roles, including those of preacher, teacher, postmaster, legal advisor, doctor, and organizer of temperance societies. His story is the Cherokee story, and in the foreword to this new edition, William L. Anderson discusses Worcester’s life among the Cherokee.

Of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians the Cherokees were early recognized as the greatest and the most civilized. Indeed, between 1540 and 1906 they reached a higher peak of civilization than any other North American Indian tribe. They invented a syllabary and developed an intricate government, including a system of courts of law. They published their own newspaper in both Cherokee and English and became noted as orators and statesmen. At the beginning the Cherokees’ conquest of civilization was agonizingly slow and uncertain. Warlords of the southern Appalachian Highlands, they were loath to expend their energies elsewhere. In the words of a British officer, "They are like the Devil’s pigg, they will neither lead nor drive." But, led or driven, the warlike and willful Cherokees, lingering in the Stone Age by choice at the turn of the eighteenth century, were forced by circumstances to transfer their concentration on war to problems posed by the white man. To cope with these unwelcome problems, they had to turn from the conquests of war to the conquest of civilization.

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. The Cherokee are a proud, ancient civilization. For hundreds of years they believed themselves to be the "Principle People" residing at the center of the earth. But by the 18th century, some of their leaders believed it was necessary to adapt to European ways in order to survive. Those chiefs sealed the fate of their tribes in 1875 when they signed a treaty relinquishing their land east of the Mississippi in return for promises of wealth and better land. The U.S. government used the treaty to justify the eviction of the Cherokee nation in an exodus that the Cherokee will forever remember as the “trail where they cried.” The heroism and nobility of the Cherokee shine through this intricate story of American politics, ambition, and greed. B & W photographs

Signs of Cherokee Culture: Sequoyah's Syllabary in Eastern Cherokee Life

This extraordinary book is based on research conducted by William Banks on the Cherokee Indian Reservation in the 1950s. It describes traditional Cherokee uses for more than 300 plants -- medicinals, edibles, natural dyes, and more. Banks documented herbal treatments for a huge range of ailments, everything from coughs and colds to rheumatism, diabetes, and cancer, back when some Cherokee elders still practiced the old ways. Published by Great Smoky Mountains Association, it includes wonderful botanical illustrations.

Temple Gordon is the beautiful daughter of a proud and prosperous Cherokee family. Her father, Will, is instrumental in the Cerokees' struggle to maintain their birthright, fighting their new Georgian masters who claim the Cherokee land as their own. To survive, they must be united, but not all the tribe think the only way forward is through conflict. The Blade, handsome son of a Cherokee chief, is one of the few who wants to comply with the government's wishes and move west. His views brand him a traitor amongst his own people, but Temple's sense of betrayal is keener than most ... smitten by the Blade's dashing charisma since childhood, their burgeoning love now seems threatened ...