The Chickamauga Nation maintains its heritage by resisting the construction of a prison on hallowed ceremonial sites

The rolling hills and river banks of Franklin County, Arkansas, hold more than scenic beauty--they echo with the memory of a people who have never stopped resisting.

Today, the Chickamauga Nation stands in opposition to a planned $825 million state prison complex on land north of Charleston.

They claim these grounds hold hallowed ceremonial sites and ancestral burials, including stone box graves placed across watercourses to safeguard the spirits of the dead.

But this protest isn’t simply about one tract of land. It’s about history--long buried, long denied--surfacing with new urgency.

Born from war, the Chickamauga emerged in 1776 as a splinter group of Cherokee warriors, led by Dragging Canoe, who refused to accept peace with American settlers during the Revolutionary War.

They carved out fortified towns like Running Water and Nickajack along Chickamauga Creek in Tennessee and formed one of the strongest multi-tribal alliances of the era. Their confederacy included Shawnee, Creek, escaped slaves, and white Loyalists, united against expansion.

After the U.S. militia laid waste to their towns in 1794, Chickamauga survivors began migrating westward--quietly, purposefully, and with a deep sense of cultural continuity.

By the early 1800s, Chickamauga families had crossed the Mississippi and begun fur trading along the Arkansas River with French and Spanish merchants. This movement alarmed U.S. leaders--Thomas Jefferson himself proposed relocating them further up the Arkansas and White Rivers to reduce conflict with white settlers.

Their presence eventually led to the 1817 Treaty, which granted territory in northwest Arkansas to the “Western Cherokee”—a term often used to group Chickamauga migrants despite their distinct identity.

Franklin County, formed in 1837, lies within this river valley network. While no formal Chickamauga settlements are recorded there, census records from the 1820s–1850s show Native families--often listed as whit--residing in its rugged hills. These records hint at quiet endurance: intermarriage, hidden dialects, continued ceremonies, and old names that refuse to disappear.

Now, in the face of development, the Chickamauga have drawn a line. They cite the Treaty of Hopewell (1785) and the 1817 Treaty of the Cherokee as legal anchors, both of which recognized their leadership and promised protections. Some treaty payments to Chickamauga chiefs persisted well into the 1820s—evidence, they argue, of long-standing sovereignty.

In response to the proposed prison, they’ve collaborated with anthropologists and tribal elders to document what they say are ceremonial rock carvings, ancient alignments, and burial sites on the land. Symbols etched in limestone may mark solstices or spiritual pathways—if verified, they would be among the few surviving Southeast Ceremonial Complex sites west of the Mississippi.

Though the Arkansas Department of Corrections initially reported no sacred sites, public pressure forced a cultural survey. Yet the Chickamauga remain wary that the process won’t reflect Indigenous knowledge.

In 2015, descendants formed the Chickamauga Nation, headquartered in Arkansas and claiming over 3,000 members from Tennessee to Oklahoma. Their mission avoids casino-based politics, instead focusing on economic development, cultural preservation, and federal recognition.

The current fight isn’t only about the land beneath Franklin County--it’s about identity.

The Chickamauga were mistakenly folded into the larger Cherokee identity for generations, a confusion born of linguistic similarities and colonial shorthand.

But to the descendants, the distinction is everything: it’s the root of their resistance and the fire behind this modern-day stand.