The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity by Gregory D. Smithers (review)

FOR MOST INDIGENOUS PEOPLES, it is difficult to imagine a group identity not inherently connected to a particular homeland, usually given as a sacred trust by a spiritual benefactor. What happens to Indigenous group identity and cohesion, then, when the homeland is lost? In his new book, Gregory D. Smithers convincingly demonstrates that not only did Cherokee identity survive a series of migrations and resettlements—voluntary and involuntary—between the Seven Years' War and World War II, but that the Cherokee actively engaged these very forces in crafting a sense of who they were as a people in response to the pressures of American settler-colonialism.

In the decades leading up to the forced removals of the 1830s, the Cherokee world came under increasing pressure from the expanding American nation, particularly in the form of frontier violence. Starting in the late eighteenth century, some Cherokee decided that the best response to these pressures was to move westward into Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri. Even as they struggled to preserve traditional knowledge and traditional kinship ties with those they left behind, Cherokee in diaspora created new ways to understand what it meant to be and live as Cherokee—ways that relied increasingly less on living in physical proximity to "home." The traditional stories portrayed the Cherokee ancestors as a migratory people; thus, there was nothing incompatible between being Cherokee and living outside the cis-Mississippi homeland.

Meanwhile, those who remained in the Southeast faced their own challenges in preserving and crafting a sense of Cherokee identity. A growing body of mixed-blood elites gradually came to control the larger Cherokee response, considering the possibilities and risks of Western education, Christianity, race-based slavery, and American legal and political traditions. Smithers demonstrates, however, that mixed-blood elites sought to adopt American influences in a manner consistent with what they saw as the best of traditional Cherokee beliefs and practices, while bringing about critical changes necessary to prepare the Cherokee for the future. Certainly not all Cherokee agreed with the new identity that the mixed-blood elites were crafting, but among the elites themselves a rough consensus seems apparent. Despite this consensus, some elites concluded that not only could migration preserve Cherokee identity, but also that it was necessary for Cherokee survival. Eventually these elites would form the Treaty Party.

Following the forced removals of the 1830s, cis-Mississippi Cherokee found themselves reunited with the trans-Mississippi Cherokee of those earlier voluntary migrations. Not only did the Cherokee who endured forced removal now have to work out internal conflicts between Ross Party and Treaty Party forces, but they also had to learn how to coexist with those who had preceded them West. Again the Cherokee found themselves facing questions of identity, proper community organization and governance, and the importance and meaning of "home." Meanwhile the new Cherokee nation in Oklahoma also had to define what it meant to be "Cherokee" in light of those individuals and groups who still lived in diaspora yet claimed to be Cherokee—most notably the Cherokee living in North Carolina, who had managed to avoid removal.

Following the Civil War, the need to understand who was and was not Cherokee grew even more vital. Federal annuities were limited. The territory of the Cherokee nation had been greatly reduced, and both the land and the nation as a political entity came under threat from the Dawes and later Curtis Acts. Furthermore, decades of migration and intermarriage now meant that the Cherokee diaspora was potentially quite large now. Simple definitions of who was and was not "Cherokee" were not easy to come by. The last portion of the book describes how the Cherokee nation wrestled to create a legal definition of Cherokee citizenship. Smithers's discussion of how the notion of "blood" entered this discussion and its subsequent effect on Cherokee freed-men is particularly nuanced and effective.

By recontextualizing the forced removals of the 1830s within a...