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:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“Racism is an ism to which everyone in the world today is exposed; for or against, we must take sides. And the history of the future will differ according to the decision which we make.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“Regarding History as the slaughter-bench at which the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of States, and the virtue of individuals have been victimized—the question involuntarily arises—to what principle, to what final aim these enormous sacrifices have been offered.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)