Cherokees
Origin:
The Cherokee Indians were originally found in the Southern Appalachian Mountains: including western North and South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, southwest Virginia, and the Cumberland Basin of Tennessee and Kentucky.
Name:
The most familiar name, Cherokee, comes from a Creek word "Chelokee" meaning people of a different speech. In their original language, the Cherokee called themselves the Aniyunwiya - "principle people"
Population:
The introduction of European diseases and epidemics in the southeast United States by the Desoto expeditions estimated to have killed at least 75% of the original population. Their population in 1674 was about 50,000. A series of smallpox epidemics cut this in half, and it remained fairly stable at about 25,000 until their removal to Oklahoma during the 1830s.
Culture:
At the time of initial European contact, the Cherokee were a settled, agricultural people living in approximately 200 fairly, large villages. The typical Cherokee town consisted of 30-60 houses and a large council house.
Increasing dependence on trade goods also drew the Cherokee to the British as allies in their wars against the French and Spanish between 1689 and 1763. Cherokee relations with their neighbors were not always friendly before contact. European trade and competition with foreign powers aggravated these rivalries and destabilized the region.
Warfare between allies and trading partners did not serve British interests, so the British encourages peaceful relations between the Cherokees and other native tribes.
When war with France broke out in the mid-1750s, the Cherokees entered into an alliance with Britain, but relations between the two deteriorated rapidly and an already difficult situation was made worse by the hostile and punitive stance adopted by colonial authorities. In the aftermath of war, the Cherokee leader, Ostenaca, sought opportunities to restore good relations with the British.
Perceptions through Literature:
A typical picture like the one above was the common British perception of how all Cherokees were, strong, brave, primitive warriors. We have come to realize that often pictures do not tell the whole story
In a section of Eighteenth Century Popular Culture, John Mullan and Christopher Reid examine incidences of the Cherokee tribe leaders traveling to London to discuss peace talks through newspaper articles. The majority of British citizens had never been to the New World and therefore looked at a native, with "awe and suspicion". The authors chronicled a few newspaper clippings to report the different perspectives that Londoner's had about Native American Indians.
"...in order to learn what they think of the mad savages of Great Britain; as they certainly must have seen in us what they never before had an idea of, and must consider our kindness to be as strange as our customs; and savages as they are, I doubt not but they think them alike stupid and unnatural."
The British feared what they did not know, but realized that a dominant race must appear a very strange thing to people so foreign as the Native Americans. This realization was meant with a sense of superiority, as they the natives were constantly referred to as 'nothing more than theatrical figures' throughout the newspaper writings. This notion further perpetuates our analysis of 18c. British perceptions of different places and races through the literary discourse.
Image source: Google Image Result for cherokeehistory.com/trailo~1.jpg
