"The Cherokee country is the Key of Carolina"  

-- Royal Governor James Glen, 1754

• General Information
• Lower Towns of South Carolina -- Spring 1999
• Middle & Valley Towns of Western North Carolina  --  Autumn 1999
• Overhills Towns of East Tennessee  --  Spring 2000
• Chickamauga Towns and North Georgia  --  Autumn 2000
• Historical Notes on the Cherokee People: A Rationale for CPI by Linda Fulmer (large file)
• Atrocity Site List -- invaluable listing and result of hundreds of hours of research
• Prayer Maps: Scanned Images of the actual prayer maps we used keyed to our Atrocity Site List
• Pictures from the Cherokee Prayer Initiative
• The Livingston Letters: Provocative exchange between a white man and an Indian woman

NOTE: Although prayer for corporate issues may perhaps never be complete until Jesus comes again, this prayer project was completed in 2000.  I would be happy to help anyone else who wants to go further in praying over Native corporate issues.  You can contact me.

A Project of the International Reconciliation Coalition

In 1999 & 2000, a prayer team hits the ground under the auspices of Mission Carolina -- the Cherokee Prayer Initiative.

SUMMARY:
The Cherokee Prayer Initiative is a distinctively Christian two-year prayer effort offering prayers of healing, repentance, forgiveness, and blessing at significant places in the Cherokee Homeland of the Southern Appalachians in the United States.

A DOOR OF CONFESSION
In 1999 & 2000, small prayer teams of Christian intercessors will fan out over the Cherokee Homeland, praying and repenting at places where Europeans iniquitously sinned against the host peoples of the land, in this case, the Cherokee people. 

With nearly 300 massacre sites, more than a dozen broken treaties, over 20 death camps, and 30 battlefields, the magnitude is overwhelming. Nearly every town was sacked and burned (some up to four different times) between 1751 and 1838. Food and homes were burned. Women were gang raped. Elderly were butchered. The young and healthy were kidnaped and sold as slaves. All were scalped for cash paid by state treasuries. It was unmitigated genocide.

A DOOR OF REPENTANCE
The resilient Cherokee (Tsalagi) people have suffered under the steady encroachment, broken treaties, and eventual ethnic cleansing by European cultural groups, especially the British. In the end, over a dozen broken treaties and a covenant-breaking spirit between the Cherokee leaders and their people broke the national back of the Nation and led toward a bitter removal to the West.

A DOOR OF CLEANSING
The Great Smoky Mountains, what the Cherokee call "The Great Blue Hills of God", has a Godly purpose as a retreat to safety in the Lord. Despite many vital Christian ministries in the area, we have seen an increase in spiritual oppression and a growing haven for open witchcraft and New Age practitioners in the old Cherokee Homeland.

The Cherokee people are hounded by many forms of poverty. According to the Scriptures, historical injustice, the shedding of innocent blood, breaking covenant, immorality, and unholy worship defile the land and bring a curse on its people. But prayer in the name of Jesus Christ can improve this situation. Through repentance the host people of the land, the Cherokee, can rise as spiritual warriors in the Kingdom of Jesus Christ as first fruits of revival and spiritual awakening.

A DOOR OF HEALING
A group of praying Christians, both white and Native American, are taking up God's call to

 "restore the land, to reassign its desolate inheritances, to say to the prisoners, ‘Come forth,' and to those in darkness, ‘Appear'" (Isaiah 49:8-9.)

These intercessors will pray throughout the Southern Appalachians where treaties were made and broken with the Cherokee people, where their homes were burned, their children scalped by white "civilized" colonists, their livelihoods destroyed, and their land lost. 
They will also repent where the Cherokee perpetrated depredations against whites, such as the many retaliatory massacre sites in East Tennessee. They will ask the Lord to come in revival and spiritual awakening to the Cherokee people once again, winning many into the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

A DOOR OF HOPE
Our hope is to do our small part to
1- Remove the blinders to the Gospel among the Cherokee, First Nations peoples, and today's inhabitants of their lands (2 Corinthians 4:4),

2- Facilitate conditions inviting to the Holy Spirit for revival and spiritual awakening among the Cherokee and other First Nations peoples, the people of Carolina, the Southeast and our nation (2 Chronicles 7:14),

3- See societal, economic, and infrastructural renewal among all our peoples (Daniel 9:25; Nehemiah 1-7; 2:1-8; 6:8-10; 12:27-47; Ezra 9:4; 10:3), and

4- Result in harvesters raised up from among our peoples to go to the nations of the earth to fulfill of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19.)

A DOOR OF PROMISE
According to legend, Creator God visited the Cherokee at Nikwasi, today's downtown Franklin, NC. He called Himself Yowah (cf. Yahweh) and brought a small flame of eternal fire. Yowah asked them to keep the flame alive in His honor. If they would, He promised, they would not perish from the earth.

"The fire on the altar must burn continuously; it must not go out" (Leviticus 6:13).

Though the Tsalagi passed through many trials, they tended the holy flame, and Yowah God has kept His covenant of love for a thousand generations. The Cherokee still call themselves Ani Kit-Yowah, "The People of God."

A DOOR OF CALLING
What Are We Going to Do?
The Lord our Creator is waiting to see if our generation will stand up and confess these sins before Him, the Righteous Judge, and claim cleansing in Christ Jesus for our children and grandchildren.

FROM GENOCIDE TO JESUS' SIDE
Since these genocidal events, deeds that make Hitler and Milosevic look like schoolboys, there has been no generation to stand before the living God and ask His forgiveness in His Son's name for these iniquitous sins. It is time to remove the generational curses from the Native Americans and our children through confession, repentance, and forgiveness in the Name that is above every Name. 
It is time for the Cherokee Principle People to come into their full inheritance as a people in Christ. It is time for freedom and liberty for the captives. It is time for the war for the Land to be over. It is time for renewal. It is time for peace. 

SHOULD YOU PARTICIPATE?
These days of prayer are only the beginning.  Through October 2000, Christians with hearts of repentance and love toward the Cherokee people will pray in the name of Jesus Christ for healing and restoration.  Is God calling you to be involved? 

THE KEY OF CAROLINA
In 1754, Royal Governor James Glen wrote,

 "the Cherokee country is the key of Carolina."

We believe the Tsalagi people could be a key today to healing, revival, and spiritual awakening in the Bible Belt and among the unreached First Nations people groups of North America. 

DATES
Cherokee Path   South Carolina       May 1999
Lower Towns     South Carolina        May 1999
Middle Towns    North Carolina         Oct. 1999
Overhill Towns   East Tennessee      May 2000
Chickamauga Towns     North Georgia         Oct. 2000

Last updated August 6, 2008.
Copyright © 1999 - 2003 Gene Brooks.
Page created February 21, 1999.