W. Brent Burgin Archives: Cherokee

In Eastern Cherokee Fishing, life histories, folktales, and reminiscences about fish gathered from interviews with Cherokee and non-Cherokee people provide a clear and personal picture of the changes in the Qualla Boundary (Eastern Band of the) Cherokee in the last 75 years. Coupled with documentary research, these ethnographic histories illuminate changes in the language, culture, and environment (particularly, aquatic resources) since contact with Europeans and examine the role these changes have played in the traditions and lives of the contemporary Cherokees.

Based on extensive fieldwork in the community of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in western North Carolina, this book uses a semiotic approach to investigate the historic and contemporary role of the Sequoyan syllabary--the written system for representing the sounds of the Cherokee language--in Eastern Cherokee life.

A major economic industry among American Indian tribes is the public promotion and display of aspects of their cultural heritage in a wide range of tourist venues. Few do it better than the Eastern Cherokee. Through extensive research into work of dating back to the late 1800s, and interviews with a wide range of contemporary Cherokees, Beard-Moose presents the two faces of the Cherokee people. One is the public face that populates the powwows, dramatic presentations, museums, and roadside crafts. The other is the private whose homecoming, Indian fairs, traditions, belief system, community strength, and cultural heritage are threatened by the very activities that put food on their tables.

During the 1838 forced Cherokee removal by the US government, a number of close-knit Cherokee communities in the Southern Appalachian Mountains refused to relinquish their homelands, towns, and way of life. Using a variety of tactics, hundreds of Cherokees avoided the encroaching US Army and remained in the region.

The first interdisciplinary survey of Cherokee removal, this volume brings together essays by eight prominent scholars (including three of Cherokee descent) in the fields of history, geography, sociology, and law. They address such topics as Cherokee politics, class structure, and land-use patterns before the removal; Andrew Jackson's Indian policies; Cherokee population losses; the effects of removal on the few Cherokees allowed to remain in North Carolina; and the Cherokees' immediate and long-term problems following their relocation.