The “Five Civilized Nations”

Abstract

Perhaps the earliest instance of European-style schooling controlled by an Indian people was among the Cherokee. After several decades of government-funded missionary schools, the Treaty of 1835 provided an annual sum of $16,000 a year from the federal government to support Cherokee public schools. Although for some years the teachers were white, often recruited from New England, eventually almost all were Cherokees trained at the Cherokee-controlled secondary schools.¹