Talk:Chickamauga Cherokee/Archive 1

Reasons to keep article
GenQuest (talk) 02:06, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * KEEP A comment such as "there is no such thing as a 'Chickamauga Indian' " is a historical, factual error. There were Chickamauga Indians (originally called "Lower Cherokee"), whether self proclaimed or not. The fact that the frontier U.S. citizens battled the "fictional "(as you say) tribe for several decades bear this out, as does the very Chickamauga Wars (1776-1794) article you cite. Nothing fictional about that.
 * As is mentioned in the article, the tribe (yes it was a tribe, with its own elected chiefs) did not stay specifically Cherokee &mdash;taking in others &mdash;including other Native Americans, blacks, Tories, and even euro-Americans. As such, there was an obvious (to me) need to address the Chickamauga People, not just the wars they were noted for in standard American histories. I wrote the article to fill a void I noted while editing other articles, as is the Wikipedia way, not to "prop-up" (as you say) anything. While I was editing other articles, I was surprised to find that the Chickamauga were, indeed, originally an off-shoot of the Cherokee, a point I had either missed in my history lessons or that was ignored by historians. I wrote the article to fill in this gap of knowledge &mdash;one that I am sure I was not the only one to have missed. I have given facts in the article, and have not attempted any subterfuge, or in any way attempted to claim the Chickamauga tribe was anything other than what the article says it was.
 * The accusation you make that "the same editor made changes to at least one other article aiming at the goal (Principal Chiefs of the Cherokee)" makes me wonder how you arrived at this ability to read minds? The changes I have made to that article were to correct factual errors regarding the Chickamauga section as was then written (this can be seen on the discussion page and history for that article) and have nothing to do with this article. (See: Talk:Principal Chiefs of the Cherokee.)
 * By the way, there are still several groups (as listed in the article) that currently claim descendancy from the band. Who are we to judge how they identity themselves?
 * If you require more citations, tag it as such, and let me and others take a shot at beefing the article up; but deleting it is total overkill.
 * The original Lower Cherokee were driven completely out of their towns on the headwaters of the Tugaloo and Savannah Rivers by the treaties of 1777, the ones who hadn't left already. Some joined Dragging Canoe, others emigrated to North Georgia.  What's really confusing for most is that these new towns of the original Lower Cherokee in North Georgia were later called the Upper Towns while those originally called the Chickamauga Towns were called the Lower Towns after 1782 when they moved west and southwest.  The only period the term Chickamauga Cherokee is accurate or was even used at the time was between 1777 and 1782.  To call the Chickamauga Cherokee a separate tribe is like saying the Overhill Cherokee were a separate tribe. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 04:24, 1 January 2012 (UTC)