Cherokee Power

Imperial and Indigenous Geopolitics in the Trans-Appalachian West, 1670–1774

Kristofer Ray

Narrated by John Guccion

Available from Audible

Book published by University of Oklahoma Press

In Cherokee Power, Kristofer Ray highlights the role of the Overhill Cherokees in shaping imperial and Indigenous geopolitics in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century America.

As Great Britain and France eyed the Illinois country and the Tennessee, Ohio, and Wabash River valleys for their respective empires, the Overhill Cherokees were coalescing and maintaining a conspicuous presence throughout the territory. Contrary to the traditional narrative of westward expansion, the Europeans were not the drivers behind the ensuing contest over the Tennessee corridor. The Overhills traded, negotiated, and fought with other Indigenous peoples along this corridor, in the process setting parameters for European expansion. Through the eighteenth century, the British and French struggled to overcome a dissonance between their visions of empire and the reality of Overhill mobility and sovereignty—a struggle that came to play a crucial role in the Anglo-American revolutionary debate that dominated the 1760s and 1770s.

By emphasizing Indigenous agency in this rapidly changing world, Cherokee Power challenges long-standing ideas about the power and reach of European empires in eighteenth-century North America.

Kristofer Ray is Visiting Scholar in the History Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He is the author of Middle Tennessee, 1775–1825: Progress and Popular Democracy on the Southwestern Frontier and coeditor of Understanding and Teaching Native American History.

REVIEWS:

“A stunning book...brings together careful research and elegant prose to reveal the pivotal role that the Cherokees played in a changing world.”

—Gregory Smithers, author of Reclaiming Two-Spirits

“An impressive expansion of what we know about Indigenous power in the eitghteenth century...Ray tells the story with nuance and intriguing detail.”

—Paul Kelton, author of Cherokee Medicine, Colonial Germs

“Fascinating account of the Cherokees during the entry of the English and French empires into the American Southeast...”

—Alan Gallay, author of Walter Ralegh: Architect of Empire