The Cherokees : In War and at Peace, 1670–1840

In this richly detailed cultural and political history, David Narrett shows how Cherokee nationhood emerged from the pressures of colonial encounter. Cherokee diplomats—including women—take center stage, adeptly managing relationships with European empires and Indigenous rivals and in the process forging solidarities among once-disparate Cherokees.

A sweeping new history reveals how the Cherokees became a nation as they navigated a century and a half of intertribal conflicts and colonial expansion that threatened their way of life. From early colonial encounters in the 1670s to their forced removal along the Trail of Tears in the 1830s, the Cherokees confronted extraordinary pressures. As their world was convulsed by the spread of European diseases, competition for guns, furs, and deerskins, and settlers’ unrelenting pursuit of “savage” allies, Cherokee communities negotiated conflicts with other Indigenous peoples and European imperial powers. In the process, they created new solidarities among themselves. At the dawn of the eighteenth century, the idea of unity among the Cherokees would scarcely have occurred to their leaders. A century later, chiefs declared unequivocally that they stood for the entire Cherokee nation. David Narrett shows that the bonds of Cherokee peoplehood were forged not only by warfare but also by diplomacy and alliance-building that ranged across half a continent. Despite severe losses during the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and subsequent US expansionism, the Cherokees endured. Cherokee women—not only men—were skillful diplomats who held their people together in crisis. Pragmatic and purposeful, Cherokees adapted under enormous stress in order to preserve their land, independence, and way of life. Rich in detail and insight, The Cherokees is a portrait of the perseverance that built a nation and of a people who survived against all odds.