Ellen CushmanNortheastern UniversityThose of us gathered in these pages met at a Rhetoric Society of America Summer Institute with the goal of creating knowledge that would help to re-place the mat...

This article discusses how archival documents reveal early nineteenth-century Cherokee purposes for English-language literacy. In spite of Euro-American efforts to depoliticize Cherokee women’s roles, Cherokee female students adapted the literacy tools of an outsider patriarchal society to retain public, political power. Their writing served Cherokee national interests and demonstrated female students’ concerns with the fate of the Cherokee people.