The text relates the powerful and dramatic history of the Smoky Mountain Cherokees, who for 40,000 years thrived in the difficult terrain of the Great Smoky Mountains and its surrounding regions areas of what is now Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. With a constitution, organized government, written language, and no economic debt, the Cherokees sought to live in relative peace. However, President Jackson and the state of Georgia thought differently, forcing the Cherokees and their devoted Chief John Ross to leave their homeland and be removed to Oklahoma in the Trail of Tears of 1837.

Much political tension was exacerbated by the fact that a key Supreme Court ruling by Chief Justice John Marshall made clear that Georgian land grabbing of Cherokee lands was illegal. This story, and how one Cherokee Chief was sacrificed to retain a small piece of Cherokee land in the southwest corner of North Carolina, known today as Qualla Boundary, is told with passion, empathy, and historical accuracy.

Horace Kephart is also the author of Our Southern Highlanders, Camping and Woodcraft, and Smoky Mountain Magic, and the creator of the Kephart knife. Mount Kephart, a 6,217 foot peak just northwest of Qualla Boundary, was chosen by Kephart and designated in his lifetime. He was instrumental in the founding of the Great Smoky National Park. This version of Cherokees of the Smoky Mountains was revised by Kephart's great granddaughter, Janice Kephart, a spoken word artist and subject matter expert who served as a 9/11 Commission counsel. Janice added context for some commentary within the text, but left the writing mostly as is. Janice also added historical photographs from the Hunter Library Horace Kephart Archive at Western Carolina University and other libraries, as well as a new foreword and introduction.