Literacy and Intellectual Life in the Cherokee Nation, 1820-1906

by James W. Parins

Overview

Many Anglo-Americans in the nineteenth century regarded Indian tribes as little more than illiterate bands of savages in need of “civilizing.” Few were willing to recognize that one of the major Southeastern tribes targeted for removal west of the Mississippi already had an advanced civilization with its own system of writing and rich literary tradition. In Literacy and Intellectual Life in the Cherokee Nation, 1820–1906, James W. Parins traces the rise of bilingual literacy and intellectual life in the Cherokee Nation during the nineteenth century—a time of intense social and political turmoil for the tribe.

By the 1820s, Cherokees had perfected a system for writing their language—the syllabary created by Sequoyah—and in a short time taught it to virtually all their citizens. Recognizing the need to master the language of the dominant society, the Cherokee Nation also developed a superior public school system that taught students in English. The result was a literate population, most of whom could read the Cherokee Phoenix, the tribal newspaper founded in 1828 and published in both Cherokee and English.

English literacy allowed Cherokee leaders to deal with the white power structure on their own terms: Cherokees wrote legal briefs, challenged members of Congress and the executive branch, and bargained for their tribe as white interests sought to take their land and end their autonomy. In addition, many Cherokee poets, fiction writers, essayists, and journalists published extensively after 1850, paving the way for the rich literary tradition that the nation preserves and fosters today.

Literary and Intellectual Life in the Cherokee Nation, 1820–1906 takes a fascinating look at how literacy served to unite Cherokees during a critical moment in their national history, and advances our understanding of how literacy has functioned as a tool of sovereignty among Native peoples, both historically and today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806193151
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	10/17/2023
Series:	American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series , #58
Pages:	306
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

James W. Parins (1939-2013) was Professor of English and Associate Director of the Sequoyah National Research Center at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock. Among numerous articles and books about American Indians, he is the coeditor of the Encyclopedia of Indian Removal and author of Elias Cornelius Boudinot: A Life on the Cherokee Border.

Table of Contents

Illustrations ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction xiii

1 Writing in Early America 3

2 Literacy in the Cherokee Nation 11

3 The Cherokee Phoenix 51

4 Education after Removal 68

5 The Cherokee Language and the Sequoyan Syllabary 101

6 The Cherokee Advocate and Other Indian Newspapers 127

7 Four Cherokee Writers 152

8 Political Writers and Feuders 190

9 A Steady Stream of Cherokee Writers 218

Epilogue 246

Notes 255

Selected Bibliography 267

Index 271