Cherokee Nation Industries history

The sale of tribal lands north of the Hiwassee River in 1819 obliged her to move.

Perhaps most remarkable of all was the syllabary of the Cherokee language, developed in 1821 by Sequoyah, a Cherokee who had served with the United States Army in the Creek War.

Ward opened an inn on the Ocoee River in southeastern Tennessee (near present-day Benton) and died there in 1822.

Native Americans’ first newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, began publication in February 1828.

Georgia officials ignored the court’s decision, President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce it, and Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 to facilitate the eviction of tribal members from their homes and territory.

In December 1835 the Treaty of New Echota, signed by a small minority of the Cherokee, ceded to the United States all Cherokee land east of the Mississippi River for $5 million.

In 1838, thousands of Cherokee men, women and children were rounded up and marched 1,000 miles to Indian Territory, known today as the state of Oklahoma.

A new constitution was adopted in September of 1839, the same year the final group of Cherokee arrived on the Trail of Tears.

In 1844, the Cherokee Advocate, printed in both the Cherokee and English languages, became the first newspaper in Indian Territory, and the first in a Native American language.

A smoldering peace came to the Cherokee Nation after the United States government forced the factions to sign a treaty of agreement in 1846.

Upon the Union victory, Cherokee Nation signed its last treaty with the United States, the somewhat punitive Treaty of 1866.

By the time of the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889 the federal government determined to extinguish the Cherokee Outlet, from which the lease income supported the Cherokee Nation.

Over ensuing years and decades, she was the subject of numerous tales and legends in her native region; the stories were given national currency by various writers, including Theodore Roosevelt in his Winning of the West (1905).

Tribal governments were effectively dissolved in 1906 but have continued to exist in a limited form.

With Oklahoma statehood in 1907, Cherokees suddenly became land owners and state citizens.

Angie Debo, And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1940).

Thus began the era of renewal, retention, and rebuilding of the sovereign, self-governing Cherokee Nation (1946 to the present).

Cherokee Supreme Court Building, 1967(11602A, Eugene H. Brewington Collection, OHS).

The Principal Chief’s Act of 1970 paved the way for certain tribes including the Cherokee Nation to take back their government and popularly elect tribal officials once again.

Earl Boyd Pierce and Rennard Strickland, The Cherokee People (Phoenix, Ariz.: Indian Tribal Series, 1973).

Rennard Strickland, Fire and the Spirit: Cherokee Law from Clan to Court (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975).

Also on February 10, 1990, the Cherokee Nation approved a tax code which included a tobacco tax and sales tax on goods or services sold or rendered on tribal land.

A few months later, in February, 1991, the tribe unanimously approved four legislative acts to facilitate cooperative law enforcement within the jurisdictional boundaries of the Cherokee Nation.

On May 30, 1996, the Cherokee Nation and four other Oklahoma tribes reached an agreement with state lawmakers on taxing Indian sales of motor fuel.