Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Chickamauga Indian


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. No arguments for deletion aside from the nominator. Ron Ritzman (talk) 17:48, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Chickamauga Indian

 * – ( View AfD View log )

This article for the most part merely repeats information included in Chickamauga Wars (1776-1794), adding a list of pseudo-tribes from another Wikipedia article. The sole intent of its existence is the author's attempt to further the pseudohistorical notion that there was actually a "Chickamauga" tribe seperate from the Cherokee Chuck Hamilton (talk) 19:56, 17 December 2010 (UTC) By the way, the word "Chickamauga"--and the Cherokee name for which it is directly derived, Tsikimagi, do NOT mean "River of Blood". That bit of misinformation first appeared when the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park was first opened in the 1890's. The word isn't even Cherokee, it's either western Muskogean or Algonquin. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 18:06, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep&mdash;None of the page content has been challenged with tags. It appears to be at least partly cited. There are web pages and books covering Chickamauga indian history.&mdash;RJH (talk) 21:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
 * There's no such thing as a "Chickamauga Indian". Self-published sources, such as webpages that are not subject to peer review, do not meet Wikipedia criteria.  ALL of the material within the article ia published elsewhere.  The sole purpose of the article in question is an attempt to prop up the pseudohistorical notion about "Chickamaugas", and I know this because the same editor made changes to at least one other article aiming at the goal (Principal Chiefs of the Cherokee). This is merely the latest in a long line of attempts by various persons to establish some sort of crediblity for fictional entities which do not deserve it, such as the person who is currently trying to insert Southern Cherokee Nation of Kentucky into several Cherokee-related articles. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 23:51, 17 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. GenQuest (talk) 01:55, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * You have your shot now. It's source citations where your talk page claims are time.  What history books and other reliable sources document this?  Cite them.  So far you've cited a only self-published WWW page by one James Billy Chance, whose credentials as a genealogist and historian are unstated.  Where are the historians and genealogists documenting what you claim?   Point to them.  Now.  Uncle G (talk) 12:38, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Note: This debate has been included in the list of Ethnic groups-related deletion discussions.  -- • Gene93k (talk) 02:41, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The Cherokee referred to by the white frontiersmen as the "Chickamauga" were never a seperate tribe from the Cherokee at any time. Dragging Canoe himself met with the national council at Ustanali on more than one occasion or sent his representatives, sometimes John Watts.  After Dragging Canoe's death, his brother Little Owl attended a memorial for him at Ustanali.  In the Penelope Allen manuscript in the archives at Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library, one of the Moravian Brethren reports that he asked Richard Fields, who fought under Dragging Canoe and John Watts, about what kind of people the Chickamauga were, Fields replied, "They are Cherokee, and we know no difference."  The spurious idea that there was any difference that's so popular nowadays abut a seperate "Chickamauga" tribe began with John P. Brown in the late 1930's.  The groups that list themselves so are already listed on the page for unrecognized groups. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 03:06, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The only reason for creating a seperate article "Chickamauga Indian" using, for the most part, information culled from other Wikipedia articles is to try establishing that such a tribe existed. It is apparent that this is your intent from direction of the changes you made to the Principal Chiefs article. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 03:11, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, the groups you list as Chickamauga in the article date as no earlier than the passage of the Indian Gaming Act, most of them much later. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 03:37, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * How do you know any of that? Cite your sources that document this knowledge of Chickamauga that you are claiming.  Uncle G (talk)
 * Do you need a lecture on the impossibility of proving a negative? It's a positive assertion that needs to be proved.  But since you are asking, see Chickamauga Wars (1776-1794). Chuck Hamilton (talk) 17:53, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * You didn't assert negatives, you made several, positive and concrete, assertions. I ask you again, since you are as bad at this as GenQuest.  What are your sources for your several assertions, above?  Uncle G (talk) 19:55, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep In my opinion, the article is not a candidate for deletion although it could certainly be improved with better sourcing and referencing. I suggest that those who have reservations add their comments to the talk page. There must be a very large number of new WP articles that bear similarities to existing articles, as is the case in any encyclopedia. But this is not a sufficient reason for deletion. - Ipigott (talk) 10:44, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Not alone, in and of itself, but the fact that no such tribe as the "Chickamauga" ever existed is grounds for its deletion. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 11:05, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment. I will echo Uncle G's request that either side provide reliable sources for their assertions. I will also emphasize that this AfD is NOT the place to discuss whether the "Chickamauga" "tribe" "really" "exists". The claim that "there is no such thing as a Chickamauga" is beside the point, but on the other hand, so far I don't see that any reliable sources have been identified to support the page.  Verifiability, not truth, is the watchword here: not whether the subject is "true", but whether it is sufficiently notable to merit a Wikipedia article. --Arxiloxos (talk) 20:29, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * By the standards of verifiability you mention, it is a verifiable fact that the Melungeons are descended from Carthaginian sailors. I do know where I can find documentation, including court records, to support that.  It is not, however, true.  As for documentation, I've already recommended Chickamauga Wars (1776-1794).  I suggest you go there, read, and note the extensive sources and citations.  Or, I suppose I could copy the whole thing and paste it here. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 23:58, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep, since the only alternative yet proposed is deletion. Although not all of the publications of Facts on File have impressed me, the firm seems reputable and its eleven-volume Encyclopedia of American History (2003) does not seem something that should be dismissed lightly. For the item Chickamaugan Nation, the index of this encyclopedia points the reader to four articles within its third volume (which covers the period 1761–1812). I only looked up one of these references and this does not clearly say that there was a "Chickamaugan Nation", although it seems to imply that there was (according to my very hazy notion of what "nation" means in this context). For all I know one of the other three articles may say that the notion that there was any "Chickamaugan Nation" is mistaken; I don't think that I need to look, given that WP writes up Reptilians, Tooth fairy, Xenu, and miscellaneous other tosh (and rightly so) in addition to historical fact. &para; I know nothing about the personal motivations, if any, of anybody who has commented above, and I am surprised by the certainty with which such motivations are inferred and the vehemence of certain remarks. -- Hoary (talk) 10:41, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

