Remembering Cherokee Removal in Civil RightsEra Georgia

Andrew Denson

Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 4, Winter 2008, pp. 85-101 (Article)

Published by The University of North Carolina Press

DOI: 10.1353/scu.0.0031

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/scu/summary/v014/14.4.denson.html

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Essay
....................

Remembering Cherokee Removal

in Civil RightsEra Georgia
by Andrew Denson

When the state of Georgia rebuilt New Echota, it sanctified the site. It not only marked the location of the old
Cherokee capital, but set it apart in the landscape, placing it outside of everyday life and protecting it as a location
suited for contemplation, in part to derive a clear moral message from the events that took place there. The New
Echota marker, erected in 1931 at the approximate site of the old capital, courtesy of the author.

85

herokee Removal is the most famous episode of the Souths

Native American history. It is also an event that southerners
have commemorated quite extensively. Tribal museums in North
Carolina and Oklahoma, as well as parks and historic sites in at
least five other states, tell the story of the Trail of Tears. Documentary films, multiple novels, a host of childrens books, and at least one TV
movie (starring Johnny Cash, no less) have also recounted the Cherokees forced
migration. A nationally designated trail maps the tribes general route, and the
annual Trail of Tears Motorcycle Ride recalls the journey. No other Indian event,
except perhaps the Battle of the Little Big Horn, has received so much attention
in Americas culture of memory.
Historical memory is a major concern for people who study the South. Monuments, commemorations, and historical myths form a popular and important
focus of southern cultural studies. Virtually none of this work, however, includes
Native American topics. The recently published Myth, Manners, and Memory volume
of the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, for example, contains no entries specific
to Native Americans. Concerned more with Paul Bear Bryant than Cherokee
leader Drowning Bear, it hardly mentions Indian people. Questions of race are at
the center of the scholarship on southern memory, since much of it deals with the
Civil War, slavery, and segregation; however, the literature almost always defines
race in terms of black and white. Examining Trail of Tears commemoration, then,
offers an opportunity to expand understandings of southern memory.1
Gordon County, in northwest Georgia, is a good place to start. In the early
1950s white residents began work to rebuild New Echota, the town that had served
as the Cherokees national capital in the 1820s and 1830s, just prior to the Trail of
Tears. Local business leaders launched the effort, identifying a section of farmland
once occupied by the town, raising money to purchase it, and then petitioning
the state government to make it a historic site and recreation area. The Georgia
Historical Commission (GHC), a then newly formed state agency, managed the
project. Its directors viewed the site as a unique place with the potential to draw a
great many visitors, and as work proceeded, New Echota became one of the GHCs
most important and highly publicized development efforts. By the early 1960s,
the Commission had reconstructed a portion of the village and was planning a
museum. The state opened the site to the public in May 1962, dedicating it in a
grand ceremony involving Georgias governor, other high officials, and Cherokee
representatives from North Carolina and Oklahoma.
When the state of Georgia rebuilt New Echota, it sanctified the site. It not only
marked the location of the old Cherokee capital, but set it apart in the landscape,
placing it outside of everyday life and protecting it as a location suited for contemplation. Sanctifying a historic site almost always involves an effort to derive
some kind of clear moral message from the events that have taken place there.
86 sout hern cultures, Winter 2008 : Andrew Denson

New Echota was the scene of an intense drama in which an Indian nation took upon itself all the monumental
responsibilities of modern civilization, created for itself a written language, established a national newspaper,
evolved a code of written laws, and created a supreme court to administer these laws, said Georgia governor
Ernest Vandiver at the opening ceremony. Sequoyah, inventor of the Cherokee alphabet (depicted on tablet),
courtesy of the Collections of the Library of Congress.

