The two hundred letters which from the colorful mosaic of this story of the Cherokee tell for the first time, in the Indian's own words, of more than forty years in the history of the old Cherokee Nation. These letters, found in three great trunks in Oklahoma by Edward Everett Dale, and here brought together, in collaboration with Gaston Litton, in sequence and with the necessary annotation to make a connected story, are the correspondence of the Ridge-Watie-Boudinot family, the minority leaders in the Nation.

The Cherokees, by the first decade of the nineteenth century, had made great progress in civilization. They had a constitutional form of government under which they were to live for three-quarters of a century in a tiny independent republic within the confines of the United States. Not a few were well educated. They had their own written language as evolved by Sequoyah and many had large plantations, cultivated by numerous slaves, and lived in beautiful homes as Southern planters, in the full tradition of the Southern cavalier.

From the time of President Jefferson, however, they had been under urgent pressure to leave their traditional homes in the deep south and seek new ones in the great unoccupied lands of the Louisiana Purchase. In 1835 the minority group, headed by the Ridge-Watie-Boudinot family, signed at New Echota, Georgia, a treaty which provided that the entire tribe should remove to lands in Indian Territory already occupied by the Cherokees West. This group was henceforth known as the "Treaty Party."

The treaty and the enforced removal three years later divided the Cherokee into two hostile factions and paved the way for thirty years of political turmoil and bloody strife within the Nation. In these letters, which center around the figure of the last Confederate General to surrender his sword--brigadier General Stand Watie--is told the story of the removal, the establishment of a new nation in the West, the divided loyalties of the tribe during the Civil War, and the tragic difficulties of the reconstruction. The picture is not alone that of life within the Nation. E. C. Boudinot, the Cherokee delegate to the Confederate congress, writes of war-torn Richmond during the Civil War. John Rollin Ridge, the poet and journalist, and several others who followed the Gold Rush to California tell of the mining camps during the days of forty-nine. General Albert Pike's official correspondence with General Watie is revealed.

As only personal letters can reveal, here in intimacy are the lives and thoughts, the loves and hates, the philosophies and ambitions of these proud cavaliers of Cherokee blood. This book will be a revelation to those who have thought of this branch of Indian race as barbarous or semi-civilized.

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 the United States became responsible for the administration of some 125,000 Indians in addition to those already within the national boundaries. The new tribes included many peoples known only to traders and trappers who had ventured into the trackless stretches of the West. This book considers the hundred-year record of federal relations with these Indians.
The first two decades of United States control are seen as a period of large-scale humanitarian purpose, flawed in many cases by racial prejudice, official corruption, or outright cruelty and abuse. New policies, under Ulysses S. Grant, and an awakening of public conscience in the 1870s and 1880s brought a second major period, characterized by the system of reservations.
Later chapters of the book deal with twentieth-century changes, particularly with agents, schools, and medical services, all carefully analyzed by the author, who was a member of the Meriam Commission in 1926-27. The record reveals in realistic detail the problems of the government and the tenacity of the tribes in resisting white settlement and retaining their own culture and way of life.

"Tales of the Tepee" grew out of Edward Everett Dale's close association with Indian tribes living in Oklahoma. During territorial days young Dale rode, hunted, and visited with the Kiowas, Comanches, and Wichitas. Later he taught many Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, Chickasaws, Sac and Fox, and Delawares at the state university. Near the beginning of his long and distinguished career as a historian, he gathered and recorded these stories.

Originally published in 1920, "Tales of the Tepee" takes the reader to the lodge bonfires of the Cherokees, Wichitas, and Pawnees, where children stayed awake to hear about giant cannibals, magical transformations, mortal unions with celestial bodies, and journeys to the Spirit Land. Dale preserved these popular tales of danger and revenge, renewal and romance, and family life. They are populated with an ogress named Spearfinger, the monster Flint, the tragic Wynema, and the cyclic heroes Wild Boy, Stone Man, and Found-in-the-Grass. Here are animal people like the courageous Rabbit and the great bird Tlan-u-wa. And here are lovely explanations for matters mundane and cosmic: how strawberries came to be, and how the moon got its spots.

The activities of a young boy on a small farm in the Texas Cross Timbers during the 1880s seem especially distant today. No one can remember the adventure of a sixteen-and-a-half-mile journey, which consumed the greater part of a day; or hurried predawn dressing in a frosty cold loft while the fragrance of a hearty breakfast wafted upward through the floor cracks; or a two-room schoolhouse, where the last half of Friday afternoon was given over to "speaking pieces" or to spelling and ciphering matches. Through the recollections of Edward Everett Dale we are able to view a pattern of life in rural America now gone forever. For The Cross Timbers is a story which, with but a few minor variations, could have been told about a vast number of small boys on farms cleared from the virgin forests in the timbered regions of many states. After presenting a brief introduction to the members of the Dale family and the plant, animal, and bird life of the Lower Cross Timbers countryside, the author describes his boyhood of a past century. He tells of his home, its furnishings, and the food served there, as well as the neighbors and relatives who come to visit. We learn of the superstitions, the humorous homespun expressions, the mores of early rural Texans. We hunt and fish with young Master Dale in the thick woods and along the clear creeks. Pioneer life demanded much hard work, but not to the exclusion of a diverting social life-both of which included the youngsters, as the author so graphically relates. Dale tells us also of the religious and secular education of the era, showing the significance of the home in supplementing these two influences. Anyone reading this volume must be impressed by the great differences in the lifeways of rural children today and of those of the end of the nineteenth century.

Edward Everett Dale gives a first-hand account of the way pioneer families and cowboys of the frontier lived. Dr. Dale has lived in a sod house, and he once rode the range as cook to a group of cowboys. In this book he draws on his varied experiences to describe all aspects of frontier life--the building of a home, the problems of finding wood and water, the procuring and cooking of food, medical practices, and the cultural, social, and religious life of pioneer families.

This edition is a digital facsimile of the 1959 edition.