THERE IS AND NEVER HAS BEEN A TRIBE OF INDIANS CALLED THE CHICKAMAUGA. Since I have more than once provided a link to an article that should make that evident yet no one has bothered to read it, I am reproducing the enitre relevant portions here, complete with in-line citations and reference list. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 02:05, 22 December 2010 (UTC) Read:


 * I have deleted this. Link to it. Don't think of readding it; doing so would be disruptive. &para; Putting an assertion in FULL CAPITALS does not add to its effectiveness. &para; Reptilians, Xenu and the tooth fairy have never existed, yet Wikipedia has articles about them. &para; You have not commented on the use in a recent, large encyclopedia of the term "Chickamaugan Nation". -- Hoary (talk) 02:18, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I support Hoary's action in deleting Chuck Hamilton's inappropriate reproduction of the entire contents of another article. Again, this AfD is not about whether the Chickamauaga Tribe actually existed, the question is whether the subject is a notable topic.  (This is the same point that arose at Articles for deletion/Massacre at Ywahoo Falls, another AfD about a topic of disputed existence in which Chuck Hamilton participated.)  --Arxiloxos (talk) 02:30, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * And this is the tenth time I've had this argument. I repeat, there is not and never was a tribe called the Chickamauga, not ever.  "Chickamauga" is merely a convenient label frontiermen used to distinguish the militant Cherokee from the non-militant Cherokee, so-called after the central town of the new settlements called Chickamauga, which lay in the modern Brainerd Hills-Brainerd Heights area of what is now Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Later they were called Lower Cherokee, not because they came from the original Lower Towns (most of those inhabitants had relocated to north and central Georgia) but because after their move west from their original base of operations there first settlements were known in the frontier settlements as the "Five Lower Towns".  The historian John P. Brown is the originator of the idea that such a thing existed; with that exception his book on the subject is excellent and usually reliable.  After passage of the Indian Gaming Act in the '70's several groups cropped up all over the country of white people claiming to be "Chickamauga"; an abundance of like groups suddenly appeared once it was legal for Indians to have gambling establishments on their lands.  More groups calling themselves Chickamauga appeared in the '90's.  The reason there are so many who claim to be "Chickamauga" is that they feel they can claim to be descended from Cherokee who stayed behind after removal to continue resistance.  In fact, is was the leaders of the former Chickamauga/Lower Cherokee who were the strongest advocates of removal.  Everything these these groups claim is pseudohistorical and an embarassment for Wikipedia to endorse.  The historical information in this article is already covered entirely and much more extensively in Chickamauga Wars (1776-1794) and the rest, the so-called Chickamauga tribes, was culled from the List of unrecognized tribes.  These "Chickamauga" groups are no more notable than any of the other fake Indians in the second article. Chuck Hamilton (talk)
 * Thank you for your calm and informative response. If groups of people did indeed pop up in the 90s with deluded or cynical claims that they were "Chickamauga" (an assertion that would need sourcing), then this might be encyclopedic. Where would it go? Not in the article that you referred to, but perhaps in this one. WP does not "endorse" the ways of thinking that it describes; on "racial" matters, see for example its calm summary (when not vandalized) of historically significant twaddle in "Negroid race". -- Hoary (talk) 03:21, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * This is not the first article on the Chickamauga as a tribe that I've recommended for deletion, and the other times were all successful. All these groups are listed in List of unrecognized tribes, along with hundreds of other such entities claiming American Indian/Native American identity, and that is all the notability they have. