Retracing the Keowee Trail
A Deep Map of the Cherokee Path in the History of the Carolinas
- History & Biography
- Publisher: Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2024
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Publisher's Description
In Retracing the Keowee Trail, the author tells the story of the Cherokee Path that connected the low country of colonial Carolina with the mountain homeland of the Cherokee Nation. The Keowee Trail was a busy trading route for a burgeoning deerskin trade. Along this same path, epidemic disease made its way inexorably from the colony toward Cherokee society, reducing their population by more than half. Along this path, warfare was waged in both directions, by Cherokee war parties determined to defend their homeland and by settlers like the author's Scots Irish ancestors, evermore hungry for land. That ancestral history is an entry point into this larger narrative. A "deep map" approach to the Keowee Trail will hold together multiple lines of perspective, including memoir, family history, migration patterns, religious history, Indigenous wisdom, trauma theory, ghost stories, mythology, archeology, geography, the watersheds, and the flora and fauna of the Southern Appalachians.
Endorsements (3)
“In Retracing the Keowee Trail, Stuart Taylor narrates a powerful and painful story about the Cherokee Nation, Scots Irish Presbyterian settlers, and the colonial history of South Carolina. Although parts of this story have been transmitted to us, we struggle to adequately understand this history because of faulty, misleading, and shallow renderings. Taylor is a skillful public historian who illumines a pathway for us to more deeply comprehend our national, regional, and religious origins throughout the pages of this important book.”
“A veteran clergy-activist, Stuart Taylor engages personally and politically in a ‘deep mapping of the multi-layered landscape’ of Scots-Irish Presbyterians in the South and beyond. His compelling family, regional and national storytelling offers a critical alternative to memoir- and genealogical-industrial complexes that perpetuate American mythology. More than a good read, Taylor’s commitments to decolonizing discipleship and anti-racist historiography offers inspiration and models how readers might do similar work on their own landlines, bloodlines and songlines.”
“J. Stuart Taylor’s exploration of his family’s history exemplifies the curiosity and vulnerability necessary for confronting our national story in which immigrant opportunity so often relied on Native dispossession and African enslavement. His ‘deep map’ of the Keowee Trail invites readers to experience the power of place and the possibilities for telling new American and new Christian stories.”
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