He was known as the Cherokee Moses, the man who fought against the removal of Cherokee Indians from north Georgia. Though Chief John Ross was only one-eighth Cherokee, he grew up steeped in Cherokee culture. He was born in 1790 at Turkey Town, on the Coosa River, near present–day Center, Alabama. As a young man, […]
In the 1820s, the Cherokee nation was carving out a permanent, sovereign home within the United States. Using Sequoyah’s Cherokee syllabary, the tribe could boast almost total literacy. Written laws led to the formation of a Cherokee Supreme Court. New Echota, near present day Calhoun, was established as the authorized capital of the Cherokee nation, […]
He was the highest-ranking Native American to fight for the Confederacy, but years before the Civil War, Stand Watie was nearly assassinated by fellow Cherokees for what they saw as betrayal. Watie was born near New Echota, in Georgia, in 1806. That’s the same place where he and three other Cherokees signed the Treaty of […]
This could be your lucky day and not just because you’re reading this. In Georgia, lotteries have been around since the 18th century. Indian lands were distributed through a lottery in the 19th century. Governor Zell Miller campaigned promising an education lottery, and in 1991 the legislature passed an amendment to Georgia’s constitution that designated […]
When the Cherokees were removed from Georgia along the infamous Trail Of Tears, the man in charge was General Winfield Scott. The man known as old “Fuss and Feathers” was the foremost American soldier between the Revolution and the Civil War. Born in Virginia in 1786, Scott served as a general in three wars. He […]
Georgia’s lottery is nothing new. Between 1805 and 1833, the state held eight land lotteries. Seventy-five percent of Georgia was sold to roughly 100,000 people for bargain prices. As land-hungry Georgians began migrating westward after the American Revolution, the state negotiated treaties with the Creek and Cherokee tribes—or simply took their land—and then distributed the […]
Peaches, peanuts, poultry: Georgia has a lot of all of them. But Pickens County has the most crystalline marble of any place in the world. One of the most highly prized minerals, it’s in 60 percent of the monuments in Washington D.C. Native Americans used north Georgia marble hundreds of years before it was first […]
On this day in 1825, 200 Creek warriors set fire to a plantation house, and shot and stabbed the owner to death. The owner was William McIntosh, a Creek Indian chief killed by his own people. McIntosh was born around 1778 to a white Scotsman and a Creek woman. Though raised among the creeks, he […]
When Georgia had its first showdown with the federal government in the 1820s, Washington blinked. George Michael Troup had faced down the president. Originally from Alabama, Troup served in the Georgia Legislature, and the U.S. House and Senate, before his election as Georgia governor in 1823. In 1825, determined to drive the Creek Indians from […]
Georgia Indians traveling to London in 1734 was hardly an everyday thing. One year after James Oglethorpe founded the Georgia colony, he returned to London to report to the Trustees–and took a group of Georgia’s Yamacraw Indians with him. Led by Chief Tomochichi, they wanted to make requests for education and fair trade directly to […]