Oleta and Jan....thank you very much for your continued information regarding your families, and your involvement in the OHS, Oleta. I know that OK is rich in Cherokee history....and in fact, in other tribes as well, being the end of the TOT. I have just started my traverse in OK....from AR. My time is somewhat limited, as I am only in AR half the year. However, I finally made it over last year to Tahlequah...and visited the Heritage Center. I really enjoyed my stay at the Herrins cabin, in the woods, near the Hertiage Center. I would like to go to the Celebration held over Labor Day, but have a conflict with my Voss Family Reunion on the same weekend. Perhaps this next year we'll change that date and we as a family may come over for that celebration. I was telling Jan about the Sequoyah Research Center, and, she, me; as we both live, and have our family history there. From there mine goes back to TN, then GA and NC. I was very surprised (pleasantly) by AR interest, and commitment to the part of the Trail of Tears (all routes, land and water) that traversed across AR. Probably because it is the homeplace of 5 generations of my Sikes, and Voss families....starting in about 1845 for the Voss....and 1898 for the Sikes. My Voss side goes back to around Henryville, TN.....and there is an oral history that says my ggggrandmother Charlotte Mitchell Voss..was a fullbood Cherokee, and she, and ggggrandfather Robert James Voss, were married at Chattanooga, which at that time was Ross's Landing. Although we can't trace by documented proof. Their son, William James Voss, married Susanna Pennington....whose family traced back through the Tuttles, and Proctors (both Cherokee) Their son, Franklin Pierce Voss, married, Mary Adeline Ellis, whose family traced back through the Sanders, Lunas (Looneys), and the Hogans. This is the Sanders, who by oral history was John Walkingstick....?? I would like to think he was, but nothing I have been able to document tells me so. All these families are in TN, before AR, and trace back to NC and GA. Been back to GA, to see the Sikes homestead, but have not been back to Henryville. Although a kin says that the Mitchells, and that family, are buried along the Natchez Trace...that runs through TN. I do hope to go, and pay my respects. I do have kin that was in Henryville, but moved. I just made contact with a Voss relative, who may be near the old homestead, as he is living on his grandfather's homestead. We'll see. jes Those are my stories...or parts and pieces of them. Guess the descendants of the Mitchell family did do applications for the Dawes, and the Guinon Miller, through Thomas Mitchell, the father. Apparently my gggrandfather Voss, cautioned his children not to identify themselves as Cheorkee...probably for the same reasons as others, who feither eared some type of retaliation, or wanted nothing from the government. But, my history says that the children were actually adopted by he and his wife, on their travels from NC to TN in about 1813...found in a campground outside of what was then Ross's Landing (now Chattanooga). That's what made us think they went there for their wedding to be with her family. So if that is the true oral history...we have no names to trace....as they were anglicized upon adoption to protect them...is my belief.