Sand Hill Band of Keetoowah-Cherokee Migrations

 

It was in a climate of hostile, overt racial and religious intolerance in the Colony, later known as the Commonwealth of Virginia that precipitated the first of many migrations of the Keetoowah-Cherokee from Virginia to New Jersey from 1711 to the present. Source documentation listed below:

The Cherokee Nation of Indians by Charles C. Royce, 1975, published by Smithsonian Institution Press.

 

1.      page 9  “ The Delaware have a tradition…that they came originally from the  west, and found a tribe who’s identity would seem to be confirmed as early Cherokee occupancy of Ohio.”

2.     page 10  “The Virginians were the first to be brought in contact with the Cherokee is further evidenced by the fact that in 1690 an Indian trader from that colony, bearing the name of Daugherty, had taken up his residence among them.”

3.     page 11  “On various early maps of North America, and particularly those of  De  L’ Isle, between the years of 1700 and 1712, will be found indicated upon the extreme headwaters of the Holston (Powell) and Clinch Rivers [in Virginia], “gros villages des Cheraqui”.  These villages correspond in location with the great nation alluded to in the narrative of Sir William Berkeley’s expedition.”

4.     page 12  “The old colonial records of South Carolina also contain mention in the following year (1713) of the fact that Peter St. Julien was arraigned on the charge of holding two Cherokee women in slavery. [Logan’s South Carolina, Vol. I, p. 182]”

5.     pages 260-262 The following Treaties with Virginia certainly had a major impact on the decision of Keetoowah-Cherokee to migrate to New Jersey and elsewhere…

·     Treaty of Oct. 14, 1768 with J. Stuart, British Supt., Indian Affairs

·     Treaty of Oct. 18, 1770, at Lochaber, South Carolina

·     Treaty of 1772 with Governor of Virginia

·     Treaty of March 17, 1775, with Richard Henderson, et al.

·     Treaty of July 20, 1777, with Virginia and North Carolina

 

Every Treaty listed above ceded land in the old Cherokee Nation of Virginia to the Colonists. These treaties contributed to the eventual migrations of the Cherokee population to other areas. Cherokees who remained in what is now known as the Commonwealth of Virginia had no legal status. The Commonwealth only recognized white or colored races and therefore, Indians were a non-entity.  From the year 1924 to 1984, the Bureau of Vital Statistics illegally classified American Indians in Virginia as “Colored” and “Negro”.  This included both reservation and non-reservation Indians. 

 

Walter Ashby Plecker was the first registrar of the State of Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics (1912-1946). A proponent of eugenics and the author of the Virginia Racial Integrity Act, Plecker issued birth, death, and marriage certificates and routinely changed the race of applicants from “Indian” to “Negro.”  Armed with the power of the State and a list of American Indian surnames, Plecker aimed to reclassify every Indian in the Commonwealth as Negro. Source: Library of Virginia.

 

6.     page 234-235  “Delaware [Raritan-Lenape] entered into an agreement with Cherokee [Keetoowah-Cherokee] which was ratified by the President on the 11th of April, 1867.  (The agreement was that the Delaware became citizens of the Cherokee Nation.) Following the Delaware, the Munsee [Minsi] or Christian Indians, a small fragmentary band who under the Treaty of July 16, 1859, had become assimilated with the Cherokee.”

 

7.      page 284 “ Delaware settled in and became part of the Cherokee Nation with full citizenship under the provisions of the fifteenth article of the Treaty of July 19, 1866 with the United States.”

 

8.     Following the Treaties of 1775 and 1777 with Virginia and upon the conclusion of The Revolutionary War, many more Cherokee migrated to New Jersey to join their brethren.

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