Sitting on the Watcher’s Stage: Networks of Kinship and Sovereignty Among the Corn Rows

Abstract

Abstract: In the decades following the Civil War, hundreds of Cherokees living East of the Mississippi River were compelled to emigrate west. Post-war poverty, loss of land, and political struggles threatened the survival of Eastern Cherokee communities. Having received an invitation from the Cherokee Nation to be accepted as tribal citizens, many turned away from their eastern homelands after avoiding Removal and outlasting decades of pressures to emigrate. Though the Trail of Tears of 1838–39 is generally understood as the history of Cherokee Removal, this study draws from scholarship on the Long Removal Era to problematize the typical narrative. This postwar emigration phenomenon was a definitive challenge which shaped the newfound Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Contrary to typical characterizations, their survival in the east was not a foregone conclusion, instead facing its gravest challenges in the Civil War era. A power vacuum resulted in divisive factionalism, with rival councils from Qualla and Cheoah competing for legitimacy. The emigration of leading Cheoah politicians signaled their defeat, galvanizing and consolidating the Eastern Band. This article offers a social history of this emigration process, investigating the phenomenon through memoirs and oral histories, tribal council minutes, and petitions and correspondence to Washington. Following the paper trail of emigrants, the study incorporates federal records alongside archival records from North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Interrogating the overlap of the Long Removal era and Long Civil War era, the study offers a new history of the Eastern Band in its harrowing formative years.