Preserved battlefields, for example, usually emphasize the virtue of sacrifice for
the nation. At New Echota in the early 1960s, that interpretive effort focused on
the story of Cherokee Removal, and the moral message was atonement. As Governor
Ernest Vandiver explained at the opening, the restoration of the town represented
white Georgians apology for Removal, an apology for the unbridled avarice of
Remembering Cherokee Removal 87

Cherokee Removal is the most famous episode of the Souths Native American history, and southerners have
commemorated it extensively. Tribal museums in North Carolina and Oklahoma, as well as parks and historic
sites in at least five other states, tell the story of the Trail of Tears. Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, courtesy
of the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

our ancestors that had driven the Cherokees from their homeland. The explicit
moral purpose of the site was to encourage visitors to guard against similar acts in
the present and future. As Secretary of State Ben Fortson remarked, New Echota
will make us better Americans, for Americans use their mistakes as stepping
stones for something more worthwhile. In supporting that proposition, the GHC
just prior to the dedication sponsored a resolution in the Georgia legislature repealing anti-Indian laws from the late 1820s and early 1830s. Murray County representative Charles Pannell introduced the bill with a dramatic speech comparing
the Georgian land grab to communist Chinas treatment of Tibet. State officials
presented the act, which had passed unanimously, to Cherokee tribal leaders at
the opening of New Echota. In short, Georgia offered the site not only as a place
to recall a unique part of the states history but as a monument bearing witness to
and apologizing for a past act of oppression.2
The rebuilding of New Echota is interesting for several reasons. The literature
on historical memory suggests that until very recently official commemoration (that
is, commemoration by governments and community elites) excluded the history
of non-white racial groups and oppressed peoples. Historians have amply demonstrated this phenomenon with regard to African Americans in the South. While
African American communities maintained their own observances and memory
rituals, white guardians of tradition denied them public space. Commemorating
Cherokee history, however, seems to have been permissible, even when it encouraged negative depictions of southern whites. New Echota recalled a crime, a theft
fueled by racial hatred. The GHC acknowledged that history throughout the sites
88 sout hern cultures, Winter 2008 : Andrew Denson

At New Echota in the early 1960s, the interpretive effort focused on the story of Cherokee Removal, and the moral
message was atonement. As Governor Ernest Vandiver explained at the opening, the restoration of the town
represented white Georgians apology for Removal, an apology for the unbridled avarice of our ancestors that
had driven the Cherokees from their homeland. Nineteenth-century lithograph depicting U.S. treatment of the
Cherokee Nation, courtesy of the Collections of the Library of Congress.

development and dedication. Indeed, recognizing the crime of Removal provided

the dedications main theme. Yet this acceptance of historic guilt did not inspire
controversy or opposition among white Georgians.3
Moreover, the rebuilding of New Echota coincided with the Civil Rights Movement. The same state officials expressing regret to the Cherokees were working to
defend segregation against black activists. Work on New Echota had begun during the years of Governor Herman Talmadges ardently segregationist administration and continued with crucial support from his successor, the only slightly less
ardent Marvin Griffin. Georgia dedicated New Echota while elsewhere in the state
Civil Rights activists fought the Albany campaign, maintained a bus boycott in
Macon, and worked for desegregation of public facilities in Atlanta. In fact, during the very session in which the state legislature repealed the nineteenth-century
anti-Indian laws, students from Atlantas black universities picketed outside of the
statehouse. Several days before, police had ejected students from the building for
attempting to desegregate the galleries. Charles Pannell decried the racist laws of
the past in a Jim Crow capitol, while outside black activists condemned the racist
laws of the present.4
Remembering Cherokee Removal 89

 Historian Fitzhugh Brundage writes of historical memory as providing a genealogy of social identity.5 Why, then, was the story of Cherokee dispossession necessary to some white southerners understanding of themselves during this period?
Why was it acceptable in the era of the Civil Rights Movement to commemorate
events that cast southern ancestors and institutions in such a negative light? Did
whites really want to apologize?
New Echota served as the capital of the Cherokee Nation for only a short time,
and, in appearance at least, it was never an especially grand place. The tribe maintained several modest public buildings, the most famous being the office of the
Cherokee Phoenix, the bilingual national newspaper. A handful of homes and businesses surrounded the village center, and at a slight remove minister Samuel Worcester kept a house and missionary station. During sessions of the National Council, a great many Cherokees stayed temporarily at New Echota, but only a small
number lived there year-round. As a symbol, however, New Echota had great
significance. It represented the Cherokees effort to forge an Indian republic, a
new capital for a nation reborn. It broadcast the message that the Cherokees were
a civilized tribe, an Indian people who had embraced a Euro-American concept
of progress. New Echota also became a key location in the struggle over Removal,
as both the capital during key stages of resistance and the place that gave its name
to the 1835 Removal treaty.6
After the Trail of Tears, the town disappeared. The buildings decayed or were
dismantled for their materials, and white Georgians took the land to plow and
plant. Of the original structures, only a section of the Worcester house survived
into the twentieth century, and fire and additional construction altered even this
remnant.7 Ninety years later, though, residents of Gordon County began discussing a New Echota commemoration, and in 1931 they placed a monument at the
towns approximate location. The Depression and World War II prevented further
work, but in the early 1950s the chamber of commerce in Calhoun, the county seat,
renewed efforts to develop the site. The chamber raised money and sponsored
research by Atlanta-based historian Henry Malone to pinpoint the location of
the village. Once the GHC had agreed to participate, the Chamber of Commerce
began purchasing land. The historical commission, for its part, financed an archeological survey and further research by Malone and ethnohistorian Clemens
de Baillou.8
The original agreement with the GHC stated that local business leaders would
manage the sites development, with the Commission merely providing help in
technical and research matters. Work on the project, however, quickly outstripped
Calhouns funds, while the complexity of the restoration led the GHC to become
far more deeply involved than its members had originally intended. After several years, the state agency assumed formal direction of the site, although local
business and civic leaders continued to participate. By early 1962, the GHC had
90 sout hern cultures, Winter 2008 : Andrew Denson

