Embedded Files
Timelines that Speak
A Proud History of Endurance and Perserverance
The Sac River and White River Bands Cherokee Timeline
1690-1721 Dangerous Man (Yuhwi Usgu Siti) took his band to Ozark area north of White River. Several bands of the Lower Town Cherokee escaped Westward prior to the Trail of Tears to avoid White expansion.
1738, Dragging Canoe, (Chief of what would later be called the Chickamauga Cherokee), son of Peace Chief Little Carpenter (Attakullakulla), opposed his father and Henderson’s Transylvania Treaty.
1776, Chief Dragging Canoe withdrew to lower towns along Chickamauga Creek, (to what is now near Chattanooga, Tennessee) to lead the Cherokee Confederacy.
1775 to 1794, Bloody Fellow and John Watts, Dragging Canoe’s sons fought Western expansionism.
1794 Sevier burned five lower towns of the Chickamauga (James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee).
1794 Lower Town Cherokee were granted land in southeastern Missouri, West of Mississippi River.
1817 Turkey town treaties moved the Lower Town Cherokee to NW Arkansas and SW Missouri in exchange for giving up their homelands east of the Mississippi.
1821, Acting Governor Crittendon, initiates a directive for all American Indians to leave Missouri and Arkansas. It was not until 1840, were his directives made into law which imprisoned, hung, jailed or sold women and children into slavery.
1828, Treaty signed under duress, which promised us land and money for ceded lands in Arkansas. The money was never issued to Arkansas Indians.
1831 through 1838, the Choctaw, Seminoles, Creek, Chickasaw and lastly the Cherokee in 1838, were forcibly removed from their homelands. By 1838, 57,000 Native Americans from the southeastern states were forcibly removed from their homelands.
1835-1838, all Cherokees were told to move to Oklahoma. Old Settlers better known as Lower Town Cherokee (Cherokee Nation of Indians west of the Mississippi) refused to leave their treaty lands in Arkansas and Missouri considering it a violation of the 1828 treaty agreement. The remaining Chickamauga were forced to continue their government and practice their culture and traditions underground, at great peril if discovered.
1840 to 1912, the State of Missouri enacted laws prohibiting Indians from being in the State with threat of imprisonment or death. (Missouri Revised Statute 1889, Vol II, Chapter 83, Sec 5477, 5482) In Arkansas, if the Cherokee language was spoken, the landman would take away their land. Chickamauga's were forced to hide their identity but retained our language and traditions in secret.
1861-1865 Civil War. Lower Town Cherokee fought for both sides.
1914-1918 WWI. Thousands of Lower Town Cherokees served in WWI.
Early 1900’s the Lower Town Cherokee bands were finally allowed to associate openly, but rampant discrimination remained.
1924, the Indian Citizenship Act, also known as the Snyder Act, granted full U.S. citizenship to America's indigenous peoples, called "Indians" in this Act. (The Fourteenth Amendment already defined citizens as any person born in the U.S., but only if "subject to the jurisdiction thereof"; this latter clause excluded anyone who already had citizenship in a foreign power such as a tribal nation.) The act was signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge on June 2, 1924. It was enacted partially in recognition of the thousands of Indians who served in the armed forces during World War I.
1978, several Lower Town tribal bands reunite with the Northern Cherokee to write their Constitution and By-Laws to revitalize a working government.
1983, the Governor of Missouri proclaimed the tribe as an historic Missouri Indian Tribe.
1984, Missouri House of Representatives proclaim the tribe as an historic Missouri Indian tribe.
We have had a continual history of elected Chiefs, cultural events and honored traditions despite years of oppression.
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