Featured Fellow: Emily Magness (2024-2025 David Center for the American Revolution Short-Term Research Fellow)

The Library & Museum at the American Philosophical Society supports a diverse community of scholars working on a wide-range of projects in fields including early American history, history of science and technology, and Native American and Indigenous Studies, among others. Additional information about our fellowship programming and other funding opportunities can be found here.

Briefly describe your research project.

My dissertation investigates Cherokee women’s political leadership during the Anglo-Cherokee War (1756–1762). I use Native American and Indigenous Studies methods to place the war in a distinctly Cherokee worldview, providing cultural context for the archival and material culture sources I use. In doing so, I show that Cherokee ways of knowing are essential to understanding the Southeast, and that Cherokee women defined kin, town, and regional politics in the turbulent 18th century.

What collections did you use while working at the APS?

I worked with several collections while at the APS: the Edward Shippen Papers, a variety of published collections of colonial and military records, and the James Grant microfilm collection.

What’s the most interesting or most exciting thing you found in the collections?

James Grant’s correspondence contains messages to and from other colonial military officers detailing Grant’s efforts to drive Lower and Middle Town Cherokees out of their homelands and into the mountains. His July 11, 1761, letter to Virginia commander William Byrd detailed how, when confronted with Grant’s army, the warriors of Tasse and Noquisiyi gave up the fight and ran to save their wives and children before Grant’s forces could destroy their towns. While brutal to read, much like the rest of Grant’s correspondence, this letter required me to think about war through the lens of families, rather than armies or war parties.

Do you have any tips or suggestions for future fellows or researchers?

Keep an open mind. I came to the APS with a list of items I wanted to see but found many more while going through collections in-person.

Any suggestions for must-see places or things to do in Philadelphia?

I had not spent much time in Philadelphia before coming to the APS, so I enjoyed being a tourist and visiting the iconic landmarks in Independence Square.

Emily Dixon Magness (Cherokee Nation, Shawnee Tribe) is a Ph.D. candidate in history at William & Mary. Emily's work focuses on Cherokee women and their skillful negotiations with Indigenous and imperial polities in the eighteenth-century Southeast. Her dissertation, titled “If you had paid attention, you would know”: Gender, Politics, and Power in the Anglo-Cherokee War, puts these eighteenth-century political clashes and alliances into a Cherokee worldview, demonstrating that Cherokee women and their political priorities were at the forefront of war and peace during the Anglo-Cherokee War, a particularly turbulent moment for Anglo-Cherokee relations.