Sovereignty, Christianity, and the Book in the Cherokee Diaspora, 1828-1861

FAIN: FT-286301-22

Sonia Hazard
Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL 32306-0001)

Archival research supporting a book on Cherokee Nation religious publications in the 19th century.

The proposed book examines the Cherokee Nation’s print culture in the midst of US imperial expansion and forced migration. Between 1828 and 1861, Cherokees printed in prodigious numbers – over three million pages in just the first five years after establishing their press. Yet in existing scholarship, little focus has been given to the Protestant pamphlets (tracts, hymnbooks, and parts of the Bible) that always constituted the majority of imprints. Mobilizing textual and material methods, my book seeks to align religious printing alongside other emergent forms of Cherokee social and political action, and argues that these publications enacted sovereignty in a Christian key. Primarily a work of American religious history, the project will speak to several humanistic fields including history, literature, the history of the book, and Native American and Indigenous studies. It also aims to advance civic education by contributing to our knowledge of Indigenous intellectual contributions.