Cherokee Civil Warrior: Chief John Ross and the Struggle for Tribal Sovereignty

John Ross served the Cherokee Nation in a public capacity for nearly fifty years, thirty-eight as its constitutionally elected principal chief. Historian W. Dale Weeks describes Ross's efforts to protect the tribe's interests amid systematic attacks on indigenous culture throughout the nineteenth century. At the outset of the Civil War, Ross called for all Cherokees to remain neutral in a war they did not support-a position that became untenable when the US withdrew its forces from Indian T...