Barbara Hildebrand Longknife (1828-1903): Southeastern Indian Diaspora in the Age of American Empire

FAIN: FT-229217-15

Rosemarie Stremlau
University of North Carolina, Pembroke (Pembroke, NC 28372-8699)

Summer research and writing on Native American Studies and U.S. and Women's History.

Barbara Hildebrand Longknife was an ordinary nineteenth-century Cherokee woman who lived an extraordinary life. As a girl, she survived removal on the Trail of Tears. As a young woman, she went to California with a hope to find gold and return to Indian Territory as a woman of means. Instead, she worked marginal jobs until she left her abusive husband and traveled to Hawaii as a laborer. Throughout her life, Longknife wanted to go home. She never did. Instead, she wrote letters to her family. Some of these letters survive to provide an alternative perspective to those of the people who gained wealth and had power in the American West and Hawaii. Longknife's life was a bridge connecting the Atlantic World and the Pacific World, and my telling of her story will transcend the narrowly focused discussions of gender, labor, and culture in Southeastern American Indian history and connect them to the larger literature on American expansion and the many complex indigenous experiences of it.

Media Coverage

The Last Generation and the First Generation: Cherokee Children in Post-Removal Indian Territory (Media Coverage)
Author(s): Will Chavez
Date: 5/24/2016
Abstract: This talk is a product of some of the research I did using the NEH grant.
URL: http://www.cherokeephoenix.org/Article/index/10301

Associated Products

"Witnessing the West: Barbara Hildebrand Longknife and the California Gold Rush" (Book Section)
Title: "Witnessing the West: Barbara Hildebrand Longknife and the California Gold Rush"
Author: Rose Stremlau
Editor: Greg O'Brien and Tim Garrison
Abstract: This essay, based on the research funded by this grant, will appear in the edited collection The Native South: New Histories and Enduring Legacies, which is being edited by Greg O’Brien and Tim Garrison and will be published this fall.
Year: 2016
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Book Title: The Native South: New Histories and Enduring Legacies

"Barbara Hildebrand Longknife: A Cherokee Life in the Age of American Empire" (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: "Barbara Hildebrand Longknife: A Cherokee Life in the Age of American Empire"
Author: Rose Stremlau
Abstract: This paper summarized my research about a woman named Barbara Hildebrand Longknife, a survivor of Removal, participant in the California gold rush, and migrant to Hawaii – all the while sending letters home and leaving a surprisingly rich documentary trail that Stremlau is following from the edge of the Atlantic World, through the West, and into the Pacific.
Date: 04/07/2016
Conference Name: Southeast Indian Studies Conference

“The Last Generation and the First Generation: Cherokee Children in Post-Removal Indian Territory” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “The Last Generation and the First Generation: Cherokee Children in Post-Removal Indian Territory”
Author: Rose Stremlau
Abstract: This paper focused on the specific experiences of Cherokee people in the 1840s in the aftermath of removal and is based on some of the research funded by this grant.
Date: 04/23/2016
Primary URL: https://gilcrease.org/cherokeesymposium/
Conference Name: From Removal to Rebirth: The Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory Symposium

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