The battle inside us....

Some interesting History about this old Cherokee Grandfathers Tribe. At least I found it interesting. The Trail of Tears.

The Cherokee Indians were one of the tribes that were considered a member of the ?Five Civilized Tribes?. This title has led to the opinion that other tribes were wild and savage, leading many to reject the term. However, one thing is certain, the Cherokee Indians continue to thrive and are one of the most prosperous Native American groups today. The Cherokee Indians were native to the Eastern and Southeastern United States and populate areas such as, Georgia and South Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

The best-known episode in Cherokee history was also the worst: the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation of the Cherokee Indians from their ancestral home in the southeast to Oklahoma. The Cherokee people were an urban, Christian, agricultural, intermarried society who had supported the United States against other tribes. In the end this was all for nothing. Though prominent Americans like Davy Crockett and Daniel Webster spoke against Removal, and though the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, President Andrew Jackson sent in the army. Fifteen to twenty thousand Cherokee Indians (along with Choctaw, Creek, and other tribes) were rounded up and herded to Oklahoma in the winter of 1838-1839. Driven from their homes without being allowed to collect their possessions first, even their shoes, the Cherokees were no better equipped for an 800-mile forced march than people today would be. Between four and eight thousand Cherokee people died of exposure, starvation, disease, and exhaustion along the Trail of Tears. If you understand this, both the extent to which the Cherokees had adopted American standards of civilization before the Removal and the ultimate futility of it, you will go a long way towards understanding the Cherokee mentality and also the attitudes of other Indian peoples towards us.

http://www.native-languages.org/cherokee.htm

George