Cherokees Writing the Keetoowah Way
A digital collection presented by DAILP
Welcome to the first, fully digital, edited translation to treat the everyday literacies of Cherokee people as evidence of a lived philosophy of individuals’ perseverance and a people’s collective resilience. The writings collected here provide a ready source of valuable insight into the cultural, linguistic, and historical legacy of the Cherokee people. Cherokees Writing the Keetoowah Way provides a critical backstory to the dark times in Cherokee history after 1880. Cherokee people used these writings as a means to organize themselves during the decades following the Dawes General Allotment Act (1889) and the Curtis Act in 1898, when thousands of acres of land that remained after individual parcels were allotted to families were opened for settlement by waves of immigrants and settlers. These writings demonstrate day-to-day life in Oklahoma between 1890 and 1954.