"When we lived beyond the great waters there were twelve clans belonging to the Cherokee tribe. And back in the old country in which we lived the country was subject to great floods." So begins the earliest and most complete version of the story of the origins and migrations of the Cherokee people, as recited by a noted member of the Keetoowah Society. First recorded in English by Cornsilk (William Eubanks) from the oral version in Cherokee by Sahkiyah (Soggy) Sanders in an 1890s Indian Territory newspaper, this tribal narrative has now been edited and published anew after over a hundred...