Blood Moon: An Epic Historical Novel of War and Glory in the Cherokee Nation - Perfect for American History Enthusiasts & Book Club Discussions
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“Riveting...Engrossing...Mr. Sedgwick’s subtitle calls the Cherokee story an ‘American Epic,’ and indeed it is.” —H. W. Brands, The Wall Street Journal An astonishing untold story from America’s past—a sweeping, powerful, and necessary work of history that reads like Gone with the Wind for the Cherokee.Blood Moon is the story of the century-long blood feud between two rival Cherokee chiefs from the early years of the United States through the infamous Trail of Tears and into the Civil War. The two men’s mutual hatred, while little remembered today, shaped the tragic history of the tribe far more than anyone, even the reviled President Andrew Jackson, ever did. Their enmity would lead to war, forced removal from their homeland, and the devastation of a once-proud nation. It begins in the years after America wins its independence, when the Cherokee rule expansive lands of the Southeast that encompass eight present-day states. With its own government, language, newspapers, and religious traditions, it is one of the most culturally and socially advanced Native American tribes in history. But over time this harmony is disrupted by white settlers who grow more invasive in both number and attitude. In the midst of this rising conflict, two rival Cherokee chiefs, different in every conceivable way, emerge to fight for control of their people’s destiny. One of the men, known as The Ridge—short for He Who Walks on Mountaintops—is a fearsome warrior who speaks no English but whose exploits on the battlefield are legendary. The other, John Ross, is descended from Scottish traders and looks like one: a pale, unimposing half-pint who wears modern clothes and speaks not a word of Cherokee. At first, the two men are friends and allies. To protect their sacred landholdings from white encroachment, they negotiate with almost every American president from George Washington through Abraham Lincoln. But as the threat to their land and their people grows more dire, they break with each other on the subject of removal, breeding a hatred that will lead to a bloody civil war within the Cherokee Nation, the tragedy and heartbreak of the Trail of Tears, and finally, the two factions battling each other on opposite sides of the US Civil War. Through the eyes of these two primary characters, John Sedgwick restores the Cherokee to their rightful place in American history in a dramatic saga of land, pride, honor, and loss that informs much of the country’s mythic past today. It is a story populated with heroes and scoundrels of all varieties—missionaries, gold prospectors, linguists, journalists, land thieves, schoolteachers, politicians, and more. And at the center of it all are two proud men, Ross and Ridge, locked in a life-or-death struggle for the survival of their people. This propulsive narrative, fueled by meticulous research in contemporary diaries and journals, newspaper reports, and eyewitness accounts—and Sedgwick’s own extensive travels within Cherokee lands from the Southeast to Oklahoma—brings two towering figures back to life with reverence, texture, and humanity. The result is a richly evocative portrait of the Cherokee that is destined to become the defining book on this extraordinary people.
Customer Reviews
The Cherokee Nation: A Story of Survival against All OddsThis book is well worth the read for anyone who is not only interested in the impact of the Cherokee on the history and politics of early America, but the survival of the Cherokee Nation as well. I read it with the aim of learning as much as I could about the travails of Native American tribes that encountered and then interfaced with Old World explorers and settlers who believed they had found a New World. The book met my aim and then some. It’s a well-researched tour de force of the historic plight of the Cherokee. The book certainly lived up to its subtitle as an American epic of war and splendor. The splendor comes through by virtue of insights on how the Cherokee people were able to survive as a nation—overcoming all odds to do so.We learn that the Cherokee were an offshoot of the Iroquois people that migrated from the north, arriving in what would become the American Southeast sometime after the English established Jamestown.in 1607. And when the Cherokee reached their destination they took the land from its occupants by the same forceful means that the predominantly Scots-Irish white settlers would employ against them—a continuation of the tribal fighting that is a hallmark of human history.In large part, Sedgwick centers this well illustrated book on two of the Cherokee’s principle chiefs, John Ross and The Ridge (He Who Walks on Mountaintops). Each was of mixed blood, with The Ridge looking more like his Cherokee father than his Scots grandfather, and the much more white-looking Ross resembling seven of his white great-grandparents,. For decades the two worked together fighting against and then collaborating with whites, and eventually fighting against each other for the future of the Cherokee nation.The issue that finally drove Ross and The Ridge apart was either to retreat in the face of white settlement pressure, or stay and fight against overwhelming odds? According to Sedgwick, an 1826 census showed that the Cherokee population "had increased only slightly to just under 14,000, and they were surrounded by well over one-million whites," a population differential that among other things led to unrelenting pressure for removing the Cherokee people thus setting the stage for the subsequent struggle over the Cherokee lands.Despite knowing that the chiefs in question did not have the authority to bind whole tribes because of the dispersed nature of tribal governance, the white federal and state governments bribed Indian leaders to sign treaties surrendering tribal lands. The 1828 discovery of gold in Georgia also doomed the Cherokee in their homeland. It intensified the pressure on the tribe dramatically. Sedgwick writes, “Once the gold appeared, the Cherokee hills of northern Georgia no longer belonged to the Cherokee; they belonged to just about anyone with a shovel. No law, no religion, no morality could ever hold back gold fever.”The U.S. government aided and abetted the taking of Cherokee lands when, in 1830, Congress approved and President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. Jackson cast the measure as a good thing, saying “To save him from this alternative, or perhaps utter annihilation, the general government kindly offers him a new home, and proposes to pay the whole expense of his removal and settlement.” Yet the president made clear that the move wasn’t optional. The Cherokee considered Jackson to be a hard man. Modern Cherokee understandably liken him to Hitler. But he and The Ridge were probably right in saying that the only hope for Cherokee survival was for them to get out of the way of the ever increasing onslaught of white settlers.The Cherokee simply had to go. The Removal Act split the Cherokee. The one party followed John Ross and determined to hold the land, no matter the cost. The other party followed The Ridge, who reluctantly agreed with Jackson that staying in Georgia risked the annihilation of the tribe. And so began the trail of tears by land and by river. Eventually, the U.S. Army compelled all the Cherokee to leave. The removal was a humanitarian disaster. Of 15,000 Cherokee who embarked on the winter journey, some 4,000 died of disease, exposure and starvation—an American Holocaust. How could this be?The 19th-century was an era of Manifest Destiny when white American settlers widely believed that they were destined to expand the country across North America without regard for the natural land rights of Native Americans. What might have been done differently that could have the situation much better? Given the imbalance in numbers and the context of the times, it is difficult to think of an alternative scenario. Nonetheless, this is the tragic—usually untold—dark side of American history of genocide by way of ethnic cleansing that took place during this era.Along with broken treaties, these government actions not only runs counter to how most Americans like to think of themselves and the principles they and their country stand for, but it also left the Cherokee and other Native Americans bitter and distrustful—creating a cultural divide, a deep wound that I believe is still with us todayThe Cherokee troubles didn’t end with the forced march and relocation to the northeastern part of Oklahoma. Sedgwick’s epic story goes on through the Civil War, which again split the Cherokee, with The Ridge’s family members of the tribe fighting on the side of the Union.In the end, the divided and decimated Cherokee rose from the ashes to make an almost unbelievable comeback in their new home centered in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Today the Cherokee Nation is comprised of close to 300-thousand citizens—that’s a twenty-fold increase over the population at the time when the Removal Act was enforced. Sadly, the Cherokee still live with the inaccurate portrayal of history taught in Oklahoma schools that Columbus and Europeans were the first to “discover” the Americas. More on the current life of the Cherokee people can be found at the Cherokee Nation’s website.
