Cherokee History

John Howard Payne, who wrote the words to "Home, Sweet Home," went to Georgia as Chief Ross's guest to learn about the Cherokee, and the authorities arrested him because they thought the visit suspicious. He was freed after a soldier sang his song and he said he had written it. Payne came to admire Cherokee achievements and lobbied Congress against removal. He gathered research on their constitution, language, myths and history, most of it never published. His theory that the Cherokee descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel has been thoroughly disproved.

What the plaque says

Cherokee History Here in a log cabin was the last home east of the Mississippi of John Ross, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Here Chief Ross and his guest, John Howard Payne, author of "Home Sweet Home" were arrested and taken to Springplace, GA., where they were imprisoned Nov. 7, 1835. Four miles S.W. from here was the Red Clay Council Ground of the Cherokees. John Martin, Treasure of the Cherokee Nation, lived 1 1/2 mile north, the Red Clay Mission, founded 1835 by Elizur Butler was 1/4 mile north.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Red Clay State Historic Park — 3.3 mi
  The last seat of the Cherokee Nation before removal, where eleven general councils met from 1832 to 1837, now a state park with a council house replica, a sacred spring and an eternal flame.
• Bessie Smith Cultural Center — 23 mi
  Chattanooga's African American museum and performance hall on the old Ninth Street, named for the Empress of the Blues, who started out singing for change on that same street.
• Walnut Street Bridge — 23 mi
  An 1890 truss bridge now open to walkers, and the place where Alfred Blount in 1893 and Ed Johnson in 1906 were lynched, the case that led to the Supreme Court's only criminal trial.
• Tennessee Aquarium — 23 mi
  A river-themed aquarium that opened on May 1, 1992, on the Chattanooga bank where John Ross kept a trading post, tracing a raindrop from the Appalachians to the Gulf.

More markers nearby

• Red Clay Council Ground — 2.7 mi
• Lost County of Tennessee: The County of James — 9.2 mi
• Masonic Female Institute — 9.6 mi
• Old Harrison — 14 mi