Our Cherokees drifted down from Arkansas for the most part.

Texas History online has them reported here by 1807. 6,000 Cherokees living upriver from Little Rock by the 1820's, about three hundred living in East Texas by that time.

See...

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/bmc51

and especially...

www.arkansaspreservation.com/pdf/.../cherokee_removal.pdfSimilar

That latter one covering the history of the Cherokees in Arkansas.

And finally, for a detailed and fascinating account of Sequoyah's passage through Texas in 1842...

http://www.cherokeediscovery.com/his_sequoyah.html

I would like to think that if ailing at seventy, I too could be left on my own somewhere in the Hill Country for maybe six weeks.

�The company then, consisting of nine persons, immediately set off with the borrowed horse, crossed the river (Rio Bravo) against the ferry,and after constant traveling, on the seventeenth night, camped within a few miles of Sequoyah�s cave. Much solicitude was felt by us, for the safety of the old man,as we saw much �signs� of the wild Indians on our way. three men were accordingly sent on in advance to the Cave, with provisions to relieve his wants, if still alive, and in need.�

But the Cave where they had left the aged Sequoyah was empty and only a note left by him told of his misfortune of being driven from the Cave by rising waters. Happily, they followed his trail to find the old man �seated by a lonely fire.� Having been driven from his shelter by the waters, he determined to continue on towards Mexico on his own, but met with a band of Delaware Indians who urged him to return with them. �Come, let us now return to our own villages. We will take you to your door,� they urged. �No,� he replied, �I have sent forward two young men to the Mexican country, whom I shortly expect back. I am anxious to visit that country. Go with me there. We will shortly return to our own country.� But no deal was struck, and the Delawares left Sequoyah with a horse and returned to their own country.


And I will say that the whole tenor of this account differs from that of many, whoever these guys were, it seems like they were able to do that whole trip without shooting at anybody. One imagines that them and Smithwick might have got along just fine.

Birdwatcher

"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744