Voices of Cherokee Women

by Carolyn Ross Johnston (Editor)

Overview

Voices of Cherokee Women is a compelling collection of first-person accounts by Cherokee women. It includes letters, diaries, newspaper articles, oral histories, ancient myths, and accounts by travelers, traders, and missionaries who encountered the Cherokees from the 16th century to the present. Among the stories told by these “voices” are those of Rebecca Neugin being carried as a child on the Trail of Tears; Mary Stapler Ross seeing her beautiful Rose Cottage burned to the ground during the Civil War; Hannah Hicks watching as marauders steal her food and split open her feather beds, scattering the feathers in the wind; and girls at the Cherokee Female Seminary studying the same curriculum as women at Mount Holyoke. Voices of Cherokee Women recounts how Cherokee women went from having equality within the tribe to losing much of their political and economic power in the 19th century to regaining power in the 20th, as Joyce Dugan and Wilma Mankiller became the first female chiefs of the Cherokee Nation. The book’s publication was timed for the commemoration of the 175th anniversary of the Trail of Tears.

Carolyn Ross Johnston has a B.A. from Samford Universityand a Ph.D. in history from the University of California–Berkeley. Her previous publications Cherokee Women in Crisis: Removal, The Civil War, and Allotment, 1838-1907; Sexual Power: Feminism and the Family in America; Jack London: An American Radical; and My Father’s War: Fighting with the Buffalo Soldiers in World War II. A recipient of Woodrow Wilson and Danforth fellowships and a Pulitzer-prize nominee, Johnston teaches at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, where she is professor of history and American studies and the Elie Wiesel Professor of Humane Letters.

"In her spirited and well-sourced collection, Johnston...unfolds history through the voices of people who remembered terrible events....An academic account that respectfully resurrects long-dead voices from a people who still have a lot to tell us." - Kirkus Reviews"

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780895875990
Publisher:	Blair
Publication date:	10/08/2013
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	1,057,458
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Carolyn Ross Johnston has a B.A. from Samford Universityand a Ph.D. in history from the University of California–Berkeley. Her previous publications Cherokee Women in Crisis: Removal, The Civil War, and Allotment, 1838-1907; Sexual Power: Feminism and the Family in America; Jack London: An American Radical; and My Father’s War: Fighting with the Buffalo Soldiers in World War II. A recipient of Woodrow Wilson and Danforth fellowships and a Pulitzer-prize nominee, Johnston teaches at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, where she is professor of history and American studies and the Elie Wiesel Professor of Humane Letters.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Part 1 Stories of the Cherokees 3

How the World Was Made 5

The First Fire 8

Kana'ti and Selu: The Origin of Game and Corn 10

U'tlûn"ta, the Spear-finger 15

Nûñ'yunu'wi, Stone Coat 19

Part 2 Encounters 22

James Adair Excerpt 27

Henry Timberlake Memoir 29

John Haywood Excerpt 32

William Bartram Excerpts 34

Louis Philippe Excerpt 37

Payne-Butrick Papers 39

Part 3 The Civilization Program 45

Memoir of Catharine Brown 49

Wahnenauhi Excerpt 65

Cherokee Phoenix Articles 68

Part 4 The Trail of Tears 75

Petitions by Cherokee Women, 1817, 1818 78

Catherine Beecher Letter 83

Evan Jones Journal 88

Petitions of Ross's Landing Prisoners 90

Rebecca Neugin Interview 92

Kate Rackleff Interview 94

Wahnenauhi Excerpt 97

Daniel Sabin Butrick Journal 99

Lilian Lee Anderson Interview 109

Bettie Perdue Woodall Interview 111

Ida Mae Hughes Interview 113

Eliza Whitmire Interview 115

Elizabeth Watts Interview 118

Mary Cobb Agnew Interview 121

Part 5 The Civil War 123

Ella Coody Robinson Interview 128

Letters between Mary Bryan Stapler Ross and John Ross 140

Letters between Sarah and Stand Watie 150

Hannah Worcester Hicks Diary 165

Mary Cobb Agnew Interview 182

Lizzie Wynn Interview 186

Emma J. Sixkiller Interview 188

Mary Alice Arendell Interview 190

Mary Scott Gordon Interview 191

Elinor Boudinot Meigs Interview 195

Elizabeth Watts Interview 197

Part 6 Allotment and Assimilation 199

I Allotment 199

Josephine Pennington Interview 204

Lena Barnett Interview 206

Mary J. Baker Interview 208

Minnie L. Miller Interview 211

Rose Stremlau Excerpt 212

II Assimilation 213

Ella Robinson Excerpt 217

Annie Williams Armor Interview 222

Lucille S. Brannon Interview 224

T. L. Ballenger Excerpts 226

Cherokee National Female Seminary Catalog Excerpts 231

Cherokee Rose Buds Excerpts 238

Part 7 Leading Cherokee Women 246

Isabel Cobb Selections 250

Aggie Ross Lossiah Article 260

Wilma Mankiller Essay 269

Acknowledgments 276

Works Cited 278

Index 288

Editorial Reviews

"In her spirited and well-sourced collection, Johnston...unfolds history through the voices of people who remembered terrible events....An academic account that respectfully resurrects long-dead voices from a people who still have a lot to tell us." - Kirkus Reviews"

"The totality of [the book's] haunting intimate recollections and excerpts is complex, nuanced, and powerfully resonant with a determination to preserve a precious heritage and identity ... The message is endurance and strength, a real sense of survival that encompasses both physical and spiritual realms ... Voices of Cherokee Women is a rare collection of refracted glimpses of Native American women [and] is offered as a tribute to women who endured through many reversals." - Nancy Lorraine from Midwest Book Review

"Rich with detailed personal remembrances, Voices of Cherokee Women is a wonderful honoring of [Cherokee women's ] complex and still evolving heritage." - Sandi Tomlin-Sutker from Western North Carolina Woman

From the Publisher

2014-01-29
A history scholar collects first-person accounts of the history of the Cherokee people, revealing a troubled but proud history through the eyes of its women. In her spirited and well-sourced collection, Johnston (History and American Studies/Eckerd Coll.; My Father's War: Fighting with the Buffalo Soldiers in World War II, 2012, etc.) unfolds history through the voices of people who remembered terrible events ranging from the cataclysmic effects of legislation like the Dawes Act to the ethnic cleansing of the Trail of Tears to the bloody cost of the American Civil War, finally reaching the rejuvenation of these proud people under the leadership of great chiefs like Wilma Mankiller. Beginning with the Cherokee creation myths, the book moves quickly to examine the flawed observations of Western explorers starting in the early 17th century. The great crisis arrived in the form of the United States government's "civilization program," as captured by the Cherokee woman Wahnenauhi ("Over-There-They-Just-Arrived-With-It"): "They could almost hear the reproaches and wailings of the dear dead as they were leaving. How must these Chiefs decide for their people? No wonder it seemed that Despair in its thickest blackness had settled down and unfolded in gloom this assemblage of brave and true hearted Patriots." Johnston excerpts some of the accounts from a Works Projects Administration program in the 1920s to capture the history of the Native American people of North America. In one, a woman remembers her mother telling her the story of a soldier who murdered a baby who wouldn't stop crying. The book also reveals how the rather warped European attitudes about topics like sex, power and responsibility changed the Cherokee people, deeply diminishing the power of women under challenges from a white, patriarchal society. Only in the 20th century have women finally been able to reassert themselves and take their fair and equal role as leaders of their culture. An academic account that respectfully resurrects long-dead voices from a people who still have a lot to tell us.

Kirkus Reviews