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18” x 36” Framed Limited Edition Print,
Black Metal(Shown) or Barn Wood, with Miniature Cultural item….$300.00
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In 1835, the most infamous of the treaties was negotiated at New Echota, Georgia, the Cherokee capital. The trety was never ratified, but less than three years later federal troops began to round up the eighteen thousand Cherokees who lived on the land. By riverboat, wagon andhorseback - but mainly on foot - the Cherokee began their forced exile across the Mississippi. Over four thousand men, women, and children died on that fateful journey. The silent graves stretching from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains to their new territory in the West, mark what has come to be known to the Cherokee as the TRAIL OF TEARS.

1839, On The Trail Of Tears

October 1839, a constitution was drafted and adopted. John Ross was elected principal chief, and a convention of Old Settlers meeting at Fort Gibson in 1840 approved the constitution.Joining in this, “Act of Union”, were two bands of Arkansas Cherokees who had migrated to Texas in 1819 and 1831, then had been driven out of Texas and come to live with the Old Settlers. Therefore, on paper at least, the Cherokees in Indian Territory were a united people living under a constitution and laws of their own making.

Act Of Union, II

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of the earth.

Band Of Brothers

On November 22, 1868, Custer mounted a winter campaign during a snow storm. At dawn on November 27, 1868, Custer attacked Black Kettle, the Peace Chief, at his camp on the Washita River, Indian Territory. The Cheyenne losses were sever, including Black Kettle, and his wife, Medicine Woman.

Black Kettle

My heart is filled with joy, when I see you here, asthe brooks fill with water when the snows melt in the spring, and I feel glad, as the ponies are wwhen the fresh grass starts in the beginning of the year. I heard of your coming, when I was many sleeps away, and I made but few camps beofre I met you. I knew that you had come to do goodto me and my people. I look for the benefits, which would last forever, and so my face shines with joy, as I look upon you. - Ten Bears

Calling Song

When cattle replaced the Buffalo, the Indians lost more than food, clothing, tools and shelter the Buffalo provided. They also suffered spiritually, with the lost of the Buffalo, put here by the Great Spirit.

Changing Times

1829-1830, Three-thousand Cherokees now lived in the West, migrants and their descendants. One of them was the adopted Cherokee Sam Houston, a friend of Jackson’s since the days when he had been a successful Nashville lawyer. Jackson had helped him be come governor of Tennessee. At this time of success and power, he had married Eliza Allen of a powerful Nashville family, and within two weeks, claiming he was “overwhelmed by sudden calamities, which form their nature preclude all investigation,” he left Eliza, left the governorship, began to drink heavily, and made his way to the home of his foster father, John Jolly, who was chief of the western Cherokees. Houston admitted that his “feet like a weary wanderer returned at last to his father’s house.”

Cherokee Ambassador To Washington

After the approval of the 1840 constitution the Cherokees turned to raising horse and cattle. The wealth of the Cherokees grew rapidly and the people flourished.

Cherokee Cattle

In 1835, the most infamous of the treaties was negotiated at New Echota, Georgia, the Cherokee capital. The trety was never ratified, but less than three years later federal troops began to round up the eighteen thousand Cherokees who lived on the land. By riverboat, wagon andhorseback - but mainly on foot - the Cherokee began their forced “EXODUS “ across the Mississippi. Over four thousand men, women, and children died on that fateful journey. The silent graves stretching from the foothills of the Smoky Mountains to their new territory in the West, mark what has come to be known to the Cherokee as the TRAIL OF TEARS.

Cherokee Exodus, 1838-1839

After the approval of the 1840 constitution the Cherokees turned to raising horses and cattle. The wealth of the Cherokees grew rapidly and the people flourished.

Cherokee Horses

The near extinction of the American Bison by the white man is depicted by the spirit buffalo's and the skull. The Buffalo inside the skull and protected by the Golden Eagle celebrates the resurgence of the American Bison.

Cosmic Thunder

The Eagle Dancer imitates the eagle, a sacred and powerful spirit, with graceful soaring and sweeping arm and body movements, telling the sotry of the bird’s flight, capture and death. The dancer portrays the wounded and dying eagle with downward quivering and fluttering actions; then lies motioless at the end of the dance.

Dances With Eagles

“Dutch”, also known as “Tahchee”, was a leader among the Old Settlers. He grew up in the West and became a skilled hunter of the buffalo. He visited many tribes and became skilled in a number of different techniques of hunting and fighting. Dutch fought many battles with the Comanche Indians who resented the arrival of the Cherokee. In his later years, “Dutch” made peace with the Comanche; and served with distinction as both a scout and a guide to a number of hunting parities and expeditions.

