ᎾᎯᏳᏥᏄᏍᏛ (na-hi-yu-tsi-nu-s-dv As it used to be)
Live the Cherokee Struggle
The Cherokee Trilogy—Cherokee Rock, Cherokee Rose, and Cherokee Reel—is a generational historical saga telling Cherokee history from 1779–1880 through the Cherokee eyes of the Waters family. Written by Cherokee citizen James A. Humphrey and inspired by documented family records and Dawes Roll ancestry, the novels blend verified history with compelling fiction to present a Cherokee perspective rarely heard in America.
"A Cherokee's Lament
and Song of Hope"
NHNS Caesar's Palace Video
Free "Cherokee History" Videos Produced by Cherokee411 with Downloadable Library or
Classroom Teaching Guide
Cherokee Rock - 1789 to 1838 - This sweeping Indigenous historical fantasy follows a grieving Cherokee boy’s journey toward healing, resistance, and spiritual purpose amid disease, violence, and colonial expansion. The narrative moves briskly while establishing the tinderbox that is Enoli’s environment. Kirkus Reviews - "Get It" rating!
Cherokee Rose - 1737 to 1830 (The Trail of Tears) - A serious, culturally rich historical novel that follows one Cherokee woman’s fight for family, identity, and justice during one of America’s most violent chapters. Still, as the journey unfolds, the narrative moves briskly from scene to terrible scene. Kirkus Reviews - "Get It" rating!
Cherokee Reel - 1839 to 1910 - A sweeping historical drama follows Cherokee, freedmen, and mixed heritage lives through slavery, war, political division, and survival in a changing nineteenth century
Indian Territory. Humphrey takes a lively look at the complexities of indigenous participation in the Civil War. Kirkus Reviews - "Get It" rating!
ᏣᎳᎩ ᏅᏯ
ᏣᎳᎩ ᎫᏣᏲᏍᏗ
ᏣᎳᎩ ᎧᏃᎩᏍᏗ
The Cherokee battle identity loss as a modern world encroaches.
The Cherokee face exclusion from home and family in Georgia
The Cherokee strive for resiliance and survival during Civil War.
Exploitation sweeps westward over the Appalachians in 1779 and engulfs a boy who loses his mother to smallpox, allies with a mentor squirrel, trains as a shaman and blood-brothers with a freedman during decades of pestilence and war, only to lose his people’s trust to a malignant medicine man before these old enemies collide in an epic good-versus-bad wolf revelation.
A Georgia Freedman’s half Cherokee daughter battles pestilence, bigotry, alcoholism, starvation and a record cold 1838 winter during a forced removal led by white profiteers and her father’s murderer that earns her people’s respect and adoration as the Cherokee Rose, then she illegally jumps her land allotment and faces a white jury in a trial that sets national precedents for the rights of Native Americans.
Torn from her past on the Trail of Tears, a half-Cherokee woman loses her sister to a political assassin, marries a freedman, organizes a freedom trail and founds a women’s rights organization during the turmoil leading to the civil war only to lose her husband and community in political strife that forces self-evaluation and confrontation with her sister’s murderer, a Confederate icon, to determine her life and future.
Books are first edition, library bound, collector's edition, with full color dust covers, individually shrink wrapped and printed in the United States of America. Paperbacks are perfect bound. Wholesale orders are available through IngramSpark.
ABOUT the author
James A. Humphrey is retired with his wife of fifty years in Grapevine, Texas. By birthright, he is a certified citizen of the Cherokee Nation and takes live language classes. The author is also an oil painter.
"Like painting, writing needs a stimulus. My paternal grandmother, Ella Waters, a Dawes’ Roll registrant, inspires my stories and I use her dialogue, history, culture, and language with focus and respect."
This trilogy, “Cherokee Rock,” "Cherokee Rose," and Cherokee Reel" tells the poignant story of a Cherokee families' and culture's disintegration."
Through colonial expansion, a forced removal, and pre- and post-Civil War crisis, this saga entertains the reader through Cherokee history as an extended family faces a tumultuous future.
The three novels follow different family members, two sisters and their father. Each story explores much different characters and epochs. In common, they stimulate your perceptions of justice and a self-analysis of your modern soul.
