New Echota, GA -The Starting Point

New Echota was the capital of the Cherokee prior to the removal. Here are a few interesting things that I learned…

1. Many Cherokee integrated with the white colonists. I’ll make the claim that they were more integrated than the other tribes. They had very colonial looking houses made of hewn wood. 
2. They were also a very large tribe in both population as well as geography. Their lands reached as far north as West Virginia and the Ohio Valley. 
3. The Cherokee established a democratic form of government with 3 branches and 2 legislative houses.
4. Sequoyah constructed an alphabet for the Cherokee language, the first tribal language to be expressed in both oral and written form. 
5. Some Cherokee were quite wealthy. 

The Samuel Worcester house, which is the only original house still left at New Echota is on the top 20 most haunted places in the US. I didn’t experience anything unusual while visiting it, bummer.