Discover

The '''Cherokee Phoenix''' was the first newspaper published by Native Americans in the United States from New Echota.

In 1828, Elias Boudinot, a Cherokee Native leader, became editor of the first Native American newspaper. The word Phoenix came from the name of a mythical bird that rose from ashes of a fire.
The newspaper was printed in both English and Cherokee (the Cherokee syllabary recently developed by Sequoyah), bringing many tribes from the Cherokee Nation together. The tribes were scattered in far places such as Virginia, North Carolina, northeast Alabama and Georgia.
The newspaper was successful for the development of the Cherokee written language. The publication had started in 1828 and ended in 1835 after Georgia politicians ordered the editor to stop publication.
Transcriptions of the English-language portions of the newspaper can be found at Western Carolina University's Hunter Library's website http://library.wcu.edu/CherokeePhoenix.
A digitized, searchable version of the paper is available through the University of Georgia Libraries and the Digital Library of Georgia.
A newspaper called "Cherokee Phoenix" is currently published by the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. It can be found on the Web at www.cherokeephoenix.org.