I read something over the last few days which has made me scratch my head and ask, “WHAT? Are you kidding me?” I have had many of those over the last couple of years when reading original documents from the National Registry. I have often said most of the stuff in the National Registry should have been burned, shredded or lost instead of it being kept as proof of the “real history” of the United States.
This one special moment comes from the Territorial Papers of the United States. Beginning as early as 1806, Thomas Jefferson was already discussing with the Chickamauga to leave the Southeast and cross the Mississippi River and go into Crawford County of the Missouri Territory, or as most call it today, the Arkansas Territory. A group of Chiefs, Headsmen, Warriors, Women, and Children left the Tennessee River Valley hinterlands to venture beyond the Mississippi.
While Jefferson encouraged the Chickamauga to go North of the Arkansas River, he never stated that it was required or demanded. He only told them to find lands not already settled by other Tribes so they went North and South. In 1809, many in the group came to Dardanelle Rock on the Arkansas River, or modern-day Dardanelle and Russellville, Arkansas. Over 1,100 men made it to Dardanelle Rock while many others stopped and set up their villages along many of the tributaries, both North and South, of the Arkansas River including the St. Francis, White River, Petit Jean, and Mulberry. Those who set up villages along the St. Francis came into contact with fellow Chickamauga who had already crossed the Mississippi, including Chief Diwali Boles group who came over in the 1780s and 1790s.
In 1817, James Monroe began negotiating with the Arkansas Chickamauga to sign a Treaty which would give them a permanent outlet to the West, to where the “sun sets on the waters” and the lands of the Quapaw when the lands of the Quapaw were ceded to the United States. I have never seen this in an Arkansas History book. Not only did President Monroe make these promises to the Chickamauga, the Secretary of War, George Graham also made these promises as documented in the National Registry.
The Great Father and his Secretary promised to provide and protect the Arkansas Chickamauga if they would sign the 1817 Treaty and encourage other Chickamauga to cross the Mississippi to join them in a land where no white settlers would surround them. Was this not a treaty in the eyes of the Chickamauga? Was this not by definition a legal Treaty with the Chickamauga in that the President could make treaties with the Indians? Finally, the Arkansas Chickamauga trusted the words of the Great Father and his Secretary as a Treaty and signed the Treaty as the Chiefs on the Arkansas River to maintain their hunting, fishing, and gathering lifestyle.
Now to address the word Cherokee in the Treaty. The Indian Agent, R. Meigs, knew our true identity and refused to call us Chickamauga, he consistently called us Cherokee. The United States had falsely assumed for decades that the Chickamauga were a splinter faction of the Cherokee. The reality is that the Chickamauga are Mound Builders who had their own culture, religion, and language before 800 A.D. according to the archaeological record. The Chickamauga lived in the Southeast Woodlands with villages and outposts extending from the Gulf of Mexico at Pensacola, Florida, up to Southern Illinois and Ohio along the Ohio River basin, to Cahokia, and to the Mounds in Spiro, Oklahoma. We have NEVER been Cherokee.
The Cherokee are from the Lake Huron and Lake Erie region of the continent who spoke a dialect of the Iroquoian language. The Iroquois say the Cherokee are not related to them by blood, only by a broken dialect of their language. The archaeological record when compared against the historical record shows that it is impossible for the Cherokee to be in the Southeast Woodlands prior to the mid to late 1670s after the Beaver Wars had ended. But never let archaeology and history get in the way of an anthropologist wanting to create "facts" to push their own narrative or the narrative of the United States government.
It is not the legal responsibility of The Chickamauga Nation to continuously correct the United States anthropologists or historians as to the documented history of the Chickamauga as contained within the National Registry. It is clearly evident that the United States continued to call us “Cherokee” even after being informed that we are not “Cherokee,” nor have we ever been “Cherokee.”
As we proclaim our identity from the documentation of the National Registry, we proclaim the following:
1. We have been Recognized by the Executive Branch and Legislative Branch of the Government of the United States.
2. We have more than sixteen (16) treaties with the United States.
3. We have had lands held for us in Trust by the United States.
4. We have been paid annuities by the United States.
5. We have had a continuous government since before the Declaration of Independence
6. We have had war declared upon us by the United States and her colonies in 1776 of which the United States has never legally ended that war through a peace treaty.
7. We have never been terminated by the Congress of the United States.
8. We have never been exterminated by the United States or one of its colonies or states.