Heather Pearson Jessie Smith Period 2 August 29, 2005 The Discrimination of Cherokees Native American prosecution and discrimination has been around ever since the first Europeans set sail and found themselves in what was to be the United States. It has lingered around until the 1970’s, surprisingly late in the twentieth century. A significant Native American group is the Cherokees. The white man thought the Cherokees to be uncivilized, savage, and barbarian. Christian missionaries began an attempt to what they thought would civilize the Cherokee group by turning them away from their original religious practice and converting them to Christianity. The missionaries settled into large properties of land and money from the Cherokee tribe was given to the missionaries and tribal government leaders, leaving nearly none for the actual tribe. This way of thinking continued for a very long time. In 1825, a law was passed in the State of Georgia which stated that no Cherokee or any other Native American had the right to appear in the Court of Law. If a white man wanted to kill or steal from a Cherokee, they would not be punished. This was all, in their mind’s eye, helping to civilize the Native American people. Children from the tribes were taken away from their families to be taught in missionary schools, and if a child did not go to a school the missionaries would not give the proper amounts of food and money. If a child did go, they were taught that their heritage was a savage and uncivilized one, and the child would lose all the family values, language, and religion. To practice Indian religion actually became a crime in 1928, and these missionaries continued up into the mid 1970’s. Many consider this to be a Red Holocaust; the term red coming from “redskin,” a nickname for Native Americans created by the Europeans. The Cherokee Nation had their children taken from them to alter their way of life and their heritage and therefore suffered genocide. They have suffered being discriminated against and being stereotyped for centuries and many stereotypes still very much exist today.