Gregory Smithers is Professor of History at Virginia Commonwealth University, USA. He specializes in the history of Native Americans in the American South. His most recent book is The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity (2015).

This book reveals the strength of Indigenous people in the American South in re-emerging from the Revolutionary War to survive the removal era of the early nineteenth century, reasserting their connection to the South during the latter half of the century. It was originally published as a special issue of American Nineteenth Century History.

Introduction: Indigenous histories of the American South during the long nineteenth century 1. "The Indians of every denomination were free, and independent of us": Anglo-Virginian explorations of indigenous slavery, freedom, and society, 1772-1830 2. Indian land sales and allotment in Antebellum Virginia: trustees, tribal agency, and the Nottoway reservation 3. Violence and the competition for sovereignty in Cherokee Country, 1829-1835 4. Tribal "remnants" or state citizens: Mississippi Choctaws in the post-removal South 5. Serving the Choctaw cause: Robert M. Jones, sovereignty, and pragmatic diplomacy during the American Civil War 6. A southern portrait by another kind of artist 7. Reflections on the long nineteenth century and Indian Removal