New Echota served as the capital of the Cherokee Nation for only a short time. The tribe maintained several
modest public buildings, the most famous being the office of the Cherokee Phoenix, its bilingual national
newspaper (above). A handful of homes and businesses surrounded the village center, and at a slight remove
minister Samuel Worcester kept a house and missionary station (below). Photographs courtesy of the author.

restored the Worcester house and recreated two Cherokee public buildings: a
courthouse and the printing office of the Phoenix. The Commission had planned a
reconstruction of the Cherokee council house; however, the researchers had failed
to find adequate documentation of the original buildings shape and appearance
and ended up debating it instead of rebuilding it. The GHC relocated one other
Cherokee structure to the site, a tavern once run by the Vann Family. The Commission decided to move the building when the creation of the Lake Lanier reservoir threatened it with inundation.9
The dedication ceremony, along with press coverage of the site, emphasized
two elements of Cherokee history: the civilized tribe image and the story of
Cherokee Removal. New Echota, Governor Vandivers address explained, was
the scene of an intense drama in which an Indian nation took upon itself all the
monumental responsibilities of modern civilization, created for itself a written
language, established a national newspaper, evolved a code of written laws, and
created a supreme court to administer these laws. With the reconstruction of the
town, another speaker remarked, modern visitors could experience the panorama
of Cherokee achievement. Many journalists emphasized the disparity between
the historic sites picture of Cherokee life and pop culture images of Indians. The
Rome News-Tribune suggested that a visitor coming to New Echota expecting an
Indian wigwam village with a few painted and synthetic savages lurking about
with bows and arrows is in for a big disappointment.10
The dedication presented Removal, meanwhile, as an outrageous assault upon
the tribe. The heartless act of removal had destroyed the Cherokees experiment
in civilization and robbed the state of people who might otherwise have been
useful and productive neighbors. To push the Cherokees out, Georgias government passed laws harshly restrictive of the inalienable rights of the Cherokees,
laws that if used in the present would cause such gross injustice as to shock the
consciences of all who believe in equality under the law. Removal was the ultimate in race hatred, one journalist remarked, an act for which Georgians must
apologize.11
Apologies, however, had never been foremost in the minds of those who
launched the project. Tourism, rather, was the main impetus behind reconstructing New Echota. The town site was very near Highway 41, a major artery running
across the state, and in later years the path of Interstate 75 would pass almost
directly beside the site. Automobile tourism already was expanding quite rapidly
in the 1950s and with it historical tourism. This period also was a boom time for
heritage activities of all sorts, diverse pursuits designed to allow ordinary people
to make intellectual and emotional connections with the past. Developing New
Echota, therefore, offered people in Gordon County a way to use a unique element
of their local past to capture some of the dollars traveling back and forth between
Chattanooga and Atlanta.12
92 sout hern cultures, Winter 2008 : Andrew Denson

