The Brainerd Journal: A Mission to the Cherokees, 1817-1823: Indians of the Southeast

The journal of the Brainerd Mission is an indispensable source for understanding Cherokee culture and history during the early nineteenth century. The interdenominational mission was located in the heart of Cherokee country near present-day Chattanooga. For seven years the Brainerd missionaries kept a journal describing their lives and those of their charges. Although the journal has long been recognized as a significant primary document, it was not fully transcribed or made widely available until now. The journal entries provide a richly textured and sensitive look at Cherokee life and American missionary activities during the early nineteenth century. They shed new light on the daily lives and personalities of individual Cherokees, as well as on poorly understood aspects of Cherokee politics and religion. The journal provides interesting ethnographic details concerning Cherokee council meetings, ceremonial occasions, gender relations, and the internal social and political tensions among families. Of equal interest are the complex and often conflicted attitudes of the missionaries, who were interested in Cherokee traditional culture but simultaneously worked to change it.