The presence of the once-powerful Cherokees is still evident throughout the southeastern United States in names like Chickamauga, Hiwassee, Chattahoochee, Unicoi, Oconee, and Tuscaloosa. For those interested in learning more about the rich heritage of the Cherokees by visiting their historic sites, the second edition of Vicki Rozema’s Footsteps of the Cherokees: A Guide to the Eastern Homelands of the Cherokee Nation is an excellent guide. In the early 1800s, the Cherokee Nation reached from western North Carolina to middle Tennessee, and south to northern Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Then, in 1838, thousands of Cherokees were forced to leave their farmlands, homes, and sacred sites during that infamous trek to Oklahoma, the “Trail of Tears.� Rozema traveled over 4,000 miles and spent four years and close to 2,500 hours visiting, researching, and photographing the sites of the Cherokee Nation. Footsteps of the Cherokees is a guide to these scenic, cultural, and historic locations. The book is divided into two sections. In the overview, Rozema traces the history of the Cherokees from their prehistoric ancestors to their interaction and conflict with white explorers and settlers to stories of the few who remained behind after the forced march west. This information puts the 190 sites listed in the book into historical perspective. The second section focuses on the sites themselves. The sites are divided into nineteen areas named after central locations. The starting locations include Chattanooga, Knoxville and Maryville, Atlanta, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Northeast Georgia, Northwest Alabama, and South Carolina. The coverage of each site includes a discussion of the area’s history, background information, detailed directions, hours of operation, entrance fees, and important phone numbers. The book includes over 200 black-and-white photographs. Take an afternoon or weekend and travel back in time to the glory days of the Cherokee Nation. Whether in your car or favorite armchair, Footsteps of the Cherokees will take you to the great tribe’s hunting grounds, battlegrounds, sacred lands, homelands, birthplaces, and burial sites. Vicki Rozema is the author of Cherokee Voices: Early Accounts of Cherokee Life in the East and Voices from the Trail of Tears and Voices from the Trail of Tears. The first edition of Footsteps of the Cherokees received an Award of Merit from the Tennessee Historical Commission in 1996. Also an acclaimed photographer, she is a history professor at the University of Tennessee.

During the first half of the 19th century, as many as 100,000 Native Americans were relocated west of the Mississippi River from their homelands in the East. The best known of these forced emigrations was the Cherokee Removal of 1838. Christened Nu-No-Du-Na-Tlo-Hi-Lu—literally “the Trail Where They Cried�—by the Cherokees, it is remembered today as the Trail of Tears. In Voices from the Trail of Tears, editor Vicki Rozema re-creates this tragic period in American history by letting eyewitnesses speak for themselves. Using newspaper articles and editorials, journal excerpts, correspondence, and official documents, she presents a comprehensive overview of the Trail of Tears—the events leading to the Indian Removal Act, the Cherokees’ conflicting attitudes toward removal, life in the emigrant camps, the routes westward by land and water, the rampant deaths in camp and along the trail, the experiences of the United States military and of the missionaries and physicians attending the Cherokees, and the difficulties faced by the tribe in the West. “O what a year it has been!� wrote one witness accompanying a detachment westward in December 1838. “O what a sweeping wind has gone over, and carried its thousands into the grave.� This book will lead readers to both rethink American history and celebrate the spirit of those who survived. Vicki Rozema is the author of Cherokee Voices: Early Accounts of Cherokee Life in the East and Voices from the Trail of Tears. Also an acclaimed photographer, she is a history professor at the University of Tennessee. The first edition of Footsteps of the Cherokees received an Award of Merit from the Tennessee Historical Commission in 1996. Her honors include the 2014 McClung Award for an article that appeared in the 2013 Journal of East Tennessee History and the Native American Eagle Award for her writings on the Cherokee. "This work, like Cherokee Voices, is a compilation of letters, newspaper editorials, journal excerpts, church records, and military documents, written by a diverse group of Cherokees and Euroamericans. As the title suggests, Voices from the Trail of Tears is a moving account of the forced removal of thousands of Cherokees in the 1830s; Rozema does a remarkable job of 're-creating this tragic period in American history by letting eyewitnesses speak for themselves.'" - Ginny Carney Studies in American Indian Literature

From the time they established formal ties with Great Britain in 1730, the Cherokees had a rocky relationship with white settlers. They found grounds for dispute over trade practices, territorial control, and the complicated loyalties among the various Indian tribes and European powers. Over the years, the Cherokees struggled to maintain their ancient traditions as the tribe was assimilated into the white man’s culture. Cherokee Voices uses the participants’ own words to tell the story of early Cherokee life. The selections were gathered from journals, treaty records, and correspondence written by Cherokees or by Europeans or Americans who knew them. The excerpts begin with the 1730 visit of Alexander Cuming, who appointed an “emperor� for the Cherokees. Touching on matters as varied as the Cherokees’ oral tradition, their village life, their ball games, their treaties with white settlers, their famous Cherokee Phoenix newspaper, and their education in Christian mission schools, the chapters take readers from when the Cherokees were dependent on European trade to when they became self-sufficient farmers and tradesmen. Unlike most books about the Cherokees, written in the third person by authors who lived years after the events, this one recognizes that no one can speak more eloquently of their lives, trials, and customs than the people themselves. Vicki Rozema is the author of Footsteps of the Cherokees: A Guide to the Eastern Homelands of the Cherokee Nation and Voices from the Trail of Tears. The first edition of Footsteps of the Cherokees received an Award of Merit from the Tennessee Historical Commission in 1996. Also an acclaimed photographer, she is a history professor at the University of Tennessee.