Torchlights to the Cherokees

by Robert Sparks Walker

Once nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, Walker's work remains (as noted in the New York Times Book Review, February 7, 1932) "an interesting and valuable addition not only to the local history of Tennessee and Georgia, but also the history of the American Indian and his relations with white civilization and government."

339 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1931

Reviews

[Estelle Ford-Williamson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an important book, reissued in 1993 after its original publication in 1931. You may be lucky enough to find a copy from a book reseller--if you search now. Anyone wanting to know about the Cherokee Indians before their removal from north Georgia, SE Tennessee and north Alabama will do well to read "Torchlight to the Cherokees.” And you can visit the site of the Brainerd Mission described, and the Cherokee farm nearby. Robert Sparks Walker, a Chattanooga, TN naturalist and publisher whose family occupied a two-story cabin and adjacent farmlands built by Cherokee resident Spring Frog, wrote this book as well as “As the Indians Left It,” largely as testimonials to the talented Native Americans who hunted, farmed, and traded and produced goods in the area. Walker’s/Spring Frog’s home was wisely preserved first as the Elise Chapin Wildlife Sanctuary (what it was called when I grew up nearby), and later as Audubon Acres. Readers of this book, which is drawn from the accounts of New England Protestant missionaries who created the impactful Brainerd Mission to help the Cherokees adapt to the ways of the white man, also have the opportunity to visit the original home and orchards that Walker created to demonstrate the agricultural holdings of the Native Americans residing in the area before the Trail of Tears. The book details the personal sacrifices not only of the Indians, but of the missionaries, several of whom were incarcerated by Georgia military authorities, and some of whom left with the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears. There are gruesome details of the Indians’ lives even before the removal. Walker does not hold back. This is must reading for anyone wanting to understand the lives of those lost to this part of the country because of the tragic removal.

[Benjamin Rupe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendous book based mostly in primary sources of the various Christian missions to the Cherokee nation before they were driven from their land.

A wonderful witness that there is no significant difference between red man and white man, but an eternal difference between the old man and the new one.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty good history if you're interested in the Cyrus Kingsbury, the founding and works of the Brainerd Mission. There is a lot of history about the missionaries that were there and the work done at the one of the first schools for Cherokees in the area.