 In addition, the business people who initiated the rebuilding effort did so with
two existing tourist centers very much in mind. First, they knew that businesses
in western North Carolina earned money from motorists interested in Indians.
The reservation of the Eastern Band of Cherokees in western North Carolina had
become a popular stop for tourists beginning in the 1930s with the development of
the Great Smoky Mountains National Park adjacent to the tribes land. Visitors to
the park sought out Native American sites and souvenirs as they passed through
Cherokee country, and both band members and local non-Indian business leaders
capitalized on this new economic opportunity. History became an important element of the Cherokee tourist attractions. In the early 1950s the popular outdoor
play Unto These Hills debuted, depicting tribal history from early European
contact through the Removal era. The 1950s also saw the development of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian and the building of the Oconaluftee Indian Village,
a recreation of an eighteenth-century Cherokee town. GHC personnel considered
some of the North Carolina attractions tacky, but at the very least the tourist stops
demonstrated the presence of a market for Native American places and Cherokee
history.13
Equally important, the planners behind New Echota well understood what
Colonial Williamsburg had done for Virginia. Williamsburg exerted a powerful
influence on the preservation and museum industries in the mid twentieth centurya period of rapid propagation of town and living history museums across
the country. It provided a model of success for any project that sought to preserve a village, city section, or collection of buildings. Promoters of New Echota
frequently referenced the Virginia attraction in correspondence, describing the
rebuilding of the old Cherokee capital as an Indian Williamsburg. The projects
main historical architect, Thomas Little, had worked at Williamsburg, and some
of the original plans called for a much more elaborate, Williamsburg-style development. There was talk of creating a living history museum, for instance, with
costumed interpreters, functioning workshops, and an outdoor theater for historical dramas.14
If tourism inspired the project, however, it does not explain why white Georgians were so willing to accept the negative image the Removal story gave their
forebears. Other historical commission projects during the same period drew
complaints from Georgians who felt that the GHC portrayed their ancestors in a
negative light. Some criticized the Commissions Civil War marker program, for
example, for being insufficient in its veneration of the Confederacy and of Georgias defenders in the war. The GHC, according to one frequently heard protest,
memorialized too many Union actions and Yankee victories. At one point in the
early 1950s, the governor even halted plans to erect markers tracing the Union armys march to the sea, an episode deemed too shameful to deserve commemoration. The few critics of New Echota, in contrast, complained that the state had
Remembering Cherokee Removal 93

By early 1962, the Georgia

Historical Commission
had restored the Worcester
house and recreated
two Cherokee public
buildings: a courthouse
(above) and the printing
office of the Phoenix. The
GHC relocated one other
Cherokee structure to the
site, a tavern (below) once
run by the Vann Family,
which the Commission
decided to move when
the creation of the
Lake Lanier reservoir
threatened it with
inundation. Photographs
courtesy of the author.

Many journalists emphasized the disparity between the historic sites picture of Cherokee life and such pop culture
images of Indians as those evoked by these children at the American Museum of Natural History. The Rome
News-Tribune suggested that a visitor coming to New Echota expecting an Indian wigwam village with a
few painted and synthetic savages lurking about with bows and arrows is in for a big disappointment. Image #:
291994, photographed by Thane L. Bierwert, American Museum of Natural History Library.

failed to put enough money into the project and that work proceeded too slowly.
They did not take issue with the commemorations subject or moral message.15
For most Georgians, Native American history might have been distant enough
to be unthreatening. Cherokees certainly lived in Georgia in the 1950s, as did many
people who could claim Cherokee ancestry, but there were no significant Native
American politics in the state at this time. Georgias Indian history, as far as many
whites were concerned, had ended in the Age of Jackson. While the Civil Rights
Movement ensured that modern southerners would struggle over the legacies of
slavery, the history of Indian dispossession must have seemed rather safe. White
Georgians could accept an old preCivil War role as villains and even apologize
for past sins. Most of the Cherokees who visited New Echota during and after its
opening would return to places beyond Georgias borders and outside of Georgias
politics. They would stay removed.
Additionally, white southern memory of the Civil War in some ways paralleled
Remembering Cherokee Removal 95

