The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears - (Penguin Library of American Indian History) by Theda Perdue & Michael D Green (Paperback)

About the Book

In the 1830s, the U.S. government proceeded to drive the Cherokee people west of the Mississippi. Recounting this moment in American history, the authors consider its impact on the Cherokee, on U.S.-Indian relations, and on contemporary society.

Book Synopsis

In the early nineteenth century, the U.S. government shifted its policy from trying to assimilate American Indians to relocating them, and proceeded to forcibly drive seventeen thousand Cherokees from their homelands. This journey of exile became known as the Trail of Tears.

Historians Perdue and Green reveal the government's betrayals and the divisions within the Cherokee Nation, follow the exiles along the Trail of Tears, and chronicle the hardships found in the West. In its trauma and tragedy, the Cherokee diaspora has come to represent the irreparable injustice done to Native Americans in the name of nation building-and in their determined survival, it represents the resilience of the Native American spirit.

Review Quotes

" With a rich sense of Cherokee culture and history . . . the authors . . . recount a human story, not only tragic but also unbelievably heroic."--Los Angeles Times

About the Author

Theda Perdue is the professor emerita within the history department at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her works include Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835 and The Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears. A recipient of several fellowships and grants, including those from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Newberry Library, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Perdue received her MA and PhD from University of Georgia.

Michael Green is a London-based writer who previously taught economics at Warsaw University and was a senior official in the British government. He is the coauthor (with Matthew Bishop) of Philanthrocapitalism.

Colin Calloway is a British American historian. He is the John Kimball, Jr. 1943 Professor of History and a professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College.