VONORE, Tenn. – Dr. Duane King will be lecturing on The Battle of Horseshoe Bend, Post-Removal Factionalism and a Cherokee Bandolier Bag at the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum on Sunday, March 16 from 2-3pm.
In 2011, a previously unreported nineteenth-century Cherokee bandolier bag was acquired by Gilcrease Museum. The bag by itself was significant in that it showed great skill in executing the intricate floral beaded designs and seemed to reflect transitional elements not seen on the few well-documented Cherokee bags from the period.
Perhaps more important than the object, was the letter that came with it. The letter documented the gifting of the bag on April 20, 1846, by Tucquo, a wounded veteran of the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, to an U.S. army officer, 2nd Lt. Cave Johnson Couts of the First Dragoons. It was written by then Clerk of the Cherokee Nation Council, William Potter Ross.
The fascinating letter reveals the significance of the gift by offering subtle references to the political intrigue surrounding the factionalism within the Cherokee Nation. Further research reveals the ambivalence of the U.S. Army, and the conflicting reports of the murder of James Starr and others in the period leading up to the Treaty of 1846 which granted a general amnesty to all those involved in the post-removal violence within the Cherokee Nation.
Dr. King was appointed Executive Director of Gilcrease Museum and Vice-President for Museum Affairs and Thomas Gilcrease Chair at the University of Tulsa in May, 2008. Previously, Dr. King served as Executive Director of the Southwest Museum of the Autry National Center in Los Angeles. Prior to joining the Southwest Museum in 1995, he served for five years as Assistant Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian for the George Gustav Heye Center, in New York City. Dr. King has taught at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and Chattanooga, Cleveland State College, Northeastern State University, and held the first endowed chair in Cherokee Studies at Western Carolina University. Dr. King received his undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Georgia. His Ph.D. dissertation was A Grammar and Dictionary of the Cherokee Language. He has authored more than one hundred publications on various aspects of Museum Studies and Native American culture and history.
This lecture is free and open to the public and is sponsored in part from a grant from the East Tennessee Foundation John D. Grubb and Louise G. Sumner Fund for Monroe County and the Cherokee Preservation Foundation Grant.
Info: www.sequoyahmuseum.org or (423) 884-6246
– Sequoyah Birthplace Museum
