ABSTRACT
Their history has been an eventful one. For two hundred years a contest invo lv ing their very existence as a people has been maintained against the unscrupulous rapacity of Anglo-Saxon civilization. B y de grees they were driven from their ancestral domain to an unknown and inhospitable region. The country of their fathers was peculiarly dear to them. I t embraced the head springs of many of the most important streams of the country. From the summit of their own B lue E idge t h e y could watch the t iny rivulets on either side of them dashing and bounding over their rocky beds in their eagerness to join and swell the ever increasing vo lume of waters roll ing toward the Atlant ic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico : the Tennessee and the Cumberland, the Kanawha an$ the K e n t u c k y , the Peedee and the Santee, the Savannah and the Altamaha, the Chattahoochee and the Alabama, all found their begin nings within the Cherokee domain. The bracing and invigorating atmos phere of their mountains was wafted to the val leys and low lands of their more distant borders, tempering the heat and destroying the ma laria. Much of their country was a succession of grand mountains, clothed witb dense forests) of beautiful but narrow val leys , and exten sive well watered plains. E v e r y nook and corner of this vast territory was endeared to them by some incident of hunter, warrior, or domestic life. Over these hil ls and through the recesses of the dark forests the Cherokee hunter had from time immemorial pursued the deer, elk, and buffalo. Through and over tbem he had passed on his long and venge ful journeys against the hated Iroquois and Shawnee.