the story of Cherokee Removal and probably helped to make New Echota a satisfying site of commemoration. The story told at New Echota bore striking similarities to the myth of the Confederate Lost Cause in southern memory culture.
The GHC portrayed the Cherokees as an honorable, patriotic people overrun by
greedy outsiders. Emphasizing the civilized tribe image, the commemoration
suggested they were model residents of the Old South. They defended their homeland as best they could but were overwhelmed, much as Confederatesaccording
to the Lost Cause mythwere overpowered by sheer numbers and the industrial
might of the North. The old Cherokee republic, like the Old South, was now only
a sad memory. Although the people who rebuilt New Echota did not draw explicit
comparisons with the Confederacy, the war was much on the minds of commemorators at this time, as the Cherokee project coincided with the Civil War centennial
observances. In a memory culture filled with elegies, an elegy for the Cherokee
republic was not out of place.
This suggests a striking irony. As it emerged in the late nineteenth century, the
Lost Cause myth was part of a fundamentally racist vision of the South. Justifying
secession and denying slavery as the cause of the war, it helped to strengthen white
supremacy in the region after Reconstruction and into the twentieth century. In
the Civil Rights era, the Lost Cause may have gained new power, as white communities and institutions resisted desegregation. It would be remarkable, at the
very least, if such a memory helped to lead white southerners to apologize for their
ancestors culpability in the Trail of Tears.16
If a particular idea of the southern past encouraged white Georgians to commemorate Removal, so too did the political struggles of the 1950s and 60s. Press
coverage of the New Echota project suggested that part of what made the Cherokee capital interesting was the storys ready connection to contemporary Civil
Rights politics. When writing about New Echota, journalists frequently made
offhand or indirect references to the fight over segregation, observing, for example, that the Cherokee experience demonstrated that Georgias record of racial
tension extended far into the past. Or, as the Rome News-Tribune put it, Indians
had racial troubles, too. The Atlanta Constitution noted the hypocrisy of the General Assembly repealing anti-Indian statutes while black students picketed outside
of the capitol building. An Associated Press story, reprinted in local papers across
the state, described New Echota and the repeal resolution as a move to put Georgias racial house in order from early beginnings, while admitting that the action
came a little late.17 Although none of these items explicitly discussed the Civil
Rights Movement, they implied that observers thoughts could move easily from
the memory of Removal to contemporary Civil Rights battles. New Echota did
not force visitors to draw comparisons with the black freedom struggle, but it did
offer a setting that invited considerations of race and power as general subjects in
American historyand at a time when the Civil Rights Movement had become
96 sout hern cultures, Winter 2008 : Andrew Denson

The reservation of the Eastern Band of Cherokees in western North Carolina had become a popular stop for
tourists beginning in the 1930s with the development of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park adjacent
to the tribes land. Visitors to the park sought out Native American sites and souvenirs as they passed through
Cherokee country. Maude WelchMaking Cherokee Indian PotteryCherokee, N.C. in the Durwood
Barbour Collection of North Carolina Postcards (P077), North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

the most prominent public issue in the South. In a sense, New Echota was an ideal
memorial site for its place and time, since it offered an uncontroversial context in
which visitors could consider some of the most powerfully divisive questions of
the postwar era.
This is not to argue that New Echota encouraged sympathy toward black activism. The commemoration may have given whites an opportunity to act magnanimously about past racial injustices without forcing them to confront injustice
in their own time. Perhaps visitors concluded that these were simply different
casesthat Cherokees and African Americans were different peoples entirely and
that whites still should define the differences. The civilized tribe story, so prominent a feature of the memorial, could encourage that conclusion, with its implicit message that the Cherokees had been unique in their progress and achievements. Apologizing to the Cherokees, moreover, served to demonstrate that white
leaders possessed moral authority at a time when black activists were challenging
the legitimacy of southern governments and institutions.
Commemoration in the United States has often cleaned up the past, ignoring
wrongs in American history, and sanitized memories have generally reinforced
the authority of governments and social elites. Something similar can be said of
Remembering Cherokee Removal 97

