Brian Hicks�s Toward the Setting Sun chronicles one of the most significant but least explored periods in American history, recounting the littleknown story of the first white man to champion the voiceless Native American cause. The son of a Scottish trader and a quarter-Cherokee woman, Ross was educated in white schools and was only one-eighth Indian by blood. It was not until he was twenty-two, when he fought alongside �his people� against the Creek Indians, a neighboring rebel tribe, that he knew the Cherokees� fate would be his. As Cherokee chief for four decades in the early- to mid-nineteenth century, he would guide the tribe through its most turbulent period, at once civilizing it for a new era and furiously defending it from white encroachment. The Cherokees� plight lay at the epicenter of nearly all the key issues facing a young America: western expansion, states� rights, judicial power, and racial discrimination. Clashes between Ross and President Andrew Jackson raged over decades, from battlefields and meeting houses to the White House and Supreme Court. But Jackson began to methodically evacuate each of the other �Civilized Tribes� to land beyond the Mississippi River and felt no shame in ignoring decades of U.S.-Indian treaties. As increasing numbers of whites settled illegally on the Nation�s native land, including Ross�s beloved home at Head of Coosa, the chief remained steadfast in his refusal to sign a treaty agreeing to removal. Only when a group of renegade Cherokees betrayed their chief and negotiated an agreement with Jackson�s men behind Ross�s back was he forced to give way and begin his journey west. In one of America�s great tragedies, thousands of Cherokees died during the tribe�s migration on the Trail of Tears, and the survivors who made it to Oklahoma were left to build a new life. Toward the Setting Sun retells the story of our nation�s expansionist aspirations from the native perspective, and takes a critical look at the well-rehearsed story of American progress.