History for ready reference, Volume 1, A-ElbaLarned, J. N. (Josephus Nelson)
History
History for ready reference, Volume 1, A-Elba
Larned, J. N. (Josephus Nelson)
History -- Dictionaries
different climate, cost the lives of perhaps 10 per cent. of
their total population. The animosities and turbulence born of
the treaty of 1835 not only occasioned the loss of many lives,
but rendered property insecure, and in consequence diminished
the zeal and industry of the entire community in its
accumulation. A brief period of comparative quiet, however,
was again characterized by an advance toward a higher
civilization. Five years after their removal we find from the
report of their agent that they are again on the increase in
population. ... With the exception of occasional
drawbacks--the result of civil feuds--the progress of the
nation in education, industry and civilization continued until
the outbreak of the rebellion. At this period, from the best
attainable information, the Cherokees numbered 21,000 souls.
The events of the war brought to them more of desolation and
ruin than perhaps to any other community. Raided and sacked
alternately, not only by the Confederates and Union forces,
but by the vindictive ferocity and hate of their own factional
divisions, their country became a blackened and desolate
waste. ... The war over, and the work of reconstruction
commenced, found them numbering 14,000 impoverished,
heart-broken, and revengeful people. ... To-day their country
is more prosperous than ever. They number 22,000, a greater
population than they have had at any previous period, except
perhaps just prior to the date of the treaty of 1835, when
those east added to those west of the Mississippi are stated
to have aggregated nearly 25,000 people. To-day they have
2,300 scholars attending 75 schools, established and supported
by themselves at an annual expense to the nation of nearly
$100,000. To-day, 13,000 of their people can read and 18,000
can speak the English language. To-day, 5,000 brick, frame and
log-houses are occupied by them, and they have 64 churches
with a membership of several thousand. They cultivate 100,000
acres of land and have an additional 150,000 fenced. ... They
have a constitutional form of government predicated upon that
of the United States. As a rule their laws are wise and
beneficent and are enforced with strictness and justice. ...
The present Cherokee population is of a composite character.
Remnants of other nations or tribes [Delawares, Shawnees,
Creeks, Natchez] have from time to time been absorbed and
admitted to full participation in the benefits of Cherokee
citizenship."
_C. C. Royce, The Cherokee Nation of Indians (Fifth
Annual Reportt of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1883-84)._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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