History
According to the UKB website, its members are composed primarily of the descendants of the "Old Settlers," Cherokee who settled in present-day Arkansas and Oklahoma around 1817, before the bulk of Cherokee were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory in the 1838 Trail of Tears, as well as Cherokees who walked the Trail of Tears.
By the 1880s all Cherokee people faced increased assimilation efforts by the US government. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Cherokee and other Native American children were sent to Indian boarding schools away from home for their education: they were expected to speak only English, were generally prohibited from speaking their own languages, and were expected to adopt Christianity rather than practice native spirituality. The US federal government unilaterally closed and seized Cherokee and other Native American governmental and public institutions through the 1898 Curtis Act, the Dawes Act and the 1906 Five Civilized Tribes Act, by which they broke up communal tribal holdings and allotted plots of land to individual households.
The Dawes Commission was tasked to forced assimilation and break up tribal governments by instilling the concept of land ownership with individual members of the Five Civilized Tribes. The commission divided large sections of land into tribal allotments in an effort to eliminate the traditional governments of the Cherokee, which at that time were based on a communal form of government with the lands being controlled by the tribal government. The US government appointed Cherokee chiefs to administer tribal lands and holdings.
Read more about this topic: United Keetoowah Band Of Cherokee Indians
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“What we call National-Socialism is the poisonous perversion of ideas which have a long history in German intellectual life.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)