In my nearly forty years as a Cherokee and an American, my eyes have seen much. I witnessed much brutality in the early years of the American frontier, as constant raids raged between the American Armies and Cherokees. I have had the benefit of an education comparable to that of my white counterparts in Washington, yet I have still kept a firm grasp on my native roots and heritage. In the long memory of my tribe, there has been pestilence, famine, oppression, loss of land, and war all due to the emergence of settlers and colonies. While these men and their ways have again and again mistreated our people, we have maintained a diplomatic stance and made many compromises with the peoples who brought such strife. President Jackson has typified us as savages and uncivilized, it is unfortunate that such a misjudgment of our society has occurred. As I have lived and experienced both worlds, that of the tribes and that of cities and towns, I am a witness that we are not savages. It is a simple difficulty of perspective. As a culture based heavily on tradition and tribal life, Americans view us as a people without culture or civilization. This assumption is easy to make for outsiders,

than wandering in the east, for we have raised to the American challenge. We have tried to transform our culture into the civilization Americans desire us to reflect; we have developed "a dining hall and kitchen, a laundry, a lumberyard, a meat house, a grist mill, a sawmill, and smiths' and carpenters' shops" (59). Not only have we strengthened our civilization by raising livestock, but we have also begun "raising corn, wheat, oats, potatoes, tobacco, indigo, and cotton" (59) to help build a stronger society. The growth of our civilization has been very rapid, and each day we work to improve our way of life so that we will not have to leave our homes. One of the largest steps in our transformation from tribe to society has been the development of "Cherokee mechanics, Cherokee merchants, [and] Cherokee plantation owners who [keep] slaves to work in the cotton fields" (60). I personally am a plantation owner, and I own quite a few of my own slaves.

As my Cherokee nation has grown, we have begun to feel that our improvements are not enough to satisfy the Americans, and this feeling of disappointment motivated us to grow larger and stronger. The American disapproval and disrespect of our transformed civilization and culture encouraged my people and I even more. The American government wants us to model their civilizations, yet the closer we come the more forceful they are in their attempt to relocate us west of the Mississippi. Jackson told Congress that moving us west would help us from our "wandering way of life" (121); we were doing much more

but it is the way we talk, hunt, dress, act, and socialize that makes our very society. The formation of our Cherokee Nation within the United

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1321
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)