Henry Starr was one of the most notorious criminals of the Old West, famed far and wide for robbing two banks in the same town at the same time—a feat even the Dalton Gang couldn’t pull off. Still, Henry Starr was a reluctant outlaw.An honest, hardworking seventeen-year-old Cherokee cowboy with a steady job and a steady girl, he was framed and arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. When he was falsely accused and convicted a second time, Starr figured that since he was branded a cr...

They named him Striker, because the day he was born he was saidto have tried to hit the midwife. It’s a name the young Cherokeewould live up to throughout his early years, carrying with him theanger of watching his parents and best friend die on the Trail ofTears. Landing at Fort Gibson an orphan, Striker spends the nextfew years with other Cherokee children earning an education, anddeveloping a burning desire to kill white men. This craving builds...

A Cherokee Encyclopedia is a quick reference guide for many of the people, places, and things connected to the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees, as well as for the other officially recognized Cherokee groups, the Cherokee Nation and the Eastern Band of Cherokees.From A Cherokee EncyclopediaCrowe, AmandaAmanda Crowe was born in 1928 in the Qualla Cherokee community in North Carolina. She was drawing and carving at the age of 4 and selling her work a...

The Cherokee Nation is one of the largest and most important of all the American Indian tribes. The first history of the Cherokees to appear in over four decades, this is also the first to be endorsed by the tribe and the first to be written by a Cherokee.Robert Conley begins his survey with Cherokee origin myths and legends. He then explores their relations with neighboring Indian groups and European missionaries and settlers. He traces their forced migrations west, relates their ...

Gaming and chiefing. Imposters and freedmen. Distinguished novelist Robert J. Conley examines some of the most interesting facets of the Cherokee world. In 26 essays laced with humor, understatement, even open sarcasm, this popular writer takes on politics, culture, his people’s history, and what it means to be Cherokee.Readers who think they know Conley will find an abundance of surprises in these pages. He reveals historical information not widely known or written about, such as ...

A modern medicine man portrayed through the words of the people he has helpedRobert J. Conley did not set out to chronicle the life of Cherokee medicine man John Little Bear. Instead, the medicine man came to him. Little Bear asked Conley to write down his story, to reveal to the world “what Indian medicine is really about.” For Little Bear, as for the Cherokee ancestors who brought their traditions over the Trail of Tears to Indian Territory, the medicine is about helping...

For many years Oliver Colfax worked as a hired killer. But after he developed a friendship with one of his targets, Colfax lost heart in that line of work and quit. A few odd jobs keep body and soul together, but until Colfax decides what to do with the rest of his life, he’s content sitting in his St. Louis hotel room and drinking fine whiskey.When a rancher from Colorado asks him to deal with some cattle rustlers, Colfax declines, thinking it is just one more case of a big landow...

When recent Harvard graduate George Tanner returns home to Tahlequah in the Cherokee nation, he finds the town bustling and accommodations scarce. The council is in session and everyone is in town.Captain Go-Ahead Rider, the district sheriff, offers Tanner immediate employment as a deputy. Rider senses trouble as some key issues come up for vote before the Council. The big issue—and the most controversial one—is whether the railroad should be allowed to come into town.Mix H...

"Robert Conley spins a fast-action tall tale salted with Western humor."—Elmer Kelton, author of The Time It Never RainedHalf Cherokee and Civil War veteran Captain Skylar Garret returns to the home of Phillip Garret his white father, seeking an inheritance that he believes to have belonged to his late mother. Intertwined now into the lives of his three half brothers—one a vocal atheist, one an aspiring minister, and the other a black slave boy who Phillip Garret doesn't claim—Skyl...

“So what does it mean to be a Cherokee?” asks Cherokee author Robert J. Conley at the start of this delightful collection of his writings. Throughout his prolific career, Conley used his art to explore Cherokee identity and experience. With his passing in 2014, Native American literature—and American literature in general—lost a major voice. Fortunately, this posthumous publication, edited by the author’s wife, Evelyn L. Conley*,* offers readers the opportunity to appreciate anew the blend...

Set against the tragic events of the Cherokees' removal from their traditional lands in North Carolina to Indian Territory between 1835-1838, Mountain Windsong is a love story that brings to life the suffering and endurance of the Cherokee people. It is the moving tale of Waguli (Whippoorwill") and Oconeechee, a young Cherokee man and woman separated by the Trail of Tears. Just as they are about to be married, Waguli is captured be federal soldiers and, along with thousands of oth...

Adopted into the Cherokee tribe as a teenager, William Holland Thomas (1805–1893), known to the Cherokees as Wil Usdi (Little Will), went on to have a distinguished career as lawyer, politician, and soldier. He spent the last decades of his life in a mental hospital, where the pioneering ethnographer James Mooney interviewed him extensively about Cherokee lifeways. The true story of Wil Usdi’s life forms the basis for this historical novella, the final published work of fiction by the late...