Deconstructing the Cherokee Nation - by Tyler Boulware (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This significant contribution to Cherokee studies examines the tribe's life during the eighteenth century, up to the Removal. By revealing town loyalties and regional alliances, Tyler Boulware uncovers a persistent identification hierarchy among the colonial Cherokee.

Boulware aims to fill the gap in Cherokee historical studies by addressing two significant aspects of Cherokee identity: town and region. Though other factors mattered, these were arguably the most recognizable markers by which Cherokee peoples structured group identity and influenced their interactions with outside groups during the colonial era.

This volume focuses on the understudied importance of social and political ties that gradually connected villages and regions and slowly weakened the localism that dominated in earlier decades. It highlights the importance of borderland interactions to Cherokee political behavior and provides a nuanced investigation of the issue of Native American identity, bringing geographic relevance and distinctions to the topic.

Review Quotes

"Aptly illustrates how Cherokee localism and regionalism changed over time and place and critically reveals the problematic nature of ahistorical or static reconstructions of Cherokee people."--Journal of American History


"Boulware has secured a place among the leading lights of what might be called the New Southeastern Indian History. . . . A complex, layered portrait of Cherokee identities that changed with the challenges that faced the people."--American Historical Review


"Boulware's tour de force richly details the developing interaction of the Cherokee and British nations and of social and political events in the period. . . .This excellent study deserves to be on the bookshelf of any serious scholar interested in Cherokee and broader American Indian history."--Journal of Southern History


"Investigat[es] the interplay of the Cherokee, other Native Americans, and European imperial powers as they all struggled for control and influence in the mountain South."--Southern Historian


"Uses ethnohistorical methodology to make a strong case for the importance of local, particularly village and regional, identities in American Indian history during the colonial era."--North Carolina Historical Review


"Will contribute much to the ongoing scholarship of Cherokee identity."--South Carolina Historical Magazine

About the Author

Tyler Boulware is assistant professor of history at West Virginia University.