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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Photo: Dig Adds to Cherokee "Trail of Tears" History


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A photo taken in North Carolina in 1888 shows a Cherokee cabin that is "very representative of the homes in this region" during the 19th century, said Brett Riggs, an archaeologist at the Research Laboratories of Archaeology at the University of North Carolina.

The United States federal government forced about 16,000 Cherokee and hundreds of other Native Americans to abandon their land in North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama and move to Oklahoma in the late 1830s.

Riggs and colleagues are uncovering the remains of farms and homes in the mountains of southwestern North Carolina that the Cherokee left behind.

Photograph by James Mooney, courtesy National Anthropological Archives.