The Cherokees: A Population History

by Russell Thornton

The A Population History is the first full-length demographic study of an American Indian group from the protohistorical period to the present. Thornton shows the effects of disease, warfare, genocide, miscegenation, removal and relocation, and destruction of traditional lifeways on the Cherokees. He discusses their mysterious origins, their first contact with Europeans (prob-ably in 1540), and their fluctuation in population during the eighteenth century, when the Old World brought them smallpox. The toll taken by massive relocations in the following century, most notably the removal of the Cherokees from the Southeast to In-dian Territory, and by warfare, predating the American Revolution and including the Civil War, also enters into Thornton's calculations. He goes on to measure the resurgence of the Cherokees in the twentieth century, focusing on such population centers as North Carolina, Oklahoma, and California.

Genres: Nonfiction

239 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1990

About the author

Russell Thornton is a Canadian poet. His book House Built of Rain was a shortlisted nominee for the 2004 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the 2004 ReLit Award.

Reviews

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very thorough, very scientific approach to ascertaining the population levels of the Cherokee people from historic to modern times. Unfortunately the scope is very narrow, not that that's atypical for an anthropological study. The book only covers enough history to explain how there came to be so many different groups of Cherokees beginning in the 19th century. He cross-indexes population points reconstructed from the historical record with major events or important periods of change in Cherokee history. As a student of Cherokee history, this is nice (and certainly a substantial contribution to the complete understanding of the Cherokee) but as a book reader, it's both hard going and a bit thin. It would have been nice if this was coupled with a study in changing subsistence patterns that was occurring as well.

He has an interesting chapter about exactly who is a Cherokee in current times. It's a more complicated issue than it sounds like, and he has an interesting insight into why everyone seems to think they have a Cherokee grandmother.

This is a work by an anthropologist, and it is basically for anthropologists and historians. If you don't have any anthropological background, or are looking for a general history of the Cherokee people, this will be even harder going than it is for those of us with that education. Still, it's worth checking out as it does add to the corpus of knowledge of the Cherokee people.