Cherokee Manufactory history

Beginning with Thomas Jefferson's Georgia Compact of 1802, the government had urged removal of all Indians from the Southeast.

Presbyterian missionaries opened a school in 1804.

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent Congregationalist ministers in 1816, who founded the Brainerd Mission, whose cemetery still stands in downtown Chattanooga.

In 1817 it adopted a constitution creating an Executive Committee and a National Council.

The Baptists founded their first mission in 1819, for the Valley Towns, near present-day Murphy, North Carolina, on the Hiwassee River.

The Methodists began sending circuit riders in 1824.

Articles in 1825 delineated property rights, giving Cherokee landholders the right to sell their land to anyone except a non-Cherokee.

By 1828, the council adopted the Cherokee Constitution with three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial.

The Indian Removal Act of 1830, signed by Andrew Jackson, started the removal of the Five Civilised tribes, including the Cherokee, along the infamous Trail of Tears from their homelands to reservations in Oklahoma.

Despite the national unease over the issue of who controlled the Cherokee territory, the white settlers began moving to the area in the mid-1700s and by 1831 the new Cherokee County was created, which originally encompassed all territory west of the Chattahoochee and north of Carroll County.

In 1832 the Supreme Court ruled that the Cherokee Nation constituted a sovereign nation within the state of Georgia, subject only to federal law; this decision continues to be the basis for tribal sovereignty for all Native Americans.

In December of 1835, a small group of Cherokee leaders, unauthorized by the Cherokee nation, signed the Treaty of New Echota at Elias Boudinot's house in their newly built capital named for the old town of Echota.

His people followed this revitalizing vision, and by 1836 were able to successfully appeal to the North Carolina legislature to be allowed to remain on their lands, mostly near the Oconaluftee River.

In 1837, local removal forts were built at Fort Buffington and Sixes.

In spite of frantic last-minute efforts in Washington, D.C., Cherokee removal began on May 24, 1838, as specified by the ratified, through fraudulent, treaty.

In the fifty years beginning in 1789 and ending in 1839, (when the last groups on the "Trail of Tears" reached Oklahoma), the Cherokees made an incredible recovery from defeat and devastation.

As the gold supply dwindled, many people from Cherokee County left for the west after gold was discovered in California in 1848.

The federal government recognized the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in 1868, along with other tribes with whom they had made treaties.

The Eastern Band then held a general council at Cheoah in Graham County to adopt a tribal government under a constitution and elected Flying Squirrel (Sawnook, or Sawanugi) as their first principal chief in 1870.

Shortly before that, in 1887, James Mooney, a young Irish ethnologist, began work in Cherokee on behalf of the Bureau of American Ethnology.

In 1895 a federal court ruling on a tribal timber sale found that the Cherokees were wards of the federal government.

The first Cherokee Indian Fall Fair, in 1914, was subsidized by the tribal council specifically to encourage tourism.

The opening of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in 1934, adjacent to the Qualla Boundary, although controversial within the tribal government, was finally welcomed as a way to attract visitors, who brought a new source of income.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, men from Cherokee County enlisted in the service and in May 1942, women could join the Women’s Army Corps.

In 1952 a sales tax began financing the Cherokee Tribal Community Services Program, which supports a tribal police department, a fire department, and the Water and Sewer Enterprise.

With his family--including a twin brother--"Argy" had emigrated to Chicago from Greece in 1958 at the age of 14.

In 1962 the Qualla Housing Authority began offering low cost loans for house construction.

Argyropoulos launched a shoe repair shop in 1968, and like his father before him was soon selling custom-made footwear to "hippies and flower children" from his Venice, California, garage.

Cherokee was founded in 1971 by James Argyropoulos.

In 1979, the first stage of I-575 was completed to Highway 92 in Woodstock and it was opened to traffic the following year.

The three formed a joint venture, Cherokee Apparel Inc., in 1981.

Union with Robert Margolis in 1983

In 1984, the Eastern Cherokees and the Cherokee Nation formally met for the first time since removal.

The next section to Highway 20 was opened in 1985 and the last section to Pickens County was completed later.

Early in 1986, Argyropoulos announced ambitious financial performance goals for the remainder of the decade, among them 20 percent annual sales and earnings growth.

Cherokee exceeded its founder's goals in fiscal 1987 (ending November 30), achieving year-over-year increases of 34 percent in sales and 53 percent in earnings.

In 1988 the Indian Gaming Act allowed federally recognized tribes to offer games of chance on tribal lands, subject to approval by state compacts.

Green acquired the remaining equity for $13.99 per share ($12 cash and an unsecured $1.99 per share bond) and merged the company in May 1989.

In November 1992, Cherokee missed an interest payment on the $105 million liability that remained, and was forced to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy negotiations with its creditors.

Results for the year ending May 31, 1993, showed a 19 percent decline in sales to $157.3 million and a near-doubling of its annual shortfall to $20.3 million.

Elles resigned in November 1994 as the company once again sought bankruptcy protection.

Cherokee's first major deal in this vein, a 1995 agreement with Dayton Hudson Corporation's Target chain, guaranteed it a minimum of $5.5 million in royalties for the fiscal year ended that May.

In January, the company announced net income of $2.8 million on sales of $3.7 million for the six-month period ending November 1996.