The Cherokees

A sweeping new history reveals how the Cherokees became a nation as they navigated a century and a half of intertribal conflicts and colonial expansion that threatened their way of life. From early colonial encounters in the 1670s to their forced removal along the Trail of Tears in the 1830s, the Cherokees confronted extraordinary pressures. As their world was convulsed by the spread of European diseases, competition for guns, furs, and deerskins, and settlers’ unrelenting pursuit of “savage”