Cherokee Indian Tribe Essays - Cherokee Nation, Cherokee, Sequoyah

Cherokee Indian Tribe The Cherokee Indians first lived in Tennessee. The name Indian first came from Christopher Columbus, who thought that America was part of the Indies, Asia. The first person to come across Indians was Hernando de Soto, in 1540. In wintertime the Indian men wore long sleeved shirts, loose ?fitting leggings, and moosehide moccasins. Women wore skin dresses tied at the waist and long, fitted leggings. Indians would hunt deer, elk, moose and buffalo. They would also eat rabbits, raccoons and birds. The women would sometimes make a stew with the meat. They also ate berries, nuts, fruit and beans and corn. Indian houses were made of stone, wood, skins, twigs and mud. There were wigwams; tipis, earth and grass covered houses. The tipis were made of buffalo skins. The tipi would protect the Indians from the cold winters. They always faced the tipi towards the east because the winds came from the west. The Indian children liked to have toys, their fathers and grandfathers would make small bows and arrows, sling shots and bean shooters. The girls liked to string berries to make a necklace; they made dolls out of grass, pine needles and bark. The boys would practice target shooting when they were old enough to prepare for when they would hunt. The Indians worshipped the sun, the wind and the rain. They celebrated places on earth that were important to the Indian people, such as a mountain, a lake or a valley. The Indians believed animals including birds were also people, just like the tribes. Indians knew a great deal about nature, they believed that a job was well done only when the spirits had been thanked. They had dances and festivals to help make their crops grow. Sequoyah was a great Cherokee Indian. Sequoyah was born in 1776 at a village called Tuskeegee. He was the first man to create a writing system for the Cherokees. Sequoyah never learned the English alphabet so he began to make up symbols that could make words. He could not read military orders or write letters home so after the war he made the symbols. He made 85 symbols that were sounds. He taught his little girl how to make the symbols. After 12 years of working on the language he and his daughter showed the syllabary to the Cherokees. The Cherokee Nation awarded Sequoyah a silver medal for doing such a great job on the new language. The Trail of Tears was a terrible time for the Cherokee Indians. Back in 1838 the Army went to Tennessee and took all the Indians out and had them walk to Oklahoma. A lot of Indians died because of the terrible time walking and the weather would get really bad. Over 3,000 Cherokees were taken on the trail of tears. It was a very sad time. History Essays

Indians and the Westward movement essays

Indians and the Westward movement essays The white people had now found our Country. The transportation problems facing the nation were as huge as the country itself. Only a few roads for coaches and wagons stretched between the states. Coaches and wagons also moved slowly, very slowly. The 260-mile journey from New York to Boston, for example, took 39 hours by stagecoach. The only other ways to travel or move goods were by small boats, on horseback or on foot. Slow, costly transport was bad for business. It could isolate Americans in one region from those in another. Let us bind the Republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals. Let us conquer space, John Calhoun said. States began to take on the challenge of building roads and canals. This transportation revolution had a huge impact on the everyday life of Americans resulting in conflicts with the Indians. The most successful, and most daring, improvement of this period was the Erie Canal. The success of the Erie Canal opened the upper Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes region to settlement. Thousands of immigrants traveled into Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan. Farm products from this region flowed eastward and their population grew. Fed by the West, easterners could concentrate on trade and manufacturing. In turn, the westerners bought the manufacturers goods of the East. The success of the Erie Canal encouraged more canal buildig in other parts of the country. It helped Americans push west in search of new lands to farm; American victories during the war of 1812 had also crushed most Indian resistance east of the Mississippi. In addition, there was a spirit of confidence and restlessness in the air. People were on the move just to be on the move. Before this time, the way of life was very different. The policies on transportation came also with policies on economic development. Before these policies individuals produced everything ...