Cherokees of the Smoky Mountains: A Little Band that has stood against the White Tide for Three Hundred Years

Written by Horace Kephart and Janice Kephart

Narrated by Janice Kephart

The text relates the powerful and dramatic history of Smoky Mountain Cherokees, who for 40,000 years thrived in the difficult terrain of the Great Smoky Mountains and its surrounding regions areas of what is now Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. With a constitution and organized government, a written language and no economic debt, the Cherokees sought to live in relative peace. However, President Jackson and the state of Georgia thought differently, forcing the Cherokees and their devoted Chief John Ross to leave their homeland and be removed to Oklahoma in the Trail of Tears (1837-1839). Much political tension was exacerbated by the fact that a key Supreme Court ruling by Chief Justice John Marshall made clear that Georgian land grabbing of Cherokee lands was illegal. This story, and how one Cherokee Chief was sacrificed to retain a small piece of Cherokee land in the southwest corner of North Carolina, known today as Qualla Boundary, is told with passion, empathy and historical accuracy.

Horace Kephart is also the author of Our Southern Highlanders, Camping and Woodcraft and Smoky Mountain Magic, and the creator of the Kephart knife. Mount Kephart, a 6,217 foot peak just northwest of Qualla Boundary, was chosen by Kephart and designated in his lifetime. He was instrumental in the founding of the Great Smoky National Park. 

This version of Cherokees of the Smoky Mountains was revised by Kephart's great granddaughter, Janice Kephart, a spoken word artist, narrator, and US government subject matter expert, having served as a 9/11 Commission counsel. Janice added context for some commentary within the text but left the writing mostly as is, added historical photographs from the Hunter Library Horace Kephart Archive at Western Carolina University and other libraries, and added a new Foreword and Introduction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trip Poetry
• Release date: Mar 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798368920061

Reviews for Cherokees of the Smoky Mountains

[Keivu G. Knox · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When listening to an audiobook version of a story, it is important to have not only content that is interesting but also a narrator that is engaging. In the case of Cherokees of the Smoky Mountains: A Little Band that has Stood Against the White Tide for Three Hundred Years, both boxes are checked rather effectively, which leads to an enjoyable listening experience.

While the original book was written in the early 1900s by Horace Kephart, his great granddaughter Janice Kephart, who is an expository writer and spoken word artist, provides the narration of the audiobook, adding modernization of text. She supplies an important touch to the audiobook by including a forward and introduction that she wrote, which provides a proper foundation to the audiobook's subject matter. This information within those first two chapters helps to give context and credibility to the entire body of work. Within the book's 82 minutes of running time, the experience of the Appalachian Cherokees is extensively chronicled. Their desire to live a thriving existence is shattered as the United States government forces them to migrate to the great plains, resulting in the " historical "Trail of Tears" that caused a significant portion of the Cherokee population to lose their life. These factual events from the elder Kephart are communicated in such a way by Janice, that the listener is not only able to envision what happened, but to empathize with those affected. Kephart's emotional delivery helps to paint a picture of hope, loss, frustration, and resiliency.

If you are familiar with Janice Kephart's prior artistic piece from 2018 entitled Cherokee Voices: A Spoken Soundtrack By The Trails of Tears Women, you will enjoy this latest project. Ironically, Kephart collaborated with the same producer of that project to help deliver a crisp and clean audio sound for this project. Everyone would definitely benefit from hearing this history!

The history of the Cherokee population deserves to be told, and we should be grateful to the Kephart family for their research, resources and sacrifice in bringing their story to print, to life and to our ears.

[Nathan Allen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great book. Listened to it while traveling through the Smoky mtns