ABSTRACT
In 1775, a delegation of Cherokee headmen turned over to Richard Henderson their claim to an enormous tract of land, virtually all of what is now central and western Kentucky. The motives that underlay the pattern in Cherokee treaty-making have been difficult for subsequent observers to comprehend. Modern scholars have generally assumed that Indian diplomats agreed to part with a piece of land only when the preponderance of British military power left them with no alternative. Cherokees believed that the power to take life was a dangerous but also a sacred power peculiar to men, a balance against the power of women to create life. The gendered alignment of these forces was as old as the world itself. War-making was the most potent ritual by which Cherokee men gave meaning to their masculinity, but ideally war was not a frequent occurrence. Thus hunting, the taking of animal life, came to have inordinate significance.
