The Texas Cherokees: A People Between Two Fires, 1819–1840

Author: Dianna Everett

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press (1995)

In 1819 to 1820 several hundred Cherokees—led by Duwali, a chief from Tennessee—settled along the Sabine, Neches, and Angelina rivers in east Texas. Welcomed by Mexico as a buffer to U.S. settlement, Duwali’s people had separated from other Western Cherokees in an effort to retain the tribe’s traditional lifeways. As Everett details, they found themselves "caught between two fires" in many respects: between the Cherokee ideal of harmony and the reality of factionalism, between white settlers pushing westward and western Indians resisting incursions, and between traditional ways and the practical necessity of accommodating to whites.