Northern Cherokee Nation of The Old Louisiana Territory - The "Lost Tribe"

The "Lost Tribe"

The leader of the Northern Cherokee Nation of the Old Louisiana Territory, Beverly Baker Northup, published a book in 2001 entitled We Are Not Yet Conquered and in the first chapter featured an explanation to the origins of the ancestry of the Cherokee people. Northup explains in this chapter that she believes that a group of Middle Eastern people (she suggests they could have been Sicarii and surviving defenders of Masada) crossed the Atlantic Ocean and intermarried with Indian peoples making up the Cherokee. Northup's suggestion of Jewish ancestry for Cherokee people was featured in the book Weird Missouri and was compared to the Mormon belief system; a similar idea also forms part of the beliefs of Christian Identity and British Israelism. The claimed connection between Amerindians and the 10 Lost Tribes has spread on Indian and Israelite oriented websites alike and has sparked disdain as well as approval.