Sam Houston has come to personify the spirit of the Texas Revolution, and yet the details of his life with the Cherokee Indians have remained obscure. In the more than fifty biographies of Sam Houston, only slight reference is made to the years (1829-1833) that Houston spent with the Cherokees. To reconstruct these years the authors have examined numerous resources, including Indian agency records, Congressional documents, contemporary diaries, and unpublished letters, as well as Houston's letters and speeches.<BR>The authors scrutinize Houston's role as Indian trader, advocate in Washington of Cherokee rights, and negotiator with the Plains Indian tribes. They offer proof of Houston's marriage to the Cherokee Diana Rogers and debunk the legend that he spent the years with the Cherokees in drunken debauchery.