The Cherokees

In War and at Peace, 1670-1840
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-0-674-25820-4
Verlag: Harvard University Press

Buch, Englisch, 608 Seiten, Format (B × H): 165 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 1102 g

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. For more than 150 years between their first encounters with the English in the 1670s and forced removal along the Trail of Tears, the Cherokees negotiated mounting pressures. As their world was convulsed by the spread of European diseases, competition for guns, furs, and deerskins, and imperial powers’ unrelenting pursuit of “savage” allies, Cherokee communities responded by creating new solidarities. At the dawn of the eighteenth century, the idea of unity among the widely dispersed Cherokees would scarcely have occurred to their leaders. A century later, chiefs would declare unequivocally that they stood for the whole Cherokee nation. Steps toward national unity were partially a response to the exigencies of war. But while armed conflict was frequent, David Narrett shows that the bonds of Cherokee peoplehood were forged primarily through efforts to maintain peace and secure their livelihoods. The Cherokees—both men and women—were remarkably skillful diplomats who practiced peacemaking as a distinctive spiritual art in which adversaries would reconcile through a mutual and symbolic forgetting of wrongs inflicted on one another. Pragmatic and purposeful, Cherokees adeptly managed relationships with colonials and Indigenous rivals, seeking to preserve their independence and living space and to maximize advantages from trade. Rich in detail and insight, and told through captivating personal stories, The Cherokees offers a portrait of the perseverance that built a nation. Amid an onslaught of struggle and change, the Cherokees became a people who survived against all odds.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Narrett, David

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Diplomatie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Indigene Völker

Über Autor(innen)

Narrett, David
David Narrett is the author of <i>Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands</i> and <i>Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City</i>. He is Professor of History at the University of Texas at Arlington.