The story told at New Echota bore striking similarities to the myth of the Confederate Lost Cause in southern
memory culture. The Georgia Historical Commission portrayed the Cherokees as an honorable, patriotic people
overrun by greedy outsiders. They had defended their homeland as best they could but were overwhelmed, much as
Confederates. Portrait of Cherokee chief Oconostota, 1762, by Francis Parsons, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

the acknowledgment of injustice. Historical confessions can also act as a source of

power. They suggest that the confessor has achieved a level of moral consciousness
necessary for better behavior in the future and, therefore, that they can be trusted.
Southern leaders sought this kind of trust and authority in the 1950s and 60snot
when it came to Indian affairs, but over African American civil rights.
New Echota, then, provided visitors an opportunity to consider parallels between the nineteenth century and their own in matters of race, but it did little to
direct their thoughts once they were on the subject. Uncertainty, however, may
be the important point. The New Echota site was (and remains today) a relatively
open contemplative space, a place in which visitors thoughts on race and power
in American history could move in multiple directions. To the extent that the restoration presented nineteenth-century white Georgians as having been wrong, it
at least permitted the conclusion that segregations defenders were wrong, as well.
This openness, in turn, may help to explain the popularity of Cherokee Removal
as a subject of commemoration, in both the Civil Rights-era South and other
circumstances. Removal, distant but familiar, has offered non-Indians a secure
perspective from which to think about race and racism. It has provided a relatively
uncontroversial way to consider deeply contentious issues.
The day before New Echotas grand opening, Eugene Patterson of the Atlanta
Constitution wrote that Georgians owed it to themselves as well as the Cherokee
Indians to visit New Echota. It will be a good place for us to go and reflect on
our ideals. He seems to have had more on his mind than Indian affairs in the Age
of Jackson.18
notes
1. Charles Reagan Wilson, ed., The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, vol. 4, Myth, Manners, and
Memory, ed. Charles Reagan Wilson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
2. Kenneth Foote, Shadowed Ground: Americas Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy, rev. ed. (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2003), 618, 111144; Press release (text of Ernest Vandivers address),
May 12, 1962, New Echota Dedication, library, New Echota State Historic Site (Calhoun, Georgia), 2; Atlanta JournalConstitution, May 13, 1962; Calhoun Times, May 17, 1962; Acts Relating to
Cherokee Indians Repealed (No. 712), Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia,
1962, 15455; Joseph Cumming to Charles Pannell, January 18, 1962, Mary Jewett to Joseph Cumming, February 20, 1962, correspondence 1962, general administrative records, Georgia Historical
Commission, RG 61, SG 1, series 1, box 5, Georgia State Archives (Atlanta, Georgia); program
from dedication ceremony, May 12, 1962, New Echota Dedication, library, New Echota State
Historic Site; Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 11, 1962; Savannah Morning News, February 13,
1962.
3. Foote, Shadowed Ground, 322332; James Oliver Horton and Spencer R. Crew, Afro-Americans
and Museums: Towards a Policy of Inclusion, in Warren Leon and Roy Rosenzweig, History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 215236;
W. Fitzhugh Brundage, The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