Dutch's Hunting Party

January 1830, Major Ridge, (dressed in buckskins, red war paint and a buffalo headdress ), led a party of 30 young Cherokee braves to the most southern part of Cherokee lands located in Georgia.

Eviction, Cherokee Style

Every summer, after the long and hard winter, the clans and societies would gather in a favorite camping place to re-new old friendships, celebrate and give thanks. This tradition has been handed down generation to generation and known today as a Pow Wow.

Gathering Grounds

No tribe has the right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers. Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth! Didn't the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children? - Tecumseh, Shawnee

Indians And Oil Wells

Long ago there was a Cherokee clan called Ani’-Tsa’ guhi, at the time of the great famine. The clan said, “Here we must work hard and have not always enough. In the woods there is alwas plenty without work. We will go and live in the woods.

Legend Of The Bear

In the beginning Heaven and Earth was a shapeless, chaotic mass, with the Great Spirit brooding over the darkness. Shape and order was given to Earth and Heaven, with lights in the sky to divided day from night, seasons from years. People appeared last, after the animals, the sun, the moon and the plants, but multiplied quickly.

Let The Magic Begin

On June 25, 1876, General Armstrong Custer and his 264 men met their fate at the junction of the Big Horn and Little Horn rivers.

Little Big Horn

The phenomenal birth of something so rare, the birth of a white buffalo calf, has great spiritual meaning in some Native American cultures. To those who believe, the birth of the white calf is a prophecy come true.

Little Sacred One

Will you ever begin to understand the Meaning of the very soil beneath your feet? From a grain of sand to a great mountain, all is sacred.

Magic Buffalo Robe

An endangered species of today, Seeker, the Timber Wolf, looks through a window in time to a sacred place in the Wichita Mountains of Southwestern Oklahoma; Medicine Creek.

Medicine Creek

The dwelling or "Lodge" of the Medicine Man: a place of healing, dreams and visions.

Medicine Lodge

Carnivores, fire, flood and storms took their annual toll, but neither these nor Indian hunting appeared to reduce the number of buffalo appreciably on the Great Plains. The huge herds seemed indestructible before the coming of the white man.

Night Of The Buffalo

I was born upon the prairie, on the night of the wolves, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures and where everything drew a free breath.

Night Of The Wolves

Like the beautiful, lone bird which lived in ancient times in the Arabian desert for 500 to 600 years and then set itself on fire, rising renewed from the ashes to start antoher long life; the Cherokee Nation arose from the ashes of the TRAIL OF TEARS, to rebuild a great nation in Oklahoma.

Phoenix

The white man never fully understood what the white buffalo meant to the Indian - held in great awe and reverence in every aspect of his life, his culture and his religion.

Sacred Buffalo

Between 1838 and 1839, about 18,000 Cherokees were forced to walk the Trail of Tears. The Spirit of the Owl swept down from the Nightland taking the lives of over 4,000 weak, sick and frail; leaving behind the strong to rebuild the Cherokee Nation in the new lands of the West.

Spirit Of The Owl

The pipe or calumet was important to many tribal cultures. This Cherokee example was collected by Lewis and Clark in 1804-06. It is probable that the pipe was received from a more northerly tribe as a token of peace and to attest contracts and treaties which could not then be violated with¬out incurring the wrath of the gods-for whom this pipe was the spiritual messenger.

Spirit Pipe

White Buffalo maiden was sent by the Buffalo tribe. She was pure white and without blemish; this being the principal desire of the Native People for the character of their children.

Spring Blessing

While many students of the horse culture of the Indians believe that the horses which stocked the Plains had been left behind by Coronado, others contend that all his five hundred and fifty-eight horses, two of the mares, were accounted for in his muster roll. These latter authorities believe that horses came from stock-raising settlements in the Southwest. Many of them spread northward through the normal channels of trade, although Indians acquired many by raids on ranches and settlements.

Stolen Thunder

A small band make camp under the watchful eyes of Seeker; the wolf of today that seeks out Indian camps of the past. This band was one of the many plains Indians inhabiting the country between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. Besides being buffalo hunters, they also were farmers & did not live in tepees except when on the march or hunt.

Tranquility

The First Americans were denied their rights and citizenship until the 20th Century.

Unalienable Rights

We The People

Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mohican, the Pokanoket, and many other once powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished, like our brothers the Buffalo, before the avarice and the oppression of the White Man.

Where Have My Brothers Gone

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All reproduction rights reserved by artist - Ron Mitchell
2007 - Designed by John G Matthews in cooperation with Ron Mitchell