In My Opinion: Unity - 15 September 2026

By Antler Chief Jimmie W. Kersh

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Since mid-June 2026, I have noticed professional media and politicians talking about having unity around the 250th Birthday and the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

The Chickamauga Nation ^SM as First Americans signed its first written treaty with the British Colony of South Carolina in 1684, which was 342 years ago. That is 92 years earlier than the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The professional Media and politicians are not coming out of the woodwork to celebrate our longevity and unity.

As descendants of the Mississippian Era, Mound Building Culture and the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, the Chickamauga people were represented in over 100 of the towns and villages in modern-day South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama. Each town and village had its own government separate from any other town or village. When it served their interests, they worked together as a confederacy, where each was independent but willing to cooperate when it served their interests. When a Grand Council was called, all would heed the call and attend, and once in a great while, all agreed on a mission.

Did all of the towns and villages always agree with each other? No. Some refused to send warriors to fight in certain battles, but that was accepted because each was independent of the others. They never held grudges because each answered to their own people. Every once in a while, a Chief or two would lose their cool and kill another Chief for disagreeing with them, but that too had consequences within the framework of the Confederacy.

Seldom was there complete unity with so many Chiefs, Warriors, Towns and Villages, but each Tribe ruled itself. Over the years, with both a desired migration to the West and a forced genocidal diaspora across the country, the Chickamauga retained their individual “bands” and groupings of families. Tracking those patterns to the West is relatively easy if you know what you are looking for, including where they moved from and to.

Once they arrived at a new location, families and bands sometimes divided into two or three villages to provide food, clothing, and shelter for everyone. That did not mean they were not unified; it meant that they knew that for their families to survive, they needed to live on and with the land to make sure it could provide for their needs.

When we fast-forward almost two centuries, which requires generalities and not specifics, we come to the place the Chickamauga people are today. For the most part, we are still in small family bands or in communities where groups of families still flourish together. You can easily see this within our own Nation. In Oklahoma, you can find two or three locations with pockets or communities with dozens of Chickamauga families living in close proximity to each other. Look near Sapulpa, Muskogee, and Oklahoma City; you will find numerous families living and surviving as a Tribal community. In Arkansas, you find the same thing in the northern part of the White River valley, in Franklin County, near Charleston, and in the Southwestern part of the state between Glenwood, Mineral Springs, De Queen, and Mena. In Tennessee, in the eastern part of the state, dozens of family communities line the Cumberland. Holston, Tennessee, and Little Tennessee Rivers and valleys, including various pockets in other parts of the State. In Kentucky, along the Tennessee River, small pockets of families and a large number of families are in the Harlan County area. In North Carolina, along the Blue Ridge and Cherokee National Forest areas you will find small communities of families who have been there for centuries. In South Carolina, along the Savannah River valley between Augusta, Columbia, Greenville, and to the west, there are still communities of families who continue to celebrate their ancestry. In Georgia, there are dozens of communities of families from the Savannah River to Dahlonega, to Rome, to Chattanooga. In Alabama, there are communities along the Tennessee River from Chattanooga, to Guntersville, to Huntsville, to Cherokee, and Muscle Shoals. Another area exists in the Southeastern Part of the state between Montgomery, Dothan, and Columbia. In Texas, there are communities in the areas of DFW Metroplex, East Texas between Paris, Tyler, Lufkin, Nacogdoches, Marshall, and Texarkana and Central Texas in the Waco, Austin, Huntsville, and Corsicana areas.

Traditionally, we are all Chickamauga by blood. Culturally, we are all Chickamauga, shaped by the communities in which we live. The same as it has always been for our people. Our footprint as First Americans literally extends from the Ohio River Valley, to the Appalachians, to Northern Georgia and Alabama, then across the Mississippi River to the Arkansas River Valley, Red River Valley, Trinity River Valley, Brazos River Valley, and Neches River Valleys. Generally speaking from the Kansas Border with Oklahoma through Oklahoma City down to Waco and Austin, all of East Texas and North of the Red River in Arkansas and back to the Mississippi.

Through all of the centuries of intermarriage with people from other countries, Nations, and Tribes, one thing is consistent: When a federal Indian agent tried to persuade Bloody Fellow, a Chickamauga war chief, to remove west, Bloody Fellow responded that "he had no inclination to leave the country of his birth. Even should the habits & customs of the Cherokees (Chickamauga) give place to the habits & customs of the whites, or even should they themselves become white by intermarriage not a drop of Indian blood would be lost; it would be spread more widely but not lost. He was for preserving them together as a people, regardless of complexion."

As First Americans, as Chickamauga, we continue to live as Bloody Fellow knew we would live: in communities where our culture and traditions would evolve and change with time, but would remain the same because we never have lost one drop of our Chickamauga blood. That is the unity that binds us together. That is the unity each of our communities has across the vast and mighty footprint of The Chickamauga Nation.

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