[Looking at why our area has its unique political and religious attitudes.]

Why do people move?

Multiple Native Americans wisely escaped the colonies before the coming atrocity. Virtually all of us in early Indian Territory and present Oklahoma, or any other locations are descendants of long-term residents. We all are migrants, just at a different time.

Since they are the largest Nation, this discussion is about the Cherokee. A very similar story corresponds to the Muscogee (Creek), Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole. Each was very different, but in an intriguing way similar.

The first British records were after 1607 at Jamestown. We really have little to no information about the location of tribes and nations beforehand. A short encounter with the Spanish expedition by DeSoto in 1540, gives little data.

Whence the Cherokee? They are an Iroquoian language group, including Cayuga, Huron, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora. At first British contact, the Cherokee were in western Virginia and south. Their favorite annual war opponent, the Tuscarora, were in south central Virginia. Otherwise, the other Iroquois speakers were north of them in a strip up to the Great Lakes. Glottochronology suggests Tsalagi (Cherokee) separated about 1800 BC.

A Cherokee tradition is their people arrived across the East Sea (Atlantic Ocean) into their ancestral lands. These people believed in a single, benevolent, providing deity, the creator, called ‘Yo wah’ or ‘Ye ho waah’. Does that look familiar? They did not have a word for religion, but everything about their world had a spiritual connection. They did have priests and traditions with laws.

There is enough difference in their ancestry from the western tribes, for historians and anthropologists to not dismiss their story. Early pottery found in Georgia dating 4,500 years ago, corresponds to timing of pottery in the Early Bronze Age of the Middle East, about 800 years before Abraham. If oral traditions have any basis, could it be we need to rethink our understanding of human history and migration?

When the Cherokee were pushed from Virginia in 1677, after Bacon’s Rebellion, they simply abandoned that territory and moved into their other areas of western Carolinas, eastern Tennessee, northern Georgia and Alabama.

Why not expand from their ancestral homes? Other nations were around them and the British intervened to limit wars between Nations. Not exactly Pax Romana, but Pax Britannica put a heavy cost on egregious violence.

The Cherokee lived in towns with a local chief, creating a control problem for the British, who then installed Outacite as Principal Chief in 1721. In response, the first of the break-out movements was led by Yunwi-usgaseti (Dangerous Man or Mankiller). He reportedly took one- quarter of the Cherokee people and migrated west. After crossing the Mississippi River, communication with the Eastern tribe ended.

Stories trickled out about a group of Indians found at the base of the Rockies living in traditional Cherokee fashion. The location was in Mexico, which included now Texas at the time. The contingent migrated to near the Rio Grande, with remnants in Coahuila, Mexico.

What was happening on the American continent, besides the British coming into the Middle Atlantic Colonies. They were just entering Carolina and not into Georgia yet.

The French sent their first settlement up the Red River to build an outpost under Commandant St. Denis at Natchitoches, now Louisiana, in 1714. New Orleans did not exist. St. Denis made a trading trip to the Rio Grande, where as a foreigner with contraband goods he was placed under house arrest in Mexico City. The punishment was not too bad, since he courted and wed the granddaughter of the Governor. The French sent LaHarpe to near Tulsa on the Arkansas River in 1719.

What was the significance of the St. Denis trek? Dangerous Man’s Cherokee migration crossed Louisiana, through Natchitoches, and followed St. Denis’ trade route.

The Native Americans had an extensive trading system. The Natchitoches Trace ran from the mouth of the Missouri River, present day St. Louis, to Natchitoches, Louisiana, on the Red River. From there, the Southwest Trail, which later became El Camino Real, ran to Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec empire, present day Mexico City. The Old Natchez Trace ran from now Nashville, Tennessee, on the west side of the Cherokee Nation to Natchez, Mississippi, on the great river. The Natchez extension ran on to Natchitoches, the junction of rivers and trails. In 1786, the Great Spanish Road, the first known trail in Indian Territory, traversed from Natchitoches to the silver mines in the Wichita Mountains, on to Santa Fe.

In Tejas/Mexico, the Dangerous Man Cherokee assimilated with others in the area. But the story does not end.

Two more migrations of Cherokee from the Carolinas and Tennessee eventually ended in the same location of Tejas/Mexico.

Use your historical imagination. In 1808, that region of the world south of the Red River was under Spanish rule as Mexico. North of the Red was a region occupied by the Caddo, which would be separated from them, and designated as Indian Territory, for other Tribes and Nations.

What became of the Dangerous Man migration? The State of Coahuila, Mexico recognized the Cherokee Nation of Mexico in 2001 under the San Andres Accords.

With all these migrations of Cherokee and intermarriages, maybe the old claim that your great grandmother was Cherokee is not too far off. The traditional roll only comprises the forced removal survivors.

What was the Cherokee migrants’ mode of transportation? Walking or horseback was the only choice. These people migrated thousands of miles through swamps, forests, and deserts, without a map, compass, or GPS. They survived the journey to live another life. Others would follow generations later.

Think about the movement of people. Why endure such hardship? To them, freedom to practice their life was better than subservience to a government who did not respect them as people.

Today, we have nowhere else to go.

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Excerpts from our book:

No Man’s Land Pioneers, Louisiana’s Wild, Wild West, ISBN: 9781694632128.