Introduction

Abstract

This book began with tourism. In the summer of 1994, a friend and I drove from Bloomington, Indiana, where I attended graduate school, to Florida for a short vacation. As we sped along Interstate 75 through northern Georgia, I spotted a brown roadside sign announcing that, at the next exit, we would find New Echota, a state historic site interpreting the history of the Cherokee Nation. For a brief time in the early nineteenth century, New Echota was the Cherokee capital, the seat of the national government created by tribal leaders in the 1820s. The Cherokee National Council met at New Echota in the years prior to removal, and it was the site of the Cherokee Supreme Court. During a time when the United States and the state of Georgia pressured Cherokees to emigrate to the West, the new capital represented the Cherokees’ determination to remain in their homeland. It was also the place where, in late 1835, a small group of tribal leaders signed the treaty under which the United States forced the Cherokee Nation to remove. I had recently become interested in the history of Cherokee sovereignty and nationhood, and I concluded that I should prob ably know about this heritage attraction. We pulled off the highway and followed the signs to the site....