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News from the Cherokee Nation, OK
Copyright © 2005 CNO
TAHLEQUAH, OKLAHOMA - Patti Jo King, a tribal citizen of the Cherokee Nation, will take part in “Lewis and Clark Across Missouri: Mapping the Historic Landscape,” a series of lectures and exhibits sponsored by the Missouri State Humanities Council.
Patricia J. (Patti Jo) King 
Her presentation, entitled “Two Trails of Discovery,” will take place on Friday, June 17 at Big Spring Campground Amphitheater in the Ozark National Scenic Riverways in Missouri. Her discussion will focus on the impact the Lewis and Clark expedition had on the forced relocation of the Cherokee 35 years later.
Several detachments of travelers along the Trail of Tears passed through the Missouri Bootheel area. After being deported from their lands in the southeast, their forced exodus took them through the Ozarks on their way west. In the dead of winter, December 1838, and January and February of 1839, they crossed the Mississippi River at Willard's Landing in Illinois to Moccasin Springs in Missouri via horse ferry boats at Green's Ferry, near what is now the Trail of Tears State Park. They also crossed at Smith's Ferry at Bainbridge Missouri, several miles south.
Many Cherokees died in camps on both sides of the river while waiting out freezing temperatures that made travel impossible. In the area known as Cape Girardeau, the Cherokee trails literally overlap the earlier route taken by Lewis and Clark.
“The real purpose of Jefferson’s expedition was the diplomatic goal of contacting Indian nations to establish U. S. sovereignty over the region,” King said. “Scientific aspirations took a back seat to the goal of increased commerce that could only be attained through control of the territories obtained in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Expansionist thinking had a direct and devastating effect on the Cherokee. By the time the Corp of Discovery was organized in 1803, Cherokee people were already being crowded out of their southern homelands, but by 1838 they were forcibly moved west.”
King is an award-winning journalist, feature writer, and a direct descendent of principal chief John Ross who presided over the Cherokee Nation during the time of the forced relocation. She holds an extended Bachelor of Science degree in American History and a Masters Degree in History of the American West from Northern Arizona University. She resides in Flagstaff, Arizona where she works as a southwest correspondent for Indian Country Today News, as publisher and editor of the Southwest Sentinel, News and Views from Southwest Indian Country, and as a contract journalist and feature writer for the Arizona Daily Sun, Flagstaff LIVE!, Arts and Entertainment Weekly, and the Phoenix APS Bureau.
Related Path: Patricia J. (Patti Jo) King Biography
| Related Cherokee Nation contact information: |
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Mike Miller, Cherokee Nation Director of Communications Phone: 918-456-0671 (ext.2210) Fax: 918-458-5580 E-mail: Communications@cherokee.org
Larry Daugherty, Advertising Manager |
Steven Swogger, Agriculture Liaison Natural Resources Department Phone: 918-456-0671 (ext.2546) FAX: 918-458-7673 E-mail: sswogger@cherokee.org
Bradley D. Peak, Cherokee Nation |