<DIV>?Richly detailed and well-researched, this heartbreaking history unfolds like a political thriller with a deeply human side.”?<I>Publishers Weekly</I><BR><BR><I>Toward the Setting Sun</I> chronicles one of the most significant but least explored periods in American history, recounting the unknown story of the first white man to champion the voiceless Native American cause.<br><BR>Son of a Scottish trader and a quarter-Cherokee woman, John Ross was educated in white schools. 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. Cherokee chief for forty years, he would guide the tribe through, its most turbulent period.<BR><BR>As increasing numbers of whites settled illegally on the Cherokee 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. When a group of renegade Cherokees betrayed him and negotiated an agreement with Jackson's men behind Ross's back, he was forced to give way and begin the journey west.<BR><BR>In one of America's great tragedies, thousands of Cherokees died during the tribe's migration on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma.<BR></DIV>