THE CHEROKEES

How an Indigenous people resisted, adapted, and endured during an era of colonization.

Unlike most previous studies of the Cherokee, which have tended to focus on the first half of the 19th century, this thorough and insightful history emphasizes the period from early contact with Europeans to the end of the 18th century. The book acknowledges the challenges in telling this story given the enormous gaps in the historical record, especially from a Cherokee perspective, and the untrustworthiness of European and American accounts, especially English translations of Cherokee speech. Nevertheless, the narrative that emerges here draws attention to a people’s vigorous, creative, and long-standing agency in affirming a sense of collective identity. As Narrett explains, “This book is not simply about what Europeans ‘did’ to ‘Indians’ as victims of colonialism. It concerns the changing and often tumultuous relations between Native peoples as they variously fought, made peace, or allied with one another in the light of new and often unprecedented challenges.” Particularly well documented here is the role played by Cherokee women in negotiating those challenges: “Cherokee diplomacy was not simply a matter of what came top-down or was decided by headmen in conferences with colonial and later U.S. officials. Cherokee women sustained community not only in daily tasks but by making their voices heard and taking risks in the political-social sphere.” Also effective are the author’s descriptions of the complexities of political negotiations with settler populations, the role of slavery in Cherokee culture, and the evolution of self-definition that emerged in response to the pressures of colonization. The concluding section of the work ably traces connections to the present-day Cherokee and to the endurance of “ideals of communal harmony, spiritual connectedness to nature, and the capacity to negotiate differences among themselves.”

An informed, astute investigation of Cherokee survivance.