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 04:22, 22 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep. The article needs lots of sourcing work, whatever the outcome of that may be. Whether or not this is an historic root tribe of Cherokees, the topic is straightforwardly notable if only because there are so many claims to Chickamauga tribal background, however meaningful such claims might be. As an aside, the notion of European-Americans claiming ancestral kin within a tribal branch of what is now called the Cherokee nation isn't startling, many Cherokees melded more or less smoothly into the European-American population early on and a lot more European-Americans have Cherokee ancestors than is widely known. As for List of unrecognized tribes, "recognition" by government bureaucrats or politicians is fairly meaningless. Sources have sway and these need not be from peer-reviewed anthropological or historical journals so much as those which are reliable as to reporting that such claims are being made, which seems quite verifiable and notable, even somewhat widespread. If there is any sourced criticism of such claims, citing it would also be helpful to readers. That any of this may/could have something to do with market outcomes owing to sundry tribal casino laws makes this topic even more notable, not less. Gwen Gale (talk) 11:58, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The relevant fact are this: the historical material in the article Chickamauga Indian is repetitious of that elsewhere within Wikipedia; i.e., there is no reason for a lengthy article Chickamauga Wars (1776-1794) and one that amounts to a summary of it, Chickamauga Indian, unless, perhaps, there actually WAS such a tribe, which there was not. Also, the so-called Chickamauga pseudo-tribes in the article are no more notable than any other in List of unrecognized tribes and do not deserve special recognition. Also, "As for List of unrecognized tribes, "recognition" by government bureaucrats or politicians is fairly meaningless"...a legally unsupportable statement and one in conflict with Wikipedia policy on the matter which is that actual tribes are those recognized by the federal government. No, Gwen, reality is not whatever you say it is, reality is what reality is.  It doesn't conform to individual fantasy and whims which too many of we Americans seem to be fond of, for example, how seriously the film Birth of a Nation was taken as history, leading to the foundation of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 18:21, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I think we can agree that Americans are inveterate fantasists. (Here as in so many other ways, they resemble the populations of other nations.) A significant number of them believe in Xenu, etc etc; I venture to guess that neither you nor Gwen does; I certainly don't (I'd never heard of it till I used Xenu's Link Sleuth), and neither does anyone in the reality-based community; but cultists do believe in it to a degree that's significant (or at least amusing) outside the cult, and therefore it gets an article. Now, you have asserted above that After passage of the Indian Gaming Act in the '70's several groups cropped up all over the country of white people claiming to be "Chickamauga"; an abundance of like groups suddenly appeared once it was legal for Indians to have gambling establishments on their lands. More groups calling themselves Chickamauga appeared in the '90's.  The reason there are so many who claim to be "Chickamauga" is that they feel they can claim to be descended from Cherokee who stayed behind after removal to continue resistance. You thereby made the claim to be "Chickamauga" seem significant within the murky world of fleecing fools. The suitability of such material for "Chickamauga Wars (1776-1794)" is not obvious to me. Have a significant number of people ("white" or other) claimed to be "Chickamauga" or haven't they? If they have, sourcing would help; if they haven't, I wonder why you brought this up. -- Hoary (talk) 01:13, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * A mere twenty-one groups out of literally hundreds like them but fraudulently claiming the identities of other tribes? No, not so much, not really. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 01:53, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I read this last night, didn't understand it; woke up and read it this morning, and still don't understand it. Perhaps you could rephrase it. -- Hoary (talk) 00:49, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * There are 21 groups claiming "Chickamauga" as some part of their name. There are hundreds of other groups attempting to rip off the identities of hundreds of other "non-Chickamauga" tribes or likewise inventing fictitious tribes from whom to be descended.  The 21 are much less than notable. Chuck Hamilton (talk) 03:04, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you; I understand now. I'm surprised that 21 groups would claim this or that Amerindian (or pseudo-Amerindian) word/name as part of their own name. The recent demise of Joe Miller reminds me of tea parties; there are (I think) only two American groups calling themselves that. -- Hoary (talk) 10:51, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.