Remembering Cherokee Removal 99

University Press, 2005), 710; Paul A. Shackel, Memory in Black and White: Race, Commemoration, and
the Post-Bellum Landscape (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira, 2003), 1116.
4. Atlanta Inquirer, February 3, 10, 1962; Pittsburgh Courier, February 10, 1962; Atlanta Constitution,
February 14, 1962; Stephen G. N. Tuck, Beyond Atlanta: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Georgia,
19401980 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2001), 11027, 14042, 14753.
5. Brundage, The Southern Past, 4.
6. Henry T. Malone, New Echota: Capital of the Cherokee Nation, Early Georgia 1 (Spring
1955): 613; William G. McLoughlin, Cherokee Renascence in the New Republic (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 277301, 388410, 45051.
7. R. D. Self, New Echota: Cherokee National Capitol (pamphlet, Calhoun, GA: Business Service
Exchange, 1953); Malone, New Echota, 11 (photo of Worcester house in 1930s); Press release,
April 24, 1962, New Echota Publicity, library, New Echota State Historic Site.
8. Calhoun Times, May 28, October 22, November 12, 1953, January 1, 7, 1954; Atlanta Constitution,
April 20, 1954; Joseph Caldwell, New Echota Excavations, May 29, 1954, correspondence through
1954, general administrative records, Georgia Historical Commission, RG 61, SG 1, series 1, box 4,
Georgia State Archives; Clemens de Baillou, The Excavations of New Echota in 1954, Early
Georgia 1 (Spring 1955): 1929.
9. Atlanta Journal and Constitution, September 18, 1955; Calhoun Times, February 2, December 29,
1956, November 7, 1957, September 4, 1958; Notes on the Council House at New Echota, September 1955, correspondence 19541956, general administrative records, Georgia Historical Commission, RG 61, SG 1, series 1, box 4, Georgia State Archives; Mary Jewett to GHC members, February 7, 1961, correspondence 1961, general administrative records, Georgia Historical Commission,
RG 61, SG 1, series 1, box 4, Georgia State Archives; Report on the Council House, April 7, 1971,
New Echota 19661971, general administrative records, Georgia Historical Commission, RG 61,
SG 1, series 1, box 1, Georgia State Archives.
10. Press release (text of Ernest Vandivers address), May 12, 1962, New Echota Dedication,
library, New Echota State Historic Site, 2; Address (probably that of Ben Fortson), May 12, 1962,
New Echota Dedication, library, New Echota State Historic Site, 10; Rome News-Tribune, May 9,
1962.
11. Resolution Commending Renovation of New Echota, Georgia General Assembly, [1962],
New Echota 195865, general administrative records, Georgia Historical Commission, RG 61,
SG 1, series 1, box 1; Rome News-Tribune, October 15, 1961.
12. R. D. Self to Charles Gregory, April 13, 1953, Minutes, May 15, 1953, correspondence through
1954, general administrative records, Georgia Historical Commission, RG 61, SG 1, series 1, box 4,
Georgia State Archives; Outline for a Television Program, undated, correspondence 19541956,
general administrative records, Georgia Historical Commission, RG 61, SG 1, series 1, box 4,
Georgia State Archives; Atlanta Constitution, April 20, 1954. For the heritage boom beginning in
the 1950s, see Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American
Culture (New York: Knopf, 1991), 62128.
13. Minutes, August 21, 1952, correspondence through 1954, general administrative records,
Georgia Historical Commission, RG 61, SG 1, series 1, box 4, Georgia State Archives; Mary Jewett
to GHC members, February 7, 1961, Mary Jewett to Joseph Cumming, November 30, 1961, correspondence 1961, general administrative records, Georgia Historical Commission, RG 61, SG 1,
series 1, box 4, Georgia State Archives; John R. Finger, Cherokee Americans: The Eastern Band of
Cherokees in the Twentieth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), 98, 101104, 13738.
14. Charles Gregory to Joseph Cumming, June 18, 1957, Mary Jewett to Joseph Cumming, July
11, 1957, correspondence 1957, Alexander Kelly to Mary Jewett, May 19, 1960, Mary Jewett to Alex-

100 sout hern cultures, Winter 2008 : Andrew Denson

ander Kelly, May 20, 1960, correspondence 1960, general administrative records, Georgia Historical Commission, RG 61, SG 1, series 1, box 4, Georgia State Archives; Charles Gregory to Roy
McGinty, April 22, 1958, New Echota 1958-1965, general administrative records, Georgia Historical
Commission, RG 1, SG 1, series 1, box 1, Georgia State Archives; Recommendations for the Development of New Echota, November 1955, New Echota Research, library, New Echota State Historic Site; Warren Leon and Margaret Piatt, Living History Museums, in Leon and Rosenzweig,
History Museums in the United States, 66-68; Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 35970, 58187.
15. Joseph Cumming to Henry Alexander, October 2, 1952, Minutes, November 12, 1952, correspondence through 1954, general administrative records, Georgia Historical Commission, RG 61,
SG 1, series 1, box 4, Georgia State Archives; Mary Jewett to Sylvan Meyer, March 20, 1961, Mary
Jewett to Joseph Cumming, July 31, 1961, Joseph Cumming to GHC members, August 3, 1961, correspondence 1961, general administrative records, Georgia Historical Commission, RG 61, SG 1,
series 1, box 4, Georgia State Archives; Calhoun Times, April 25, 1957, September 4, 1958, July 7,
1960; Gainesville Daily Times, March 13, 1961; Atlanta Journal, July 21, 1961.
16. Alan T. Nolan, The Anatomy of the Myth, in Gary W. Gallagher and Allen T. Nolan,
eds., The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000),
1134; David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2001), 255300; Shackel, Memory in Black and White, 2650; Kammen, Mystic Chords
of Memory, 590610.
17. Rome News-Tribune, May 1, 1956, February 11, 1962; Atlanta Journal and Constitution, February
11, 1962; Atlanta Constitution, February 14, 1962.
18. Atlanta Constitution, May 11, 1962.

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